In the November/December 2008 issue of Sierra, Sierra Club's magazine, a reader asked columnist Bob Schildgen of "Hey Mr. Green", whether it was an environmentally-sound practice to change out presently functioning incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, or wait until they burn out first and then replace them with CFLs. I must admit that I've been engaging in the former practice. Schildgen's answer was to switch the incandescent bulbs for CFLs immediately. Why? Schildgen explains it this way: "Say you have a 100-watt incandescent that has provided 500 hours of light. If it burns for another 500 hours, it will consume 50 kilowatt-hours. That 's four times the energy a compact fluorescent bulb would require to produce the same amount of light and nearly 30 times the energy needed to produce a new CFL. Generating those extra-kilowatts-hours for the incandescent with fossil fuel would require the equivalent of almost three gallons of gasoline or 35 pounds of coal." Schildgen also advocates turning out the lights when you're not using them and to recycle CFLs, as they have a small amount of mercury in them.
So change out your incandescent bulbs for CFLs and save those incandescents for use when you've run out of CFLs...or make a sculpture out of them or something.
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