Environmentally Friendly Lighting
Much of the conventional wisdom these days tells us to switch out our incandescent bulbs with fluorescent lighting. It is true that fluorescent lights last a lot longer and use a lot less electricity than incandescent bulbs. They are great energy savers. But if we are really concerned about our environment we should be concerned about the highly toxic mercury that is found in all fluorescent bulbs. Even many environmentalists are unsure of this change as described in this article. The problem is that compact fluorescent (CFL) need to be recycled and not sent to landfills. If we start using as many CFLs as we do incandescents, the landfills will be inundated with mercury poison as these bulbs break. And right now it is nearly impossible to locate a CFL recycler.
Our suggestion is to switch to LEDs. LED lights are 300% more energy efficient than fluorescent lights and about 1000% more efficient than incandescent lights. And LED lights last over 50,000 hours. A 5 watt LED is equivalent to a 60 watt incandescent. They have a ways to go but the industry is taking giant steps in bring LEDs to our homes.
But until the price really comes down, I suppose CFLs are still better choice than standard incandescents. This is true only of lights that are on for a long time. If you have lights that you switch on and off a lot, CFLs use more energy to power up than the incandescent uses in the short time it is on. Use CFLs wisely but go with LED lighting whenever possible. |
