The Environmental Stewardship & Management Initiative was launched by Audubon International to help foster environmental stewardship and improve resource management by a wide range of people.

 


Lets Talk Light Bulbs

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Making the change from incandescent to compact fluorescents (CFL) is an easy way to “green” your home or office.  The benefits are immediate without making a large investment.

Lighting accounts for 20 percent of your electric bill. CFLs use 75 percent less energy and last 10 times longer than a regular incandescent bulb. One CFL can save you $30.00 or more over its lifetime. Every CFL can keep more than 400 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere and reduces the release of mercury and greenhouse gases from coal-burning power plants.  If every home in America replaced just one incandescent light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified CFL, it would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of more than 800,000 cars annually

Productdose has a light bulb comparison spreadsheet that can show you the cost savings of each bulb; you can enter your own data to see how much you will save in your home or office. www.productdose.com

Home Depot has a national CFL Bulb recycling program. All you have to do is bring your non-broken bulbs to Home Depot, place them in a bag, and put them in the bright orange collection unit.

Home Depot also has a savings calculator located on their website www.homedepot.com/ecooptions.  You can type in your monthly electric bill total and it will tell you how much you could be saving by switching your bulbs to CFLs. They also have a great deal of other great information about how to save energy and water at your home or business.

ENERGY STAR also has some great resources on their website at www.energystar.gov.

There is a buyer’s guide to help you chose the right product for your needs. They also include an explanation of how the bulbs produce light, and if one happiness to break how to clean up and dispose of your CFLs.