The Light Bulbs Goes Off

By Tim Laughlin

Republished from Xcel Energy Blog

Last week, Swedish-based retailer IKEA announced they will no longer sell incandescent bulbs, offering only compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and halogens in its place.

While this may seem like a fairly insignificant step toward the inevitable, it seems much bigger than that to me; much more profound.

The light bulb has been a fixture in our society, since, well, Thomas Edison. It’s been THE icon for energy use in our country. And while we’ve seen a number technological advancements to our day-to-day energy using equipment, the one constant has been the incandescent light bulb.

I’m not slighting IKEA, or the move to discontinue incandescents. Far from it. It’s great to see progress for energy efficiency. I’m thrilled to see moves like this, as they hopefully will encourage positive action and ultimately behavior change.

What I find fascinating is that after all this time – particularly in an age of better, faster, stronger – the original light bulb has remained virtually untouched for more than 100 years. So many similar products have made huge technological strides – the telephone, radio, PC, and television, to name a few. And through it all, the light bulb has been there, glowing, well…incandescently.

Over the past 100 years, I can’t think of a similar product that has remained virtually unchanged – like the incandescent light bulb. Can you? Would love to hear your thoughts and ideas.

Greening Beauty

Facebook/GreenBlogNetwork

Posted via email from The Green Blog Network


Share/Bookmark

1 comment:

  1. Thinking about going green? We've got a simple way to do it! It will save you money and you will help local high school students compete at the FIRST Robotics World Championship competition as well as score scholarships to top universities!

    Imagine this- light bulbs that last 10,000 hours and, if used 3 hours a ,last over 9 YEARS (current ones last a mere 3-4 months at the same rate). This means: saving money on bulbs and on your electric bill! In fact, within one year, these bulbs pay for themselves just on your electric bill savings. We've got them for $20 a bulb- and doing the math- one bulb pays for itself in one year. These bulbs do not require any special disposal, they carry no radiation or environmentally unfriendly chemicals, they do not heat up, they have a plastic casing so they do not break, and they plug into all of your current devices. For more info click http://www.phillyrambots.com/?page_id=246

    The money raised from these light-bulb sales goes towards raising money for our competition being held in just 2 weeks. So please, help our robotics team and green up your world! The students are rookies and have only just qualified this past weekend for the Championship Event and need to raise $15,000 in order to pay for registration, transportation, and lodging at a hotel in St. Louis, Missouri for three days.

    ReplyDelete