[Greenbuilding] [BULK] Real cost comparison of xenon verses fluorescent verses LED lighting

[Reuben Deumling]

This is from a different list. I'm afraid the NRDC reference is pretty
juvenile, especially the "By the time CFLs burn out, little mercury
remains." But it may be useful to know how these folks go about
answering your question.

See: http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/05spr/asknrdc.asp for a quick run of
the numbers. Of course, this is on a systems basis rather than looking
at the broken bulb in your house. It seems like there are standards on
the horizon for reducing the mercury content in CFLs. I know that
there is currently a huge range in the amount of mercury in the bulbs
as many CFLs are "hand doped."
- - - - -
Have a look at:  http://www.nema.org/lamprecycle/epafactsheet-cfl.pdf

Reuben Deumling

On 5/27/07, David Bergman <bergman at cyberg.com> wrote:
>
> We also discussed overall life cycle costs -- comparing the total
> cradle to grave impacts of, say, 100,000 hours of incandescent, LED
> and CFL lighting including production and disposal impacts. None of
> us knew of any such analysis. (One question was whether the mercury
> in fluorescents and CFLs was offset by the decreased mercury output
> resulting from less energy consumption -- dependent on the energy
> source, of course.)