What is the motivation for purchasing CFL lightbulbs?

Question

These bulbs are going to cause more damage when one considers the fact that one of the ingredients to the manufacture of the bulb is mercury. That stuff is dangerous! It can poison you easily. Are lower power bills worth the damage we will be doing to our environment? Also, none of these CF lightbulbs is manufactured here in the States. EVERY last one of them comes from China!

My point about mentioning that NO CFLs are produced here is that liberals like to complain about a "Loss of Manufacturing" here in the States, and it is THEY who WANT us to use these bloody things!

Tie up manufacturing? WHAT else would you have us manufacturing? Both the bulbs and the light that uses the bulbs are manufactured in China! Read the labels.

Answer 1

For starters, CFLs have a very minimal amount of mercury in them. See the period on that last sentence? That's the size of the amount of mercury in a CFL.

In fact, since coal-burning power plants emit mercury, you can actually reduce the amount of total mercury produced by using CFLs, as you can see in this plot:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CFL_bulb_mercury_use_environment.svg

Additionally, the bulbs are recyclable.

On top of that, a CFL uses just 20-25% the energy that an incandescent bulb uses and lasts 8-15 times longer.

Is that enough motivation for you?

Answer 2

These bulbs aren't going to cause more damage unless you are ONLY considering the mercury in CFL's, which is very minute, versus none in incandescent bulbs. If you look at the bigger picture, they are actually going to cause "less damage", DESPITE containing a small amount of mercury in each. If they are properly disposed of, then less still...

On the second part, not all CFL's are produced in China. Also, CFL usage isn't really a liberal vs. conservative issue. They are being used by people interested in saving money, interested in saving the environment, liberals and conservatives alike.

It seems as though you are trying a "scare tactic" warning of the "dangers" of CFL's without really elaborating on the question of whether these so-called dangers are really worse than the alternative. The motivation for people to buy CFL's has been mostly to save energy. Whether people equate that with saving money or reducing energy usage and helping a bit on the environmental side, it's about saving energy.

Answer 3

They last about 5 times as long as regular bulbs. I have made an effort to change out the bulbs that stay on the most - like the front porch and kitchen lights that are turned on automatically for convenience, safety and security. I have bill averaging for the whole year so bills creep downward, which they are doing. There are slight changes in habit because when the bulbs first come on they are about 70% of the brightness and slightly more yellow and come to full brightness over a minute or two. When buying the bulbs, take a look at the lumens printed on the packaging for your current bulbs and for the CFL. If you have been buying Long Life bulbs, these use even more current (watts) per lumen than common bulbs so if you buy a "60 watt" CFL (that uses about 11 watts as I recall) it may be much brighter than the 60 watt long life bulb you took out.

Answer 4

CFL lightbulbs are extremely energy efficient.
A CFL bulb generally contains less than 4 mg of mercury (about one-fifth of that found in the average watch battery, and less than 1/100th of the mercury found in an amalgam dental filling). A power plant will emit 10mg of mercury to produce the electricity to run an incandescent bulb compared to only 2.4mg of mercury to run a CFL for the same time. The net benefit of using the more energy efficient lamp is positive, and this is especially true if the mercury in the fluorescent lamp is kept out of the waste stream when the lamp expires.

Answer 5

I've been using them for years. The major problem is that they not only use so little energy, they emit so little light. As in the darn things make reading quite difficult. Anyone over 40 is likely to suffer diminished eyesight, a good 100 watt bulb makes a lot of difference. In addition the usable life is much less than the hype. Sure they don't blow but they sure get even duller pretty quick. Given the price, I have not found that they are cost effective. Admittedly that is not a problem for the relatively wealthy.

Answer 6

One motivation is to reduce mercury pollution.

Fossil fuels contain mercury. Using incandescent bulbs causes more mercury to be emitted from power plants. More than the tiny amount (0.005grams or less) that is in a CFL.

It's better if you dispose of old CFLs properly so that even the tiny amount of mercury is not released. But, no matter how they're disposed of, CFLs reduce mercury pollution.

http://www.cityofberkeley.info/sustainable/Powerplay%20articles/16Powerplay.Mercury.CFL.html

http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp

If you're worried about breaking one, better get rid of every conventional fluorescent in your house. They contain 2-10 times as much mercury, and are easier to break.

Answer 7

There's mercury in a lot of things. And modern flourescents contain only a very small amount. You're straining at gnats and swallowing camels.

If (hopefully) we convert completely to CFB's, it will reduce our power consumption by the equivalent of 50-75 coal fired powerplants. That is NOT trivial--and causes a lot more environmental damage than the mercury you are worrieed about.

Further, its easy to dispose o f--practically every city has places you can drop off that kind of waste. Just put used bulbs in a box in your basement and drop them off once every year or two. That keeps even the minimal amounts of mercury from getting into the ecosystem.

Answer 8

The bulbs save energy. That is the motivation. What is the problem with bulbs being manufacured in China? Why tie up our labor force making lightbulbs?

Goods flow OUT of China and INTO the USA. I prefer living in the place that goods flow INTO.

Answer 9

I think you just like stirring things up and being angry. The benefits of the lightbulbs FAR outweigh any of the "problems" you've come up with.