Bright Lights, Dim Responses
October's eco article is about compact fluorescent light bulbs and frustration with the difficulty of doing the green thing. Oh, and I also have fun quotes from two friends.
This Be Me
- Becky!!
- I work at Boone County Solid Waste as an Environmental Educator. It's the best job ever. My favorite part of my employment is connecting with residents of Northern Kentucky and sending info to those who'd like to get involved. So! Comment or contact! I am all about it! Naturally, any opions I express here are my own.
4 comments:
Your link in both posts here is not actually to anything about CFL's but actually to the Northern Kentucky Solid Waste Resource Guide. Very informative and helpful but not what I think you were wanting to link to
Thank you thank you for the notification! All has been amended.
Is there a way you could link the radio show so that we can listen in on it? I'd be interested in hearing.
As you point out in a later blog, CFL’s can be recycled, sometimes for a cost, sometimes for free.
There is also this. Hg is also added to environment from the burning of coal to generate electric.
The givens in the equation
100W incandescent bulb - avg life 1000 hours - 0 HG
23W CFL - avg life 10,000 hours - avg 5.1 mg HG
KWH used in bulbs life
100W = 100 KWH (1000 hours)
23W = 230 KWH (10,000 hours)
HG emitted by generating 1 KWH = 0.023 mg
I'll let you do the math if you like but here are the answers.
It takes 10, 100 incandescent bulbs to last 10,000 hours. In the end that’s 1000 KWH. 23 mg of HG from electric production.
The CFL will take 230 KWH. 5.29 mg of HG from electric production.
Add in the 5.1 mg and you have 10.39 mg of HG.
So the CFL even with starting out with 5.1 mg of HG in the end still comes out with 12 mg less put into the environment.
And if you recycle your CFL’s then in the end the incandescent puts out almost 18 mg more HG!
This debate is clearly won by the CLF!
Wow ... What a great insight! It makes so much sense to compare the mercury released in the burning of fossil fuels. Brilliant, and a perfect response to those who are concerned about the bigger eco picture.
As far at the radio show, it is available on iTunes, though I feel I must warn you that we spent a relatively short time discussing environmental topics and lots of time having off-color conversations that don't make much sense. If I were the MPAA, I would give it at least an R rating. If you're still not detered, simply search for "Pizza Infinity" (Josh and Kendall's production company) as the title in the podcast section of iTunes. My boyfriend Greg and I appear in episode #17.
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