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Need To Save Money In This Economy?There are many green products on the market and this is not a new one but it does save a ton of money. Maybe enough to take a trip to a local vacation spot. I am talking about the Compact Fluorescent Lamp that we are seeing pop up all around town. Let’s take a look at this little money saver when we consider that in the average U.S. home, lighting accounts for about 20% of the electric bill.
Replace Incandescent Blubs with Compact fluorescent bulbs
The Compact Fluorescent Lamp, which is a small fluorescent light bulb, carries the abbreviation CFL is a great energy saving green products.
 A CFL was a minor engineering packaging feat when it comes to new green products. The CFL is almost equal to the standard fluorescent fixture designed many years ago.
Ed Hammer designed the CFL in 1973 at GE and then in 1976 he completed the new spiral bulb design we know today. The spiral bulb is designed to fit in places an incandescent light bulb is used.
The CFL package still needs a high voltage starter to get things started. It still uses an electric current driven through a tube of argon gas with a small amount of mercury vapor to generate the ultraviolet light and that excites a fluorescent coating (called phosphor) on the inside of the tube, which then emits visible light.
So do green products help? Yes, you save up to 75% of the electricity used to power an incandescent bulb every time you turn on a ENERGY STAR® CFL instead. If you add up the savings that is about $30 a year off of your electric bill. Add to that the fact that a single CFL will last 10 times longer, around 8000 hours, which is about 7 years.
One of the facts overlooked is that if every American home replaced just one light bulb with a CFL instead of an incandescent bulb we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million new homes a year and prevent greenhouse gasses equivalent to the emissions of 800,000 cars.
Sense the introduction of the CFL, they have been saving us money, for example in 2007 Americans saved 1.5 Billion dollars by switching to CFLs. That would be equivalent to planting 2.85 million acres of trees or removing 2 millions cars from the road.
CFL Color Choices
Many of the newer CFLs come is a wide variety of shapes and shades of color. You can now get colors that vary from warm yellow to a bright bluish white light. With the flexibility now afforded the interior designer, it is much easier to set the mood in a custom space or room. These new green products are even designed to directly mimic the color produced by the light of the old incandescent bulb.
Many people are light sensitive and are affected by the bluer color light produced by the Daylight or older style CFLs. Where possible replace the bluish light with a warmer bulb that will help them reduce this unintentional squint caused by this new type light.
The color temp of the CFLs is based on the heat/color spectrum listed in Kelvin. The color spectrum run from left, warm 2700K-3000K colors, moving to the right 3500K-4100K is Cool White and finally to the far right 5000K-6500K is a blue Daylight color.
To determine which of the many CFL green products to use when replacing that old style incandescent bulbs use this table.
 Courtesy of Southern California Edison.
California law requires that CFL’s can not be disposed of in the regular solid waste trash. CFL are one of the latest green products but each bulb does contain about five milligrams of mercury – one-fifth of the amount of mercury in an average watch battery.
CFL green products must be recycled through places like ACE Hardware, Orchard, Home Depot and IKEA. They will accept and properly dispose of the old CFL bulb.
For decorative lights, choose ENERGY STAR® qualified light emitting diodes (LED) bulbs. The LED units are great green products and use up to 90% less energy that an equivalent incandescent bulbs to produce the same amount of light. I have been told that a single seven-watt incandescent bulb could power up to 140 LEDs.
So wherever you use incandescent bulb in the past replace them with a new CLF and for outside lighting use the new LED decorative lights. This will save you money and reduce your carbon footprint.
One of the next green products will look at is small appliance power supplies.
Michael
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I know a way to save more on toilet paper than any coupon or special. This covers all the bases = saves you money, helps the environment, helps your health, makes you feel better, it’s so easy to do and it costs less than $50.00; Save money and the Earth and be clean at the same time! Add Bathroom Bidet Sprayers to all your bathrooms. I think Dr. Oz on Oprah said it best: “if you had pee or poop on your hand, you wouldn’t wipe it off with paper, would you? You’d wash it off” Available at bathroom sprayers with these you won’t even need toilet paper any more, just a towel to dry off! Don’t worry, you can still leave some out for guests and can even make it the soft stuff without feeling guilty. It’s cheap and can be installed without a plumber; and runs off the same water line to your toilet. You’ll probably pay for it in a few months of toilet paper savings. As for water use a drought is always a concern and must be dealt with prudently but remember the water use of industrial users far exceeds the water use of household users and in the case of toilet paper manufacture it is huge. The pollution and significant power use from that manufacturing process also contributes to global warming so switching to a hand bidet sprayer and lowering your toilet paper use is very green in multiple ways.
I have read about CFLs, but you have provided some great statistical evidence to show that they are actually the best option!
Hello Michael, http://www.fivicons.com
I must say I like reading your articles very much. They are very informative and show nice graphics. I wonder if you are interested in promoting your articles and sustainable stories on my new website
BREEAM Club “Fivicons” is a professional initiative to globally organize the latest technology solutions on sustainability and renewable energy. You seem just perfect to join this relatively new community.
Just have a look and whatever you decide I would appreciate your comments and thoughts about this site and subject.
With regards,
Menno Gijrath MSc
Grontmij Europe NV
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