Do the research on cfl's, and you will find that the amount of energy they take to produce and recycle eats up all the savings in energy. Also, you need to get the full life claims to even break even on the increased price. I have never had one in our home last that long, and the warranty process it more costly than just buying new.
Explain to me how if mercury in the air is bad, and if dropping an oral or rectal thermometer in a clinic causes total evacuation of the room or building to clean up the mercury, how is it ok to put 25 mercury containing vessels in every home in the nation? How is it a good thing to possibly break one of these things in a home where the mercury will go into the carpet where babies play?
You have to understand the entire purpose of CFL's, no matter if you like them or not, is to lower a persons electric bill by burning fewer watts to produce the same amount of lumen's of light. This they do very well. It has been proven in independent tests, and I've proven it to myself with a much reduced electric bill by replacing all of my incandescents with CFL's, even my outside pool lights. They are also avaliable in different colored "tones" much like incandescents are. They even now have dimmable models avaliable, as well as "3-Way" models. The major outlet home centers like Home Depot and Lowe's have sales on these things, and they can be purchased for about the same price as incandescent bulbs.
As far as energy production and recycling costs it doesn't matter to me because I'm not paying for that. If the bulb costs almost the same to buy and uses one third of the power, and lasts over twice as long, the rest is meaningless to me as the end consumer simply because I've already realized the savings. I don't worry about what little Mercury they contain, or everything else they claim will kill us all. I'm 57 years old and grew up with lead paint, lead in gasoline, even steel beer cans that rusted. I lived through it. I don't recycle. For me it simply isn't worth the bother.
In grammar school in the 60's our science teacher had a large vial of Mercury on his lab desk. We used to take the stuff and rub it on then Silver coins and they would become slippery and shiny. We then went to lunch and ate our sandwiches. We rarely washed our hands. I'm still here. We would pour some of it on to the floor and stomp on it and watch as the little silver colored balls would shoot across the floor. He would scream at us, and give us detentions for doing that, not because it was so poisonous and dangerous, but rather because it was
EXPENSIVE! Today if they drop a thermometer they have to shut the school down and call in a Haz-Mat team and spend $250,000.00 to "decontaminate" the place. This has gotten out of control.
My doctor told me on my last visit that in children today between the ages of 10 and 20 years of age, we are at
epidemic levels of Diabetes in this country! What is that saying? We're so damn worried about things that won't kill us, we have zero problem ignoring the things that will. What is in store for a kid who is on Insulin at age 10? Dialysis by the time he or she is 30? In a coffin by 45? Ask a 12 year old child who is on Insulin because he or she has eaten a steady diet of sugar coated $h!t their entire lives, willingly provided by their idiot parents who worry about mercury in light bulbs, if they care about what's in a landfill? We need a solid dose of common sense in this country. All of this silly "green" thinking isn't it. I use CFL's to save money. It's as simple as that. I've proven to myself they do work in that regard. As far as what they'll do or not do to a landfill in 400 years, I simply don't have time or energy to worry about such things that are meaningless today, and will most likely be even more so in years to come.
With all of the "change" going on in this country politically, socially, as well as economically, what we are putting in our landfills and choosing to light our homes with is about the very least of or concerns. Or at least it should be. We've got 1.3 BILLION muslims in this world of which 13+ MILLION of them want to kill every single one of us, and are trying to obtain nuclear weapons to do it as we speak. That no one cares about. At least not enough to do anything about it. But drop a thermometer on the floor in a school or hospital and you would think World War III has just broken out. We need to rearrange our thinking. This borders on insanity. Bill T.