After watching “An Inconvenient Truth” tonight, I went to their web site to see what I could personally do to make a difference.
The site recommends using a compact flourescent light bulb to reduce environmental impact. You can read more about that on the wikipedia page link above.
From my experience, the bulbs do not last longer than a regular bulb. I am not discouraging you from trying…but my experience was that the bulbs only lasted a few months, and are more than twice the cost of a regular light bulb – not economically viable at this poin, and since I was using nearly twice as many bulbs, it was hard for me to understand how that was helping, at least in my household.
Your results may vary.
dave
January 10, 2007 at 9:34 am
I have compact fluorescent bulbs I’ve been using since the early 1990s, from Philips. The problem is a lot of stores now are getting cheap Chinese or Eastern European ones that don’t put out any more light than an incandescent and burn out quickly. You need to get a real name brand – Philips for example! – and then they’ll last for YEARS.
Two caveats – you CANNOT use them with dimmers, and they WILL burn out faster than standard bulbs if they’re being switched on and off constantly. They can burn practically forever; the wear comes when you use the on-off switch! So they are silly for things like the closet where you only leave teh lot on for ten seconds, but really good for things like that light you tend to leave on nearly all day…
Gabriella Adams
May 11, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Incandescent light bulbs will soon be phased out because they waste a lot of energy.-’,