Invented over 206 years ago, the light bulb has gone through many changes. From its early beginnings with a battery and a carbon short circuit to todays standard of not caring what the heck is in the socket and just knowing that when you flip a switch you will be able to see the remote for the T.V. Oh what luxuries we have come to know. 

As some of our readers may know, Greener Thinking recently had an interview with a local news paper and in it I had described how I had converted my entire house to compact Florescent bulbs. I did not, however, have the opportunity to go into great detail about the advantages and disadvantages. 

One of the problems you will find when using compact florescent bulbs is that they take a few minutes to come to full brightness. Some of the newer ones do not take quite as long. Another issue can be that the compact florescent bulbs are not the same shape as a normal bulb so they do not fit into all of the same places. One of the biggest issues with compact florescent bulbs is that they contain a small amount of mercury. This is an issue because it makes it difficult to dispose of the bulbs. You should definitely look into a recycle outlet that can handle these bulbs when choosing to replace the bulbs in your home. Some companies like GE and Philips only use trace amounts of mercury in the manufacturing of these bulbs. Another issue is that upfront cost will be more. And the biggest drawback of them all is that your “Easy Bake Oven” brownies will never cook with a compact florescent bulb. Due to the fact that there is less energy lost to the friction of electricity, compact florescent bulbs will never get hot enough to cook your tiny brown cakes of goodness. 

There are also reasons why using florescent bulbs is good and very helpful. Where your “Easy Bake Oven” gets the short end of the stick your electricity bill will definitely be happier. An average 60-Watt equivalent bulb uses around 14 Watts of electricity. This means that you can run around four compact florescent bulbs with the same amount of electricity as an incandescent one. Another bonus is that a compact florescent bulb lasts around 10 times longer than the average incandescent. I started the conversion in my house to florescent bulbs about 3 years ago and during that time I have not needed to replaced a single florescent bulb, but I have steadily replaced all of the dead incandescent bulbs until there were no more. It is much nicer not to worry about changing the light bulbs in your house every 8 months or so. One other thing that makes compact florescent bulbs nice is that they are built to fit into the same sockets as a regular bulb. This means you can replace just about any incandescent bulb with a florescent one. They are getting smaller and smaller as time goes by which also makes it easier to fit them into smaller fixtures. Finally, over the life of the bulb you will save money and electricity due to the more efficient design of compact florescent bulbs and that is a win-win for the Greener Thinking philosophy. 

Compact Florescent Bulbs Cheat Sheet 

Pros

• Much less electricity to give off the same amount of light
• Last much longer than regular bulbs
• Fits into the same socket as an Incandescent
• Cheaper over the life of the bulb

Cons:

• Use Mercury
• Take a couple of seconds to get to max brightness
• The shape can sometimes get in the way of smaller fixtures
• The upfront cost is more

Did you like this? If so, please and subscribe to the RSS feed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Conservation, Home Electronics, Recycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.