Project "Light Bulb Switch"

You probably remember that I told you I read this guide about living eco-friendly called Living Like Ed by Ed Begley (see blog post from May right here). Ever since then I've been constantly working on giving a few things in my life some kind of environmental-friendly make-over.

Just lately I concentrated on the lamps I actually use all around my apartment. When I moved in about two years ago, I took over certain things from the previous tenant - certain lamps included. Well, retrospectively not the best idea I ever had. So a couple of weeks ago I went through my whole apartment compiling an inventory list of all that lamps. The result pretty much brought me back down to earth:

• office: 4 halogen lamps, 1 broken (didn't turn that one on that often, I'm an IT person, I work with computers...)
• bedroom: 1 light bulb
• living room: 1 light bulb
• kitchen: 1 light bulb
• entrance room: 3 light bulbs

Considering my lighting habits I definitely had to change that. So the first thing I did was research on the different kinds of illuminants out there, their energy footprint and of course their pros and cons.

Energy footprint:
- stinky normal light bulb < halogen lamp < CFL < LED

Stinky normal light bulb:
- forbidden in Germany
- needs way too much energy
- bright

Halogen lamp:
- saves about 20-30 percent of energy compared to the stinky normal light bulb
- bright
- medium expensive

CFL:
- save about 80 percent of energy compared to the stinky normal light bulb
- not that bright
- medium expensive
- Should be left switched on for a longer period of time

LED:
- saves about 90 percent of energy compared to the stinky normal light bulb
- medium bright
- definitely expensive

So I finally decided for the following:

• office: I replaced the broken lamp and decided not to replace the halogens in general with CFL or LED as I'm not really using them that often, maximum once a week for a couple of minutes
• bedroom: I replaced the light bulb with a 200lm LED as this is one of those lamps I probably use the most but it doesn't need to be that bright
• living room: I replaced this one with a 200lm LED as well as I'm using this one quite often but never leave it switched on that long
• kitchen: I replaced this one with a 600lm LED as this is a place where I need really bright light. Furthermore this one is the most used lamp in my whole apartment.
• entrance room: I decided not to replace them. At least for now. I only used these a couple of times during the last two years though.

Thanks for reading!

Yours

Uta