An interesting irony is that many states don’t even have bottle bills yet! Considering the amount if energy it take to make aluminum...as compared to recycling it, this seems like a no-brainer! We have to walk before we can run!
Saw this from Consumer Reports (hope they don’t mind the cut and paste):
Illuminating update on CFLs
After thousands of hours, most of the 13- to 15-watt compact fluorescent lightbulbs we are testing still work. That’s good news, considering that equivalent 60-watt incandescents typically last only 1,000 hours. All of the CFLs are Energy Star-qualified.
But the light went out early on seven of nine Feit Ecobulb ESL13T bulbs, which cost about $2.25 apiece. Most of these failed between 3,300 to 3,900 hours of lighting in our tests, which cycle them on and off. The package claimed 8,000 hours average life. A better choice was the Feit Ecobulb Plus ESL13T/Eco ($2.66). All 10 samples of that model passed a 5,000-hour preliminary test, and they are being tested further, along with other brands. So far, here are some other good choices: GE 8,000 Hour Long Life 41525, and N:Vision 423-599, (sold at Home Depot) were still on after 7,600 hours. We paid about $2 to $4.50 a bulb.
All of the bulbs we are testing claim to have less than 5 milligrams of mercury. Ecobulb Plus claims less than 2.5 mg; N:Vision, 2.3 to 3.5 mg. You should recycle dead CFLs so that mercury isn’t released into the environment. Most municipalities don’t have programs to collect CFLs, and neither do most stores that sell them. Learn how to recycle your CFLs.
Although not all CFLs will last their claimed life, our testing has shown that most should last much longer than incandescent bulbs and pay for themselves in energy savings. Even the Feit bulbs that quit at 3,300 hours could save about $13 over their short life span.
IES Lamp Life ratings are based on a 3 hr on 20 min off cycle. Life is calculated on sample lot when 50% have failed meaning for ex a lamp with 10000 hr rating means the median lamp lasted that long with half failing before and half lasting longer.
In theory the lamps should last that long provided the filament isnt damaged during the process. I suspect most failures are due to the very cheap components used in the ballast portion of the lamp versu the lamp itslef.
Myself I have some old sylvania lamps made where I used to work which are sill burning after 12 years but we used good components, where as the Chinese knock off junk I have been forced to buy recently(my old supply long gone) are lucky to get a couple years and I am sure not many hours since I turn off lights.
FWIW I ran tests on some T8 32W 4 ft FO32Octron lamps we were working on and got over 25K hours on them on the filaments I designed.
We also had electrodless lamps which in theory would last over 100K hours, but I left before the tests on those were very far along. I have one in my garage and works great.
I bought one of those reusable bags from Wild Oats a few months ago, touted as “green” (they tend to fall apart pretty quickly with reasonable use). Not only are they made of plastic fibers that, as far as I know, are not recyclable, but they are made in China!
I also love the whole biofuels thing and how it’s supposed to give the US energy independence - GREEN FUEL. Check out National Geographic from a year or so ago documenting the increased slash and burn practices in the Amazon to make room for more soybean farms. Awesome!
Seems to me that any time a subsidy makes the apparent cost of something much less than the actual resources consumed in producing it, then we are encouraging excessive or perhaps even reckless consumption of that item and by extension the resources that go into its production.
I’ve heard the argument (not in the past few months so much) that subsidies of the oil industry have created artificially low oil prices that have encouraged excessive use of oil.
How about when the subsidy is for something that’s ‘green’? Do massive subsidies of photovoltaic system lead to their use in situations where they consume more resources than the value of the electricity that they produce?
We can perhaps agree that the McMansion on the hill is not green - it consumes more resources than necessary, merely to make the owner feel good about themselves.
Is a subsidized photovoltaic system different? I will argue that many of them consume more resources than necessary, and in fact more resources than would be consumed to provide the same electricity by conventional means. This seems like unnecessary consumption of resources to make the owner feel good.
If programs designed to encourage ‘green’ projects lead to wasteful consumption of resources, that’s pretty ironic.
Not drilling domestically so that we have to burn massive amounts of fossil fuel to get the fossil fuel here, and risk spilling, and or spill, the fossil fuel in the ocean while burning fossil fuel to get the fossil fuel here!
Burning up millions of gallons of oil to fight a war to assure our access to ..oil.
Idling cars in a traffic jam.
sounds of the Talking Heads ‘Burning Down the House’ filling my head.
Burning up the furniture and the house for fuel instead of putting on a sweater and closing off a few rooms to reduce heating needs.
CFL’s—agree on variable life, but most last a long time and we have some now over 10 years in use, estimate average of 4 hours “on” per day, that’s nearly 15000 hours.
REAL SIMPLE - my sister gave me a subscription for Christmas, looked at the first issue, and this is a women’s magazine through and through, nothing but ads for expensive and useless stuff, and any environmental info or advice (if you can find it) is very elementary and also worthless. I gave the first issue to my wife, and I haven’t looked at any subsequent issues since.
Not a Green saving, but a money saving, is the magazine More. My wife’s “trial” one-year subscription ran out over a year ago, and they keep sending us the magazine, along with urgent request to renew. But this is another magazine full of ads for expensive and useless stuff. I suspect they keep sending it to keep subscription numbers up so they get “more” money from their advertisers.
I have some scotch irish friends that could probably save the world - problem is when they take me out to lunch, it’s fast food and I have to pay my own way....AND, they complain to the clerk about the prices (even if they have coupons).
Please..
I have had a 2005 Prius for 3 years ($24K)
My MPG on this tank is 57 mpg, lifetime 45 mpg (lots of snow up here)
Once Plug ins come online it will be sold ($17K)
I think I can find a few people interested in 50 mpg car with gas at $4.00 per gallon
I wonder what the trade in value of a Hummer is?
