Believe it or not, the light bulb is 131 years old! In those 131 years, we have gone from horse and buggy to rocket trips to space and back. The world's population has grown from less than 2 billion people to just under 7 billion-- and is still growing! That's a lot of households, a lot of light bulbs (for those with electricity) and a lot of energy to power those light bulbs!
Since the US consumes a large majority of the world's energy, it seems only fitting and fair that we should also be a leader in conservation and environmental stewardship. How to do your part? You can start by changing your light bulbs.
As mentioned in a previous post, a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) uses 75% less energy and lasts 10 times as long as a regular incandescent light bulb-- saving you roughly $30 over its lifetime!
If every American home changed just one light bulb to a CFL, we would save enough energy to light over 3 million homes for a year, save more than $600 million in energy costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking 800,000 cars off the road!*
Just think about the positive impact we could make if we changed ALL of our light bulbs to CFLs! Well, this will become a reality for all of us in the very near future. Governments are already placing restrictions and bans on the production of incandescent light bulbs. The European Union is phasing out incandescents by 2012.**
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I've been using CFLs for quite a while now... long enough that I have had a couple die on me. I know you're not supposed to just throw them out too because they contain traces of mercury though. I was wondering where I can take them to be recycled, or at least disposed of safely? I tried taking them to some hardware stores (where I bought them) but they will not take them back last I checked. Do you know where I can take spent compact fluorescents bulbs?
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