Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
They need to stop trying to update CFL's and start working on LED's that are affordable. CFL's are a temporary fad, and quiet honestly, after we put a house full of them in, I noticed only a dollar or so savings. The fact is they aren't some super energy efficient green thing. Light bulbs account for only a small fraction of the energy used in the average home. So to take away a fraction of a small fraction leaves you with a tiny fraction of your bill that you are saving.
The real savings in lighting comes from only having lights on when they are necessary. Me and the wife are phasing incandescents back in to several areas of the house because of the low quality light from CFL's. Keep the incandescent use to a minimum and I see no reason to have CFL's. Its just a big part of the hippy fad "I'm green! Look I even have the cute CFL's Priest Gore told me to buy!!!"
Well although these bulbs do contain about 1/2 the amount of Mercury, it still does pose a serious environmental hazard! About 90% of all these bulbs will wind up in land fills. So if you multiply 20 million per month X 1.5 milligrams you get a significant amount of Mercury dumped in landfills that will most definitely eventually find its way into our ground water.
Sad to say but every landfill will leak its nasty stuff into our ground water. All landfills should be closed and made illegal. If you really want to do some serious environmental activism I would suggest you pay more attention to ground water contamination than to this Pop Culture Media Frenzy of your Carbon Foot Print. It is entirely so insignificant compared to real environmental concerns.
We replaced every bulb in the house with the energy savers ... but ... unless I need a light to see my way, read or work then you won't see them turned on. That IMO is how you save energy and a few bucks.
Well although these bulbs do contain about 1/2 the amount of Mercury, it still does pose a serious environmental hazard! About 90% of all these bulbs will wind up in land fills. So if you multiply 20 million per month X 1.5 milligrams you get a significant amount of Mercury dumped in landfills that will most definitely eventually find its way into our ground water.
Sad to say but every landfill will leak its nasty stuff into our ground water. All landfills should be closed and made illegal. If you really want to do some serious environmental activism I would suggest you pay more attention to ground water contamination than to this Pop Culture Media Frenzy of your Carbon Foot Print. It is entirely so insignificant compared to real environmental concerns.
Many things that include mercury hit the landfills. In my state, it's illegal to throw out ANYTHING with mercury in it, but companies make it as hard as possible to find out what materials are in components (though mercury *should* be marked) and few people take the initiative to take their products to the hazardous waste facilities. GPS systems, most laptops, most cell phones, handheld game systems, and more all contain mercury and are going into the landfills or, even worse, being incinerated every day.
I switched to cfl's for outdoor, hallway and living room fixtures. Home office and library have 50's style straight flourescents. In the bathrooms I have 60W incandescents. LED's should be the next thing but the rest of my lights are cold cathode (neon/argon) lights which use very little energy and give good light. Along with the traffic signal bulbs in the bathrooms they have worked flawlessly since 1990.
LEDs need to be significantly less expensive and produce a lot more lumens to become practical alternatives. Solar tubes don't help on the first floor or basement of 2+ story houses.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
