18 seconds dot org

With all the controversy over CFL's such as proper disposal technique (they do contain mercury) and the energy used to ship them over from (mostly) Asia there has been a lot of disagreement as to whether they are worth it.

Well, from a simple economic standpoint, they are. Replacing a few regular incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents will shave dollars off of your electric bill (and similar to my case, take longer to burn out when people leave the lights in the basement on all week long). They quickly pay for themselves with the energy saved, so that alone is rather interesting.

I guess the disposal question could be answer the same way you get rid of your old TV's, video monitors and other electronics that typically contain heavy and/or poisonous metals. You (should be) taking them to the proper waste/recycling centers.

And as far as shipping bulbs all the way over from China or the like. I suppose one could make the argument that if you want to purchase American made efficient goods then you have to get American companies to start producing them. One wonders where GE, Chevy, Ford etc gets their ideas from when they complain how people aren't purchasing their crazy inefficient crap.

Anyway, off the soap box. If you would like some relatively unbiased information about CFLs you can check out 18seconds.org where the tagline is "change a bulb, change everything" (no doubt the next Heros mission). You can get some facts on the matter, see how your locality is doing in the pledge department and maybe feel a little bit better about helping out.