The do nothing Congress finally pulled its thumb out and did something. Not a lot, but they did put the light bulb ban on hold for 9 months.
In other words it CYA time until after the election. They know just how enraged Americans will be when big government declares that we can’t buy a 100 Watt incandescent light bulb. IMHO it’s not the technology or any desire to waste electricity. It’s the principle of the thing that big government has no business sticking its nose into our hardware stores.
I got no skin in this fight. I’ve already bought 200 100 Watt, 300 75 Watt, and 300 40 Watt. Enough (hopefully) to last out my remaining 30 years of life. The pinheads in Washington will not be telling me what light bulb I use. Ironically, I’m very interested in recycling and probably would have gone to compact fluorescent eventually. But, when Big Brother pulled this bullshit it made me fighting mad. Its a matter of principle for me and when you tell me not to do something…
This article says the hold is for nine months. Just long enough for politicians to CYA until after elections.
Washington Post doesn’t mention the time limit for the hold.
I should add that I have standard 4-foot fluorescent fixtures in my kitchen and my laundry room has a large U-shaped fluorescent inside a rectangular fixture. I installed these over 20 years ago.
There’s nothing wrong with standard fluorescent fixtures like everyone uses in offices and home kitchens. It’s the compact fluorescent I can’t stand. The mercury in them is a dangerous problem for landfills and I personally can’t stand the color of light from them.
At least this gives more time for LED technology to improve and get more cost efficient. The CFL has always been a highly flawed & dangerous technology that will eventually be replaced by LED technology.
LED’s will be everywhere in just a few more years. They are already being used in newer autos and home lighting. The biggest problem is still the cost and that will come down with time.
Here’s an outdoor Par38 (the standard size flood) using LED. But at $67 it’s still way, way too expensive. Probably in five years they’ll get it down to $20.
How many fixtures in your house use 100 watt, 75 watt and 40 watt bulbs? That just sounds like a ridiculous amount to spend on bulbs you won’t need for years and a ridiculous amount of space to devote to their storage.
Especially ridiculous since incandescent bulbs are not technically banned. Efficiency standards were set that “traditional” incandescents cannot meet, but some new halogen bulbs have recently been developed that meet the standards and pretty much look and perform like regular incandescents.
They aren’t all for me alone. My adult children need bulbs too. I was buying for an extended family.
Thirty years is a long time. It takes quite a stockpile to last that long. Any we don’t use can be sold privately after I’m cold in the ground.
There will be a black market for incandescent bulbs. Just like prohibition and booze. Any time the government tries to take away a product an alternative market is always created. Making anything illegal or banned automatically makes it more desirable.
As the price of electricity goes up and other technologies improve, and more and more people abandon the obsolete incandescent, they would have disappeared before too much longer any how. Those of us having a need for a cheap little heat source still have the halogens for now. While I question the wisdom of stocking up on incandescents, I applaud resisting intrusive government.
I haven’t checked, but I am sure some voted against the ban. While it isn’t a big issue to me, it does identify who needs to be retired as being overly controlling. How did your representatives vote?
I think some people confused my number of 200 100W for packs rather than bulbs. Home Depot sells six packs of GE incandescent bulbs for $3.50. 35 packs easily goes in one large cardboard box. $122.50 is not a lot of money for 210 bulbs.
If you’d only used 18 exclamation points, I would have questioned the seriousness of this rant.
But 19 exclamation points…when a man uses 19 exclamation points, you know he really means it. That nineteenth one, it sent chills down my spine. Truly, it did.
I actually love love love the compact fluorescents (which you can get in warm colors BTW) and have lots of them in places where they’re on a lot (basement, dark corner) and a couple of other places where changing them is a great big hassle. They outlast the incandescents by a very long time.
But…
I hate hate hate that somebody has decided I MUST use them, and I, too, have stockpiled a bunch of incandescents. They’ve been on sale a few times in the last year. They likely won’t go on sale again.
And I have a couple of chandelier type fixtures where I need 8 bulbs that all match, and they are visible. I’ve got that covered for the next few years, too.
(I really hate standard fluorescents, though. I have them in a couple of places, too–like my kitchen. They always make noise, and the compact ones, if they make noise at least it’s at a frequency I can’t hear.)
The real bummer is that soon all the incandescents will be coming from China and some of them will last well and others will explode within the first ten minutes.
I’ve tried a couple of the compact fluorescents that are supposedly a match for an incandescent 150-watt bulb, and I have yet to find one I can read by. Hopefully, as technology marches on, that will change.
If your in California, it’s already too late. Always the state to be one-up ahead of everybody else, the 100W incandescent were banned starting Jan. 1, 2011 and I think the 60W, etc., will be up next year. This past year, 60W bulbs (or 57W) have been flying off the shelves as people (myself included) snapped up lifetime supplies.
Actually, I just snapped up enough for a few years. The idea is to wait out the CFL’s until the LED’s get better developed and cheaper. I don’t like CFL’s too much (although I’m still using up the last one or two that I have). But from all that I read, the LED’s look promising, as soon as they get a few things figured out about how to make them better and the prices start coming down.
I’ve been using CFLs as long as they’ve been available. I love lower electric bills!
My wife collects old lamps, and we have a small stash of specialty bulbs for them. Old lamps often use odd base sizes, shapes, wattage, etc. We don’t have hundreds, but we have a small box full that will probably out last us.
It’s a shame that Congress is so spineless it can’t uphold legislation it already approved. Someone grow some backbone, please!
Apparently you are unaware that ALL fluorescent bulbs contain mercury. They do. All of them.
We transitioned to CFL’s a while back and disposal issues are a pain in the ass. No one wants them because they’re “hazardous waste”, but I suppose we’re supposed to stockpile them somewhere in our living quarters until doomsday?
We are now transitioning to LED’s. As my spouse has a small side-business in LED lighting now we get them for ridiculous low prices. When we’re ready to start retailing them I suppose I should put a blurb in Marketplace?
I suspect that, in my area, such unwanted hazardous waste winds up in the middle of ordinary trash bags set out with the regular garbage. Seriously, what do the authorities expect? Tell people something is poisonous, but don’t give them a means to dispose of it, and expect them NOT to sneak it out of the household somehow?
Actually, the local Best Buy is taking batteries now. Give me a place to “properly” dispose of stuff and I will.
ETA: Vehicle batteries, on the other hand, you can actually sell for scrap. I think car batteries are going for around $6 these days, somehow those never seem to be dumped along the road. Go figger.
Ironically, I’m very interested in recycling and probably would have gone to compact fluorescent eventually. But, when Big Brother pulled this bullshit it made me fighting mad. Its a matter of principle for me and when you tell me not to do something…