A few days ago my husband went to the store to buy some light bulbs. He came home and told me he couldn’t find any 100W bulbs. The salesman informed him that starting in January 2013 the government has banned 100W and 75W incandescent bulbs. By January 2014 the government will ban the sale of 60W and 40W incandescent bulbs.
When compact fluorescents (CFLs) first came out, I thought they were a great idea. If we as a population switched over to these more efficient bulbs we could reduce our society’s energy consumption without changing our lifestyle: “Wow, what a great idea!” I was an early convert to the new bulb and very excited about this energy saving technology even though they where far more expensive than incandescent bulbs.
After using the CFLs for a while in my home, I began to dislike the cold light coming from these bulbs, but I still thought it was a great energy saving idea. I just put up with the cold, sterile light and the ghostly green glow it gave to skin. In these early days, no one knew about the mercury in the bulbs and that if the bulbs broke in your home, your family could inhale mercury dust. Since we didn’t know about the mercury in the bulbs we weren’t careful about discarding the bulbs safely and they just went into the garbage.
Many years later, I learned about the mercury in CFLs. I was horrified. I felt manipulated and cheated by CFLs. I’d spent more money on CFLs, advertised as environmentally friendly, to find that the opposite might be true: “I’m such a gullible dope!” After doing some more research to confirm the bad news, I switched back to incandescent bulbs in my home. It was great to go back to the warm, yellow light of incandescent bulbs.
Presently, I do not allow CFLs to be used in our home. We do use a few CFLs in our business. We are very careful to use CFLs in places where the bulbs cannot be broken. We try to have CFLs in glass and metal caged ceiling or wall fixtures. We would never use CFLs for table or floor lamps because of the danger of the lamp falling over and exploding, spreading mercury dust everywhere.
After these experiences, I am unhappy to learn that I am going to have trouble finding incandescent bulbs in the future. Can’t the government stop meddling in my household decisions?
I have decided to stockpile 60W and 40W incandescent bulbs. Some people are suggesting stockpiling incandescent bulbs until Light-Emitting Diode (LEDs) technology improves. Presently, we use LED headlamps for night-time use and camping. But LED technology does have some limitations. LEDs will last for 10,000 hours but only work well at very low wattage.
HOUSEHOLD ENERGY SAVING PROJECT: Do you want to save on electrical bills and reduce your electrical consumption? I have a household project for you to try. Between the months of March 2012 to March 2013, we shut off all the breakers in the house except for the breaker to our refrigerator and freezer at about 8:00pm every night. We usually go to bed at 9:00pm. The family uses LED headlamps and rechargeable batteries if we need light during the night. During that year we had a surprising 40% reduction of our power consumption!
After such an amazing success, we continue this practice to this day. We have noticed something else which we cannot totally explain. Our light bulbs are not burning out as fast either. It may be because lights occasionally are left on all night by naughty children or adults. This cannot happen when the breakers are off. Thus your stockpile of?incandescent bulbs will last even longer with this system.
Updated November 5, 2013: Since the 1980s, the 3Rs Campaign: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle has became very wide spread. Even though “recycle” is the last word in the series, the act of “recycling” has become the major focus of government funding. Dr Floy Lilley questions the economic wisdom of using government funding for recycling.
