Green Daily

I have been trying to switch over to the cfl bulbs but had a few hang ups. Like you I did not want to get rid of my current bulbs as they work just fine. So I decided to just by a pack or 2 at a time and change over. I got 2 4 packs of 60 watt equivilent CFL but they were so bright that we had to relocated them to lamps with shades and out-door porch lights. One pack also had a bad one in it and that made me mad as they are already expensive and to have one bad out of the box made me grumble. We have some celing fan lights that you can see the bulbs and since the 60 watt ones were too bright I decieded to go to 40 watt and they were too bright also. I guess I will have to try the round versions of the CFL for those lights. I also don't like that some take awile to warm up and work while others don't have a problem.
So in all I have stopped buying them unitill they either make better ones, or make them cheaper and the quality is better. Granted it these were the cheap ones from HomeDepot but hey they still cost more that regular bulbs! Maybe some day the LED ones will be affordable.
later
e

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I've changed a lot of bulbs at my house (all living room, kitchen, bedroom, hallway, closet, upstairs bath, porch lights - whew! - and a few of our floods in our basement can lights). I think we've seen electricity savings of about 15% to 20% (I'll know more when I see this summer's bills). So it's a big cost-saver as well, especially over the long term.

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I read a little about the potential for hazardous materials to end up in the landfill if you just throw out CFLs. Here is more info from GE:
http://www.gelighting.com/na/home_lighting/ask_us/faq_compact.htm#disposal

Because the bulbs won't last forever.

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Good idea, I will be joining in on the challenges.

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I'm tired of all the reminders to recycle CFL/fluorescent bulbs: I go to the many web sites that supposedly tell you where to do this - and somehow, none of them will take my bulbs. Everything listed in earth911.org for my area is either for commercial recycling, or don't allow residents outside their municipality to recycle (it appears my municipality doesn't offer bulb recycling).

Meanwhile, the pile of dead fluorescent bulbs in my basement grows. I don't like it, but I understand why my neighbors simply put them in the trash. I want to tell them to recycle the bulbs - but it's not terribly useful if I can't tell them *where* to recycle them.

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The visuals were helpful as well, thank you for this post.

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It's hard because I'm a teen living under my parent's roof. It seems like such a hassle for them whenever I tell them to replace stuff in the house.

I'll try my best to convince them to do this, though. I really want to participate in this challenge. I did something green for March though: http://theinquirer.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/humid-december-nights-chilly-march-mornings/

I'll update you when we're already using CFL bulbs at home!

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So... I did this a couple of months ago. I got married in october, so in our house we just bought CFL bulbs. The only problem is that there are some colourish like blue light and a yellow light, I prefer the yellow one cause the other reminds me of a Hospital.

But I think its really a good thing, One step a time we can make our world a better place...

Blessings from Chile

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If money is not an issue, you might consider LED bulbs over CFL. They have come a long way in the last few years. Now there are a lot of options to replace your current bulbs without looking "weird" or having overly blue light. The cost is still up there, but that is changing too.

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