The marketing lately to promote the “green” CFL – compact fluorescent light bulb and how it is good for the environment and your wallet is not entirely on track. Yes, the price is cheap, but at what cost?
BEWARE.
There is still mercury in the CFL bulbs and that poses a future risk to your health if the bulb is broken by mistake in your home or office. Yes, the EPA has a lengthy process for you to follow if a CFL breaks. You must evacuate the room and if a window is available, air out the room. You mustn’t use a vacuum to pick up the pieces as it will in effect make your vacuum a future contamination tool!
The other factor that is a concern, the mercury from all those millions – billions of CFL bulbs that make it into the waste processing and ultimately into the water tables.
Let’s be clear, the promotions are to inspire you to move away from incandescent light bulbs for a better environmental choice – despite that incandscent bulbs have been used for a very long time and are not considered “haz-mat” when they break. Incandescents use more KW (electricity) and the “green” argument for CFL bulbs leading to less CO2 – a gas that we exhale and that plants need to grow and produce oxygen. However, the hazmat problem is usually minimalized.
A new direction to look for lighting?
LED lighting. It is a newer technology and therefore more expensive up front – just like CFL bulbs where when they first were introduced. However, the LED:
- doesn’t contain mercury,
- uses even less electricity to produce lumens (light)
- a nice, non-flickering, warm or cool color of light
- at approx. 50,000 hr life, it far outlasts the incandescent and CFL bulbs.
- Many of the bulbs have a break resistant covering and are cool to the touch in the lamp version(s) of equal to 40 watt – just tested it myself.
Yes, you will probably have sticker shock when you see the initial price of LED lighting that is bright enough for reading, or lighting a dark hallway… but the power it will need over the course of its lifetime will save perhaps dozens of dollars in replacements, energy used and the actual labor to replace the bulb.
If you are replacing a bulb or two over the next several months, consider LED as your better option. Especially if it is a bulb used for lots of hours a day or week. You will begin to see a difference in your electricity use in those types of applications. Don’t know where to find LED bulbs?
I have several sources I am willing to share with you…they are not in the big box stores and probably won’t be for some time, due to the price point.
If you want to start small – consider the nightlights – 1 Watt and for the tests I’ve done, very bright and effective for hallways (too bright for bedroom – my opinion). These are in the big box stores.