The Bulb

The humble light bulb. It seems so ordinary and yet it is impossible to imagine our world without it. It lights our homes, businesses, schools and streets. No wonder there are so many of them. The average home is said to have more than 50 light sockets! And here lies the problem: the incandescent light bulb just isn't energy efficient. 95% of its energy is lost as heat. Now count the bulbs and consider how much energy is wasted.

How do we stop all that waste? It turns out the answer is staring at us from the shelves of our local grocery and hardware stores: the CFL (compact fluorescent light bulb). Screw one in and you get the same light as your old bulb with 75-80% less energy used. That means less money spent on energy in your home and less energy produced overall: which means big reductions in emissions. Here's a fact: a CFL saves 2000 times its own weight in greenhouse gases over its lifespan!

So why hasn't everyone switched to CFLs? Well, the truth is the CFL has come a long way in the last few years. On the market for over two decades, the first CFLs were expensive, produced less enjoyable light, and were more unreliable than the old-fashioned light bulb. But all that has changed. Today, CFLs come on without delay and produce the same soft white light that we're used to. They also last 7 times longer than regular bulbs, which means they save you money in the long (replacement cost) and short run (energy savings).

The message is clear. It's time to switch. If every household in the United States replaced one old light bulb with a CFL, it would be like taking 800,000 cars off the roads. In Canada the equivalent would be 66,000 cars off the road. Now imagine if we replaced all of our light bulbs with CFLs?!

• To read more about CFLs check out our Fact Sheets