Buy compact fluorescent light bulbs now
Purchasing energy efficient lighting at work
You can save 300 pounds of carbon
for every three frequently-used light bulbs you replace with CFLs
Changing all the light bulbs in your home to compact CFLs is a simple and inexpensive way to cut the amount of energy you consume.
Search for CFLs
| Environmental Defense | Energy saving light bulb finder, part of their "Make the Switch" campaign. Take the One Million-Bulb Swap Out pledge |
| Energy Star Interactive Choose a Light Guide | Use this fun tool to choose the right CFL bulb by searching for shape, location and light quality |
| Energy Star store locator* | Online search for CFL retailers near you |
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LetsGoGreen offers ENERGY STAR qualified CFLs in lots of shapes and sizes. Purchase products here and 25% of every dollar comes back to New Dream |
*The locator will also search online sources. But clicking “yes” in the “sells online” button will produce a large number of online sources displayed first, before the local sources. To shop locally first, leave the “sells online” box checked “no.” If nothing satisfactory comes up, go back and check “yes” on the “sells online” option.
Mercury and CFLs
The Responsible Purchasing Nework's guide to CFLs notes that lighting is associated with mercury in two ways:
- Coal-fired power plants that generate the electricity to light the bulb release mercury into the environment.
- All light bulbs, including CFLs, contain varying amounts of mercury.
According to 2005 U.S. Department of Energy data, illuminating an incandescent bulb generates more mercury than lighting an equivalent CFL. (The average coal-fired power plant emits approximately 5.4 mg of mercury to light a 75-watt incandescent light bulb for five-years, whereas it takes about 1.7 mg to run an equivalent CFL for the same time.)
If you are concerned about the amount of mercury in your light bulbs, look for ENERGY STAR certified CFLs. The new ENERGY STAR 4.0 standards, effective in late 2008, limit the amount of mercury allowed in ENERGY STAR qualified CFLs to less than 5 milligrams for most bulbs. Read their fact sheet on CFLs and mercury.
Recycling CFLs
Though CFLs do contain about as much mercury as the point in a ball-point pen, it is still important to recycle spent CFLs. You can take them to some big box stores like IKEA and Wal-Mart or look up a location near you on earth911.org.
Why it's important
According to the US Department of Energy, lighting accounts for 22% of the electricity used in the United States. Energy Star CFL bulbs use about 75 percent less energy than standard incandescent bulbs, last up to 10 times longer, save about $30 or more in electricity costs over each bulb's lifetime, and produce about 75 percent less heat. In fact, the Department of Energy says that if every American home replaced just one light bulb with an Energy Star CFL bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and the greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars!
Learn more
- The Benefits of Compact Fluorescent Lighting - from Greenfeet.com
- Energy Star's CFL page
- Green Seal Choose Green Report on CFLs (pdf file)
- Energy Efficient Lighting
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