Spend now, save later on energy, costs

The new fluorescents are light years away from the old, buzzing, ghoulishly colored tubes of offices and gas station bathrooms. They cast warmer light, fit into more -- though not all -- lamps and fixtures and warm up to their full brightness a little faster. Most important, compact fluorescent lamp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMcClatchy - Tribune Business News p. 1
Main Author Veverka, Amber
Format Newsletter
LanguageEnglish
Published Washington Tribune Content Agency LLC 11.03.2007
Subjects
Cost control
Energy
Environmental protection
Fixtures
Recycling centers
Yard waste
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Summary:The new fluorescents are light years away from the old, buzzing, ghoulishly colored tubes of offices and gas station bathrooms. They cast warmer light, fit into more -- though not all -- lamps and fixtures and warm up to their full brightness a little faster. Most important, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), as they're called, use 75 percent less energy than regular, incandescent bulbs. Mint Hill resident Andy Brennan said the higher price "would certainly be a deciding factor" in any decision to replace his home's incandescents with CFLs. He bought one fluorescent as an experiment and says though CFL packages list wattage equivalents to regular bulbs, they don't appear to cast quite as much light. A potentially bigger problem with CFLs looms. The bulbs contain small amounts of mercury -- the package carries a warning -- and shouldn't be tossed in the trash. Although Australia plans to ban incandescents and a California lawmaker has proposed a similar shift for that state, it's unclear whether the fluorescent technology will eliminate the bulb Edison built. Lighting manufacturers in the European Union recently agreed to phase out incandescent lights, but didn't spell out how or when. And manufacturers such as Philips Lighting Co. and General Electric Co. plan to unveil new halogen and regular incandescent lights that come close to or exceed the energy efficiency of CFLs.