Eric Rochow: I can't get them stop singing, so we're just going to have to go with it. I am Eric Rochow and this is Real World Green. I want to start off with the simplest thing you can do to reduce your impact on the earth and that's to replace your incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. These compact fluorescent bulbs that use 75% less electricity than an incandescent bulb. They last ten times longer and they produce 450 pounds fewer green-house gases that an incandescent bulb will. Your electric bill is also going to go down when you install compact fluorescent bulbs. You will save about $30 over the life of each compact fluorescent that you put in, which is a good thing.
Compact fluorescents do contain some mercury, but there are now recycling programs being instituted to keep that mercury from going into the wave stream. You can go to the Real World Green website for some links to find local places to recycle your compact fluorescents.
I bet you didn't know this, but incandescent bulbs actually release more mercury into the air than a compact fluorescent contains in its manufacture. How does it do this? Coal burning power plants.
When coal is burnt mercury is released. So in a power plant that coal is burnt, the mercury is released, it goes up the smoke stack and it's just is dispersed into the atmosphere. So by using compact fluorescents you are actually keeping mercury out of the atmosphere.
Did you know that 90% of the energy consumed by an incandescent bulb is given off as heat? Remember the easy-bake oven, powered by light bulb.
In the past compact fluorescents have had really kind of a bad rep. The first ones that came out they were kind of big, really industrial looking, and they were really quite ugly. But this is the compact fluorescent of today. It looks nothing like that. It's really, really good for us and it's really, really good for the environment.
So to sum this up with my friend Mr. Robin and now Mr. Mockingbird, if you replace your incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, you consume less electricity. That means less coal-based power will have to be generated to meet the demand for your incandescent bulbs. That means less coal will be burnt, and that means less greenhouse gases will be released into the atmosphere.
That's really it, it's probably the most simplest thing that we can do as people to lessen our impact on the earth. Compact fluorescents, go to the Real World Green website, we'll have some information, links, some more information. Send us your emails, send us comments and tell your friends.
Thank you!
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services