CRANKY GENIUS

On a recent Memorial Day weekend, Home Depot was giving away a free compact flourescent lamp (CFL) to each customer who ventured into the store. It was a nationwide campaign that bought Home Depot a lot of environmental credibility and gave consumers of the traditional incandescent bulbs their first exposure to a “greener alternative.” Tens of millions of CFL bulbs were distributed that weekend and it was an publicity coupe for the chain whose slogan is ”you can do it and we can help.”

But if a thinking consumer sat down and actually analysed the factual consequences of Home Depot’s “greening of America” initiative, (doing the math as it were) one could only conclude that, in reality, this program was the “poisoning of America.”

Consider this.

Incandescent light bulbs are made using simple and mostly inert materials; silica glass, copper wiring, an aluminium base, tungsten filament, inert argon gas to fill the bulb, and the tiniest bit of solder (tin/lead) to attach the copper wiring to the base. Even though the bulb costs consumers roughly $0.60 (US) each can be disposed through traditional means with almost no environmental impact. On the downside, incandescent bulbs consume 3 to 4 times the electricity of CFLs to produce the equivalent amount of light, produces enormous amounts of waste heat, and will only burn for about a 700 – 1000 hours at full voltage. (By the way, putting a 100 watt bulb on a dimmer switch and restricting the output to 50 watts will double the bulb’s lifespan.)

The impact… triple the electricity to light a room, but mostly negligible materials for disposal. One estimate places the CO2 footprint at 450 pounds per year, per light bulb. This is why government entities are poised to outlaw incandescent bulbs.

Enter CFLs. Compact Florescent Lamps.

CFLs are made with the same silica glass as incandescent bulbs and are filled with an inert gas, but that’s where the similarities end.

A typical quality CFL goes for about $4 each and has a lifespan 6,ooo to 10,000 hours. To fluoresce (or “glow”), the inside surface of the glass coated with rare earth phosphor salts, without which the light emitted from the electrified ionized mercury vapor would be in the ultraviolet range, the kind of light that causes skin cancer and results in cataracts.

The chamber within the CFL tube is filled with an inert gas and a 5 mg drop of mercury. The base of the CFL “bulb” contains a ballast, which is printed circut board with electrical components along with a coil of coated copper wire surrounding a magnet.

Here is the lie.

A majority of all CFLs are manufactured in China out of reach of the watchful eye of the EPA, and virtually none are made in the US, which means most compact fluorescent lamps are made where melamine tainted pet food, baby formula and milk are manufactured. In other words, safety and environmentalism is not the highest priority for most CFL manufacturers.

The so-called extended lifespan of compact fluorescent lamps are inflated. As any building superintendent can tell you, each time you power up a fluorescent lamp you reduce its life span. Hence, CFLs are better suited to situations where light is needed at a constant rate, not the intermittent circumstances found in most homes. CFLs also degrade or malfunction when used with a dimmer switch.

CFLs require speciall handing (meaning, more costly) for disposal of its circutry and mercury recycling. Considering this cost alone, the net saving is marginal - and more likely, negligible.

And what if the mercury of a CFL is release through an acident or negligence?

An in-home accident causing a CFL to shatter (which probably happens at least once in every home and office across America) can result in mercury poisoning at 6 times what the EPA considers safe. The cost of cleaning up after a broken $4 CFL up to EPA standards could be costly if done by a professional.

Before the CFL, mercury pollution could have been centralized at coal powered electrical plants where it’s cheaper to capture and clean the pollution. But with CFLs, there’s less mercury pollution at the power pland and more in homes, offices and landfills.

On top of that, the circuitry in the CFL contains thousands of times more solder (tin and lead) than incandescent bulbs. The circuitry in inferior brands has been known to heat up and release a toxic puff of smoke, and even catch fire.

Mercury and lead, like those found in CFLs, cause long term environmental damage. These two toxins damage the central nervous systems in animals, contaminates soil, and poisons plantlife. Consuming contaminated animals and plants passes this poison along, causing all kinds of illness and birth defects in the unborn. These chemicals pollute lakes and waterways, and render soil unsuitble for plants. The chemicals used to make compact florescent lamps are in same categories of other toxic wastes, like batteries, illegal pesticides, and chemical weapons.

One estimate places the number of lamp sockets in the US alone at roughly 4 billion. This includes all kinds of lighting – home, office, outdoor, industrial, and so on. If each CFL contains 5 mg of mercury vapor, and if each CFL is replaced approximately once per year, the math works out to 20,000 kg of mercury in need of recycling and cleanup each and every year.

The health costs and environmental clean-up associated with mishandled CFLs are enormous.

The other half of the mathematical exercise is this. As of this writing, the US Department of Energy reports that less than half of the US power plants (48% to be exact) run on coal. The rest of America’s power generation is produced by nuclear (21%), natural gas (20%), hydroelectric (6.5%), renewable (3.5%). So, the theoretical CO2 savings from switching over to CFLs is actually much less than advertised.

Here is the bottom line.

CFLs are a bigger hassle than they are worth. Recycling, clean up, and mitigating environmental damage is more costly than the energy savings and CO2 reduction; and this is something none of the CFL advocates are willing to admit.

The real green alternative is solid state lighting, or super-bright LEDs.

Lamps made using super-bright LEDs are cropping up in flashlights, Christmas lights, trucker tail lamps, and in some locales – traffic signals. Even Times Square is getting in on the action. Super-bright LEDs consume less that half the electricity consumed by CFLs and less than 10% of incandescent bulbs. The lifespan of super-bright LEDs have more than 50,000 hours, more than 5 times longer than the life span of CFLs and up to 50 times longer than that of incandescents. Finally, they do not degrade when repeatedly powered on and off or when subjected to a dimmer.

This technology has no mercury vapor, negligible CO2 impact, and the circuitry can be processed using decades-old techniques that makes super-bright LED lamps nearly 100% recyclable.

The unfortunate factor is sticker shock. Bulbs using super-bright LEDs cost 10 times as much as CFLs with the same lumen output, and 50 times as much as incandescent bulbs. But considering its true lifespan, frugal power consumption, and minuscule environmental impact, even at these high prices the cost to the consumer may only be slightly more. The real savings is environmental impact, recycling costs and health.

Imagine if consumer demand for super-bright LED lamps resulted in the kind of mass production that drove down the cost to the end consumer to be on par with CFLs.

CFLs need to recognized as the misguided environmental cause that it is. Like ethanol fuels and plastic shopping bags, CFLs offer a feel good “solution” that is creating more problems than solutions.