The Ultimate Green Light
Well maybe not ultimate, but close.
I have one of these push-light gizmos that I got at one of the home warehouse stores. It uses 4 AA batteries. I just put a set of rechargeable batteries in it. Then I looked at the light and realized it has an incandescent flashlight bulb in it. So I looked up the bulb type and found an LED replacement for it. I have it mounted in the hall closet. It doesn’t get used much. Usually if we are looking for something in that closet we’ll turn it on. Once I get the new bulb we could be looking at several years on a single charge. I don’t know how long it would burn constantly…probably several days. I may test that out as well. I may put one up in the bathroom like that. It’s a bit pricey on the front end but the bulb could run for 10 years with maybe 3 recharges for the batteries in that time. So a $6 with an $18 replacement bulb and $12 batteries comes to $36 in hardware. Then maybe $3 in electricity. That works out to $3.90 a year. $39 + $36 = $75, which works out to $7.50 annually. If I have to change regular batteries once a year I end up paying at least $5. So $1.10 in cash savings, then looking at not buying and throwing away (recycling) 40 batteries over the same 10yr period. I’m not sure what the exact figures would be. Let’s say a single AA alkaline battery thrown away adds $1 in waste to the environment. My $5 pack of batteries is now a $9 pack. The $6 light costs $90 to run over 10 years. I understand that many may view only the dollar amounts and say the difference is negligible. Well part of that has to do with the current cost of LEDs. Once we get the price down to $5 or $6 a bulb more people will be interested in converting their battery powered lights and the savings to the environment will compound many-times over.
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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 18:18 and is filed under Ecology, Energy, Environment, LED. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
