CFL Facts
Have you noticed all the hoopla lately about light bulbs? Calls for banning Edison's ubiquitous incandescent bulbs have definitely heated up And at the same time, worries about mercury have caused some people to shy away from energy-saving compact fluorescent lights (CFL). Even so, they are currently being touted as the best choice from an energy perspective.
When it comes to the environment, there is no Comparison to LED:
While CPUs can be a marked improvement over incandescent lighting inefficiency, fluorescent and compact fluorescent lights are not the change we need for a sustainable earth.
Incandescent lights are energy wasting - only five percent of the energy it uses generates light - the rest is wasted. Plus they are an extreme offender of the use of glass with tons of it going into our landfills. They must be replaced!
CFL's are considered an improvement over incandescent relating to better energy efficiency but they do not eliminate the use of harmful and hazardous mercury. And the ecological impact goes beyond mercury. More than 250 million pounds of un-recoverable glass, plastic and metal from fluorescent tubes are disposed of in the U.S. each year. When the bulbs break the vapors can harm not only the people who come in contact with them, but also the environment through seeping into the groundwater. CFL's are an extreme offender of the use of mercury, hazardous gas and glass. They must be replaced!
Our landfills are overwhelmed and it is costly to all U.S. taxpayers to safely dispose hazardous lighting materials and glass.
The fact is:
When conventional incandescent, fluorescent and CFL bulbs burn out (which does happen often), they should not be thrown in the trash; they should be properly recycled so the mercury inside the glass tube can be safely recovered. Even fluorescent lights labeled low-mercury should not be thrown in the trash. Some CFLs also contain lead in the soldier or glass. It's not a direct hazard to you, but it's another reason to recycle spent bulbs. Contact your city's recycling or hazardous waste disposal department or Earth911 for local recycling drop-off sites.
The fact is:
LED eliminates the need and cost of hazardous materials disposal, as well as the health fear issues of all other forms of lighting containing mercury.
enLux LED lighting significantly reduces energy use, lasts 50,000 hours for less burn cuts, does not get hot and will not break like glass; it is 100 recyclable, a robust, sustainable product friendly to our planet earth.
It is time to change to LED Lighting
We believe that lighting should be in harmony with our planet Earth, from the materials to the manufacturing process used in creating lighting products, to the energy used in lighting our homes and businesses, to being recycled at the end of the use cycle. enLux LED lighting products are sustainable and significantly reduce the carbon footpint for lighting.
We believe enLux LED lighting products contribute to a healthy environment in which people live and work.
When compared to LED Down Lights:
The Life span of CFL's can be greatly reduced when used in some overhead Ilights. Unlike a normal bulb, which screws into the ceiling and hangs down, CFL lights actually work best (and are lab tested this way) pointing up, not down. That is because the "Ballast", the unit at the base of the light, contains complex electronic components. When CFLs hang down, particularly the 100 watt equivalents or greater, the heat generated in the bulb travels back up to the base and slowly fries the electronics, bringing on early failure and/or physical burn out as reported in Investigate magazine / Aug 2008.