bkdelong

I was going around my house last week in order to survey our use of lightbulbs to determine what I need for CFLs or Compact Fluorescents Lightbulbs. CFLs are much more energy efficient than your average incandescent bulbs and last a lot longer.

This is part of my crusade to consume less energy and do my own part to sort of "atone" or practice what I preach. I've tried to start a recycling program in the house but it's not working so well - I need to refine my system instead of having two bulky recycling containers in the kitchen. I think I need a shredder.

Anyway, I was unscrewing the CFLs that we had and noticed they mentioned containing mercury. I was horrified and wondered if this was just a less green solution that I needed to rectify. This came up again in conversation with my brother Nate, (necr03), over the weekend so I took some time this evening to do some quick research.

I headed over to Treehugger and found the exact post I was looking for. The short answer is that incandescent bulbs produce much more mercury than the CFLs. Salient points:

Ironically, compact fluorescent bulbs are responsible for less mercury contamination than the incandescent bulbs they replaced, even though incandescents don't contain any mercury. The highest source of mercury in Americaâ™s air and water results from the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, at utilities that supply electricity. Since a compact fluorescent bulb uses 75 percent less energy than an incandescent bulb, and lasts at least six times longer, it is responsible for far less mercury pollution in the long run. A coal-burning power plant will emit four times more mercury to produce the electricity for an incandescent bulb than for a compact fluorescent.

The source is an EarthTalk column in E - The Environmental Magazine.