http://www.care2.com/greenliving/let-there-be-led-light.html
Let There Be LED Light
One of the best part of the holidays is all the lights everywhere. They are so pretty and festive, but if you’re like me you can’t help think about all the energy they’re wasting. Christie Matheson, author of Green Chic: Saving the Earth in Style, has a solution.
According to her book, if you’ve decorated a tree with a string of about 300 mini-incandescent lights, you’ll use about 30 kilowatt-hours of energy (emitting about 45 pounds of extra CO2) over the holiday season.
If you use those big fat holiday lights, we’re talking more than 450 kilowatt-hours and close to 700 pounds of CO2. The mini lights are the preferable choice, and even better is a string of LED lights.
They’re available at Target, Costco and Lowe’s, and even though they cost more than incandescents (a string of 100 LEDs will run you $10-15), they last forever. OK, not forever, but 50,000 hours. And they use about 10 percent of the energy of the mini incandescents–less than 3 kilowatt-hours throughout the holidays.
Plus, they don’t get hot so your fire risk goes down.
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9 comments
add your comment »We use LEDs in some of our light fixtures year-round.
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Yes, I've converted to LED X'mas lights. They are all of 3 years old. We turn them on at 4:30 pm then turn them off at approx. 11:30pm. This routine is done for approx. 10-12 days per Dec. I've now got 2 strings that are partially burnt out. That is NOT a total of 50,000 hr. Shall have to deal with this after the holidays. Currently my lights look like they are on dimmer. Oh, had purchased over 20 strings of 35 bulbs per string, not pleased with this situation but still committed to LEDs.
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I had the same thought, Linda, but this place accepts old lights for recycling:
http://www.holidayleds.com/holidayledscom_christmas_light_recycling_program
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LEDs are great, but what do we do with our old lights? Send them to the landfill? Give them away so someone else can use them, this doesn't seem to accomplish much. The same can be asked about the incandescent bulbs that we have replaced with CFLs.
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Can these new LED bulbs be used in the old bulb sockets, or do they require a new type of wiring too? If so, does anyone know where they might be purchased? 45 pounds of CO2 sounds like a lot of pollution when you consider how many people use lights during the winter holidays, so, as I'd like to be a part of the solution, perhaps I can think of some other uses for the strings of lights which doesn't involve plugging them in if the LED bulbs won't work with them. Since we are struggling financially this year, and probably won't be able to afford to buy new lights, I will pledge to light the tree only when we're in the room with it, and limit it to just an hour or so an evening. Hummmm, I wonder, too, if getting a few LED spot lights and aiming them at the tree, which could be decorated with biodegradable shiny stuff (say, cranberry garlands coated with clear sugar sprinkle) would be a greener way to go? Anyone have a formula for figuring out which would be the greener way to go? How much CO2 does a regular LED bulb produce?
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We just bought LED lights this weekend for our tree. We love them, just don't buy the cheap no name brands.. we got them on sale at Kmart first but had to return them because half the times they worked, the other half they didn't. Home Depot has Sylvania LED lights that work great. Go green! :)
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Yes! I keep hearing about these LED lights and now I'm sure they are worth it- I kept hearing about the amount of electricity they saved, but I could believe it! A site I found had alot of LED x-mas lights, but I didn't want to buy without knowing for sure. I think one set is like 10 dollars too! I'll leave the link below, GO GREEN!
-Dillon
GreenHome.com
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And several stores now carry a "warm white" or "soft white" which is a big improvement upon the cool white LEDs that look like signals for UFOs.
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