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No more incandescents at Ikea
This final note today, from the Swedish furniture company Ikea. The company confirmed this morning it has stopped selling old-style incandescent light bulbs in its American outlets. It pretty much had to by 2014 anyway. That's when new federal lighting efficiency standards kick in that basically rule out anything but compact fluorescents and LEDs. Ikea will sell those, by the way.
You have to put 'em together yourself.
[LINK: IKEA's June 5 press release]
I'm a huge fan of energy efficiency and cleaner energy sources, but I can't help but wonder about the wisdom of going all-CFL. Even tiny amounts of mercury "x" (times) millions of bulbs has gotta carry a major adverse environmental impact of its own.
I'm sure LED's are the way to go, but that eye-straining glare is still very annoying and the price is still a major hangup... so I'll still be using a fair number of old-fashioned tungsten-strand incandescents for a bit longer... but apparently I'll not be buying them at Ikea.
CFLs are great -- I have them in several rooms in which I turn the lights on longer than just briefly -- but they have to be recycled. Not all retailers are accepting them for recycling, i.e. Lowes. Curbside recycling? Not in the forseeable future.
Until we have more ways to easily dispose of these things when they give out, making us adopt them is doing consumers a big disservice.
Kai Ryssdal's report "No more incandescents at Ikea" and the IKEA web site statement "Starting January 4, IKEA US no longer stocks or sells incandescent light bulbs." are incorrect.
1. IKEA will continue to sell Halogen bulbs, which are a form of incandescent light bulb, that are 30% more efficient than original Edison incandescents. Halogen bulbs, still sold at IKEA, etc, are available to replace the common incandescent bulbs that are being phased out.
2.Incandescents below 40 watts are not being phased out.
2. Inefficient incandescent light bulbs powered by coal cause more mercury, radioactive carbon 14, and a soup of toxic chemicals to be spewed in the air we breathe. The Mercury continuously spewed into the air to power inefficient lights is far more than contained in the occasional CFL that is broken.
