What’s involved?
image:"544pxCompactFlourescentBulb.jpg"
Many suggestions on how to help the environment involve either great expense or lifestyle changes -- or both. That's why lots of folks are surprised to hear that by spending $4 to replace one incandescent (traditional) light globe with a Compact Fluorescent Lamp (or CFL), more than 360 kilograms of CO2 are kept out of the atmosphere -- and you can save more than $80 on your electric bill.
Here's the thing: the light globes you're likely to have in most of your lamps are incandescent, the same kind invented in the late 19th century. They work by heating up a wire so much that it begins to glow. It sounds neat, but it's wildly inefficient -- only 10% of the energy an incandescent globe uses goes towards lighting an area, all the rest creates wasted heat.
A compact fluorescent lamp is just like the fluorescents you see in offices or schools, except smaller. They'll fit right in your existing light sockets. Not only that, but they're specially designed to create a "warmer" light than traditional fluorescents, a light nearly identical to that created by incandescents. All that, and it only uses 20% of the energy that an incandescent globe would.
The only real disadvantage is that they cost a little bit more at the register. Each CFL costs about $4, so quite a bit more than you're probably used to paying when a light burns out. Yet despite a higher initial investment, CFLs will save you money in the long run -- quite a good bit of money. Over the 15,000-hour life of a CFL (10 to 15 times longer than the life of an incandescent!), you can save more than $80 _per globe_!
So don't even wait for the light to burn out to switch this time around. Start making a real impact on climate change today!
*How do I know this?*
Make the Switch: http://www.environmentaldefense.org/page.cfm?tagID=602&campaign=mts&calcID=571
Wikipedia Free Encyclopaedia, _CFL_: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp
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© 2008. First published on actnow.com.au
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