Comments on: No more regular light bulbs? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/02/28/no-more-regular-light-bulbs/ The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:15:57 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Tom Barrett http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/02/28/no-more-regular-light-bulbs/#comment-115 Tue, 06 Mar 2007 14:15:58 +0000 http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/no-more-regular-light-bulbs/#comment-115 Having been responsible for installing over 10,000 CFLs recently I’m somewhat concerned as to where CFLs are going. First, I think they are a great source of light. Second, they went in the wrong direction making them totally disposable. When CFLs first came out they were two-piece units, a lamp and an inefficient magnetic ballast. Today they have evolved into high tech electronic devices and are one piece. The ballast typically lasts 3 to 5 lamp lives so it can be resued over and over lasting up to 20 years or longer, except that we can no longer replace the lamp portion. A typical product of a manufacturing system run in a nonsustainable way. And yes there is a tiny bit of mercury that is a concern, not to mention the lead in the solder in the electrtonic ballasts (in case you hadn’t noticed incandescent lamps use lead solder too and should not be sent to land fills) and other heavy metals and nasty materials used in elctronic components.

So the solution is to go back to the two-piece system, place a deposit on both the lamp and the ballast, set up a recycling campaign similar to aluminum cans, and not allow them to be disposed up in the household waste stream. Think of the fund raisers that school kids could do to cover the cost of their books and field trips by recovering the deposit on these lamps, not to mention the energy savings and the fewer nuclear power plants we’d have to build.

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