Bulbs--very glamorous

New Pod Zero member Ari Handel asks the following question: "Mostly we use this track lighting that takes these tiny little bulbs. They're sorta triangular shaped with a flatish bulb. You know that kind? Are those super energy burners or are they ok?"

Here is what your fearless Pod Leader has uncovered: The way to tell how much energy a lightbulb uses is to check the wattage--a typical incandescent bulb uses between 40-100 Watts, while a typical compact fluorescent uses between 10-40 Watts. I never know how they come up with these kinds of statistics but at any rate, "they" say that replacing a single incandescent bulb with a CFL will keep a half-ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere over the life of the bulb. I have found the folks at Service Lighting,1-800-624-4488 to be very helpful in terms of figuring out what kinds of bulbs you need--the woman I spoke to most recently said they make the CFLs in just about every shape.

That said, Ari, maybe your light bulbs are LEDs, which are also extremely energy efficient, and wouldn't require replacing. There is an excellent review of all types of energy saving lightbulbs at EARTHEASY.COM.

Eartheasy makes several important points--one is, again, order the WARM bulbs if you don't want to feel oppressed by the hideousness of the cool ones, and two is that CFL bulbs contain small amounts of mercury. The mercury poses no threat while in the bulb, but if YOU BREAK ONE, BE CAREFUL NOT TO INHALE THE MERCURY - immediately use a wet rag to clean it up and put all of the pieces, and the rag, into a plastic bag. (Although household CFL bulbs may legally be disposed of with regular trash (in the US), they are categorized as household hazardous waste. As long as the waste is sent to a modern municipal landfill, the hazard to the environment is limited. However, CFL's should not be sent to an incinerator, which would disperse the mercury into the atmosphere. (The best solution is to save spent CFL's for a community household hazardous waste collection, which would then send the bulbs to facilities capable of treating, recovering or recycling them. We'll work on figuring out where to do this East Coast/West Coast style. If anyone finds out anything about this, please post a comment)

ONE MORE THING, my googling this morning has turned up the following resource for determining just how much energy your products are using. Nerds who are interested should go visit Mr. Electricity.