CONSILIENCE PRODUCTIONS | "dialogue BEYOND music" | Earth Blog and Forum | Let There Be (Fluorescent) Light

« Are you an Eco-Mom? | Main | Buried Seed Vault »

March 2, 2008 2:17 AM

From a recent "Greentips," published by a wonderful organization called The Union of Concerned Scientists:

Today's compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) already use 50 to 80 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs. If every U.S. household replaced just one incandescent bulb with a CFL, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates we would reduce global warming pollution by an amount equivalent to taking more than 800,000 cars off the road.

If you ever get asked the question, "Do my little changes really make a difference in reducing global warming?" - just hit them with that statistic! If every U.S. household replaced just one incandescent bulb with a CFL, it would be the equivalent of taking more than 800,000 cars off the road.

note:

CFLs do contain a small amount of mercury, so they cannot be thrown out in the trash (see the related links for disposal information). However, the mercury in CFLs represents a much less significant environmental hazard than incandescent bulbs because CFLs require much less electricity, and more than half of our nation’s electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants—the largest U.S. source of mercury emissions.
In other words, the average coal-fired power plant emits only 3.2 milligrams of mercury for each CFL running six hours per day for five years, but emits nearly 15 milligrams of mercury for an incandescent bulb running the same amount of time, according to UCS research. The difference far exceeds the approximately five milligrams present inside a CFL. Properly disposing of CFLs ensures the mercury in them remains contained.

What are you waiting for?

Run, don't walk, to your nearest store to pick your CFLs up now!