Today Al Gore spoke at Arizona State University about his award winning film An Inconvenient Truth and after the event everyone was given a free complact florescent bulb (CFL). According to Energy Star If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR CFL, we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars. So instead of waiting for my incandescent lights to burn out I made the switch and replaced the last 19 of my 33 household lights with CFLs. They are a little more expensive but the cost is coming down significantly and they pay for themselves in the first 500 hours. Besides the spiral shape they now come in different sizes and shapes for both indoors and outdoors.
The conversions from incandescent are on the CFL package but in my example I was replacing a 60 watt incadescent so the CFL equivalent was 13 watts.
They do contain a small amount of mercury so clean up with caution if you break one (no vacuums) and recycle them when they die.
Here is an example of my savings and a quick formula for my math loving readers...
(wattage of the bulb) X (life of the bulb) X ($.10/1000) = cost to run a light bulb
(60W bulbs I replaced) X (8000 hrs) X ($.10/1000) = $48 cost to run 1 60W lightbulb assuming that a regular light bulb will last 8000 hours like a CFL. It won't!
(15W what I purchased) X (8000) X $.10/1000) = $12 to run 1 15W CFL and the difference is money in my pocket. That's a savings of $684 minus $76 (purchase price for 19 bulbs) = a great return on investment! Plus I am helping to prevent greenhouse gases which for me it most important.
Are you ready to make the switch and save Mother Earth?
