Steal This Idea: Better CFL Packaging

I heard Target and Wal-Mart are both considering having dropoff bins for used CFL’s – I love ‘em (CLFs); they really do save you money!

I have slowly but surely replaced a huge percentage of my bulbs with these little suckers and I’m going to be honest – my electric bill hasn’t decreased.

On the bright side, my house if filled with little glass containers that have mercury in them.

Seriously, I see someone says they save you money. Can you honestly say you’ve seen a difference in your bill?

I haven’t.

While I don’t know about cost-saving and eco-friendliness, I’m sure that CFL’s are way more convenient. They live much longer and I don’t have to replace them that often. In particular, they are much more robust against flaky power lines and being bumped. Every time a incandescent bulb is bumped it burns out — how annoying is that!

While CFLs are a large step forward in efficiency, their greatest environmental downside is that they contain Mercury.

All fluorescent bulbs contain this heavy metal as a vapor and if a bulb breaks it simply mixes with the air around you.

Mercury is a heavy metal which can be absorbed into the body by breathing it. Once there it stays for a long time and causes damage to the nervous system.

This is why I believe LED light bulbs are most likely a better alternative.

Please recycle your CFLs people and be careful not to break them.

That is the reason recycling MUST be implemented with these bulbs. The actual reuse of the components is secondary in importance.

Why cant we move beyond CF to LED’s? I do not know all the sides of LED’s but the size, longevity, and mpact on the environment should push the CF argument to the side.

We have a few in our home and the light is superior to the CF bulbs.

Can anyone educate me on why LED is bad?

If people aren’t actually seeing a cost savings in their bills as someone mentioned here doesn’t that mean that the bulbs aren’t actually saving electricity? Although I know nothing about them, LEDs already sound like a better alternative.

LEDs are one example of the growing Solid State Lighting (SSL) industry. Obviously, LEDs are by far the most recognized SSL name.

It is not whether LEDs are good or bad. In fact, there is increasing research which indicates LEDs are the future of energy efficient lighting. The key word in that last sentence is ‘future’. The SSL industry is in it infancy and still must overcome several key challenges before the technology can compete with CFLs.

LEDs were first developed to produce colored light – in fact color is what the LED does best. Manufacturers have a long way to go before ‘white’ light LEDs can compete with CFLs. Right now white LEDs produce about half the light output per watt as CFLs although they are rapidly approaching and should exceed CFLs in the near future. Producing white light (equivalent to CFLs) has been and continues to be a big challenge for LED manufacturers – specifically with respect to color consistency.

In very basic terms today you can walk into any big box retailer and be confident (at least with Energy Star labeled products) you won’t turn them on at home only to find some producing pinkish-white light while others produce bluish-white light. You cannot say the same right now for the large majority of LEDs.

LEDs are extremely sensitive to heat. In fact LED’s are happiest when they are coldest – you will likely see LEDs taking over the freezers in our local grocery stores before long. Not only must manufacturers figure out how to produce white light, they must also figure out how to keep them cool.

I hope this helps explain where the LED industry is today. With zero mercury, LEDs certainly have an extremely bright future (pun intended).

So you are aware, the big three manufacturers (Philips, Osram Sylvania, and GE) are have been making a big push to remove as much mercury as possible from CFL lamps and are having very good success. You cannot always find these in your local big box retailer but they are out there.

Please keep in mind that while you have slowly replaced your old bulbs with CFL electricity costs have doubled. Try to compare your KWatt usage this year (use a month where you do not use heat or A/C) with the one 12 months prior.

Reply to below post:

I have slowly but surely replaced a huge percentage of my bulbs with these little suckers and I’m going to be honest – my electric bill hasn’t decreased. o

On the bright side, my house if filled with little glass containers that have mercury in them.

Seriously, I see someone says they save you money. Can you honestly say you’ve seen a difference in your bill?

I haven’t.

I think a better solution is to skip the CFL’s completely and head straight to the next big thing, LED’s. I just purchased some from http://www.lumenstarled.com, Energy Efficient lighting has come a long way.

This is the type of recycling program that should be required for all dangerous goods, not just cfl bulbs but batteries, electronics, and any other product that shouldn’t end it’s life in a landfill. Unfortunately you won’t be finding many company’s willing to bear the extra expense and most consumers are not willing to take the extra hit in their wallets.

I live in the UK, so I’m not sure about direct comparisons with US homes, but bare with me.The EU are banning incandescent light bulbs by 2010 so many UK residents already use CFL’s (or ‘energy saving lightbulbs’ as we like to call them).We changed all our bulbs for CFL’s when we moved into our last flat and we got a call from the energy company asking us to confirm our meter reading because it was so LOW. We only paid £4 for three months electricity in a one bed flat. We’re careful to switch every appliance off at night so as not to waste energy leaving devices on standby and we limit our use to a reasonable amount for a couple, but this was still extraordinary.Prices have since gone up, but I believe if we all make a few small changes – and sacrifices – in our lives we’ll see a massive collective difference and help our planet to readjust to the damage we’ve inflicted on it over the centuries.RichardLondon, England

This is ridiculous! CFL’s are ridiculously expensive compared to regular bulbs. I’ve tried replacing several in my house and they burn out or even burst much quicker than a decent incadescant.
When CFL’s burst, the mercury that could be released causes it to become a HAZMAT location. And we got onto China for putting lead in paint, yet we’re letting our government force us to put mercury inside our houses? Seems a bit ironic to me! Also, don’t forget to mention, CFL’s are not dimmable. Though there are some dimmable CFL’s available, they cost much more and you need an expensive reverse-phase dimmer installed in the wall in order to utilize that function. Whereas if you dim an incadescent bulb to 80%, you save 20% on your energy usage for that light, not to mention the extrra money you saved keeping your old dimmer, and an inexpensive light. Any savings you get from lower electricity costs is FAR outweighed by the high-price of adoption. It is a net negative cost to switch to CFL’s. Too bad the old technology is still MUCH cheap and user-friendly than all this “eco-friendly” crap that is trying to be shoved down our throats. Just think, if CO2 emissions were sooooo bad, then the US wouldn’t trying to be taxing them, they would be eliminating them. But rather, the US knows that they don’t affect the envirnoment in a negative manner, they just want to make money off a huge hoax. Not to mention, plants LIVE off of Carbon Dioxide and emit Oxygen. Human’s emit Carbon Dioxide after taking in Oxygen. If it was sooo bad for the environment, then why were humans created like we were? We’re starting to starve the very source of life that gives us oxygen. Before you know it, the government is going to tax people for the carbons we emit, and then once all plants are extint from lack of carbon dioxide, they will create machines to turn water into oxygen and deplete our water supply as well. Either way, using CFL’s, or using all this energy-saving stuff helps nobody, certainly not you or me.

Also, if using electricity is SO bad, then why is the government trying to get everyone to make and buy electric cars with extremely high-priced batteries that have a very limited life? Not only will they increase electricity demand exponentially, once the batteries in the cars are dead after 4-5 years, no one will want to spend $10k to replace the batteries in a car that is only worth $10k-$15k anyways. So the car is going to go into a landfill and further pollute the earth with its plethora of toxic batteries. Next time the government tries to tell you it’s saving you money or energy, look at all aspects of what’s happening, and the effect it has on our society and environment. Even ethanol is a net negative energy. It takes more energy to create ethanol than what ethanol produces. It still takes a barrel of oil to grow, produce, and process the ethanol, and then you’re left with a barrel of ethanol which contains less energy than the same volume of oil which was used to create it. So in recap, you burn 1 barrel of oil to create 1 barrel of ethanol. Then you burn the ethanol in your car for less gas mileage, damage to the engine and components, and less energy. Basically, you burn two barrels of fuel for about 3/4 a barrel of energy output rather than just burning the one barrel of oil for lower emissions and more energy. Sounds to me like that’s a solid plan for a greener earth.(And please don’t forget that ethanol depletes food sources an increases the cost of food all across the world, and also depletes the soil of nutrients needed to grow other types of food. Farmers have to rotate crops in order to keep the soil full of nutrients. But if they’re only growing corn, it extracts all nutrients and fails to replenish those, and ultimately renders that land useless to anyone.)

How much more pollution of varying types will be generated exclusivley for the suggested recycling method above. Think it through folks! Special packaging well beyond what would be necessary for routine retail of the product. Past ecology theories always seemed to include less packaging, and of materials that would be environmently friendly. There’s a good bit of extra ink being used to produce a package with a shipping label already printed on it. By-The-Way…Who’s paying for the shipping? USPS contract? Private Commerce contract? Taxpayer funds maybe? That seems to be the new trend! Anyway IF people use the package as designed, then there will be a major increase in delivery costs which is a bunch more fossil fuel being burned to transport these bulbs. Local “Return Where Purchased” drop points seems more effective. How about money wasted for all of the printed and paid labels that are never used. Resources of all kinds, including the very same electricity claimed to be saved has been used to produce this extra special package. Is the extra damage caused by the Mercury really worth the electric savings. How much more power is being used to mine, transport,process, reclaim, etc and dispose of that Mercury that otherwise would never have to be used. Not to mention that now we have all this hazardous stuff laying around just waiting for some big corporate cheats to find a way to avoid responsibility for proper storage. Really can this be anything more than a flagrant expoitation of the current social propaganda. (if your not as green as they tell you to be then you are of course evil). Don’t get me wrong. I believe there are a great many things which can and probably should be changed concerning wasteful energy habits, but this just doesn’t seem to be anything worthwhile. Many times we may be saving a few pennies (Maybe not considering the up-front cost of new gadgets), but the power savings are just a lie when you factor in all of the new power requirements that will be created elsewhere. “Out-Of-Site, Out-Of-Mind. We all must think things through carefully lest we become as sheep led away to our own destruction. I suggest we all stock as many of the cheap incandescent bulbs as we can before they are banned outright. Well there’s much more could be said pro-con but I’ll end here with one last thought, Search-Out the effects of Inc. vs Flour. lighting. Agree or not, Thanks for taking time to read through to this point. You are obviously someone who is interested in searching for truth and knowledge and is willing to consider as much as you can find. Have a good day! Spenz

Not sure the postal service is going to be too eager to ship all those little containers of hazardous material!