60,000 CFLs and Counting
Green Light New Orleans Recently reached a milestone: 60,000 compact fluorescent bulbs installed for free in local homes since October 2006. The headline-making 60,000th CFL was installed earlier this month at the Jeannette Street home of Irene Green.
Established in 2006 after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Green Light New Orleans is the brainchild of Swiss-born musician Andi Hoffmann, who’s now a resident of the Big Easy. Hoffman started the program first as a way to offset the greenhouse gas pollution he and his band b-goes generated during their tours to Europe. It’s since taken on a greater goal: to reduce New Orleanians’ energy costs and help fight climate change.
As Green Light New Orleans’ Website puts it, ” Global warming is the most significant environmental challenge of the day, and New Orleans is one of the most at risk cities.”
The organization estimates that, since it started installing CFLs across the city, it has (over the life of each bulb) helped residents save $2.7 million in electricity costs and reduced the region’s carbon dioxide emissions by 26 million pounds. It aims to install another 300,000-plus compact fluorescent light bulbs throughout the Crescent City in 2008.
Hoffmann says the effort has grown rapidly, to the point where Green Light New Orleans volunteers are now installing about 15,000 new CFLs each month.
“We currently receive about 40 applications per day and have a waiting list of 1,800 homes, which equals about 55,000 CFLs,” Hoffmann says. “With the help of grants, the business community and the volunteers we should be able to put CFL light bulbs in every home within four years.”
With the 4mg or 5mg of mercury in each CFL the ecological damage when all these bulbs hit the landfill should be quite interesting.
I understand your concern, Matthew: this is kind of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” territory. At least the long life of a CFL might give us time to establish some alternative, safe, clean method of disposal; I tend to believe that climate change is the more immediate, pressing matter to address today.
As someone who sells light bulbs for a living, I am less enthusiastic than most about compact fluorescent bulbs. This is due to the fact that the ones currently available contain significant amounts of mercury. If one of these bulbs should break inside of a person’s home, it could cause a challenging disposal situation. It is my belief that the technology should progress to a point at which the mercury levels are low or nonexistent before people changeover their entire homes. Another consideration is that as these bulbs burn out, they will most likely be thrown away as though they are normal rubbish and landfills will have incredibly high levels of mercury in their soil as a result.
One of the characteristics of a fluorescent bulb is that it doesn’t like to be switched on and off repeatedly. Doing so will severely shorten it’s life expectancy. In an office or factory where the lights stay on for long periods they work very well, but most household applications are short cycle so I wouldn’t expect to get very long life from any CFL used in a home environment. These bulbs also consume much more energy to manufacture than the incandescent bulb which will tend to offset any energy savings. The reason they are selling so cheaply is that most of them are being manufactured in China where the hazardous byproducts of their construction are being dumped untreated into the environment.
Thanks for the interesting perspective from a real “light bulb person,” Rudy. As I said above, I do understand the concerns about the mercury in CFLs — maybe there’s a better way we can find to dispose of them?
You raise an interesting point that has bothered me as well, Matthew: I’ve long suspected many so-called “green” products actually have larger carbon/environmental footprints than we believe, especially when you factor in waste (the old product the green one replaces) and tranportation (as you say, many of these products come from China). (Freakonomics writer Daniel Hamermesh offers an interesting perspective on this in a commentary today on “The Consequences of Being Green.”)
I’ve actually been trying to find out what the full carbon/environmental price of a CFL from China is compared to the energy-efficiency benefits it provides, but haven’t yet seen any quantitative data on the subject. Has anybody else?
Hi there!
I live in South Africa and am a “green home” profiler. I have CFLs installed all over my home and recommend them to my clients. One huge problem! They apparently contain mercury and to date I have not found out if we have any way to dispose of these in this country once they need to be replaced. Any suggestions?
Debbie Scrimgeour
Hi Debbie: I’m not sure of CFL recycling efforts in South Africa, but I would check with your local municipality to see whether there’s a program in your area. You can also ask the store where you bought the CFLs if there are any recycling programs available.
A useful resource for those in the U.S. and Canada is LampRecycle.org. It has lots of information and resources about CFLs and safe disposal/recycling.
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Most CFLs today on the market contain less than 5mgs of mercury and there are CFL options out there that contain as little as 1.5mgs of mercury- which can hardly be called a “significant amounts of mercury” considering that many item in your home contain 100s of times more of mercury including your computer. Mercury levels in CFLs can never be “nonexistent” since mercury is a necessary component of a CFL and there is no other known element that is capable of replacing it. But CFLs actually prevent more mercury from entering the environment. According to the Union of Concerned Scientist, “a coal-fired power plant will emit about four times more mercury to keep an incandescent bulb glowing, compared with a CFL of the same light output”.
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