Should i stockpile incandescent bulbs

Being largely glass and metal, at least they won't break down to produce greenhouse gases like methane You could sell them, though given that incandescent bulbs are being outlawed in Europe this may enable someone to use them who would otherwise have been forced to use a CCFL or LED, so there may be an indirect energy cost there. The embodied energy in an incandescent bulb is about 0. You could keep them in the attic until long after all incandescent bulbs have been outlawed, then donate them to a museum ;-.

Improve this answer. Community Bot 1. Would this then not be preferrable to putting them in landfill? If so, I suggest explicitly mentioning that and bumping it up your list.

PJTraill : I think it depends on where that externally generated energy comes from. For example if you normally heat your home with natural gas, and your electricity comes mostly from coal plants which generally produce more CO2 than natural gas , it might be better to minimize the amount of heating you get from electricity and use a little more gas instead.

Something like this That's unbelievably cool! Well done. It may in fact be an excellent idea to use it if: you live somewhere that requires your home to be heated in the winter you currently heat with electricity or with something less efficient than electricity The "wasted" energy from an incandescent bulb is wasted as heat. Kate Gregory Kate Gregory 1, 10 10 silver badges 17 17 bronze badges. Linza Itkonen Linza Itkonen 1 1 silver badge 4 4 bronze badges.

This is very interesting. Out of curiosity, do you know of a reputable site that maintains a list of the warmest LED bulbs? I have sleep cycle problems that are worsened by lots of nighttime exposure to cooler light. This is interesting, but unfortunately not an answer to the question, which in the body, if not the title asks for the most environmentally friendly use. If you can afford to do so, it would be better to donate appropriate suitably warm LEDs. Smilin Brian Smilin Brian 1 1 silver badge 4 4 bronze badges.

Pawpower Pawpower 49 1 1 silver badge 3 3 bronze badges. There's another beneift to using incandescents in an attic over CFLs: Attics can get cold enough that CFLs don't start or take ages to get bright enough to use, and when your attic is cold you don't want to leave the hatch open any longer that absolutely necssary while you wait for the light to warm up. Of course, LEDs don't have this problem, but are expensive. If your attic is infrequently used then the bulbs can go there to die.

I reckon mine averages less than an hour of use per month ; the payback period would be infinite in cash terms. Same for cold cellars, outbuildings etc. The forestfern. Dummby Mech Dummby Mech 29 1 1 bronze badge. I use a similar strategy, however my old CFLs and incandescent bulbs are used for closets, hallways, the attic, and the basement -- places where I don't often use lights, so total energy usage on an annual basis is low. Maria Maria 4 4 bronze badges. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google.

Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown. Featured on Meta. Now live: A fully responsive profile. Linked Related Hot Network Questions. That legislation set a timetable that requires all screw-in light bulbs to use 25 percent less power by and 65 percent less by While the phase-out may take some getting used to, energy experts expect that the transition to alternatives like LEDs and CFLs will wind up saving many of us a significant amount of time and money.

Incandescent models like the ones that are about to be phased out may seem cheap, but they waste about 90 percent of their energy producing heat rather than light. More efficient alternatives like LEDs can turn as much as 60 percent of their energy into light. Skip Navigation. From left: Incandescent tungsten, compact flourescent and LED bulbs. Floating towns and oyster beds: How US cities are preparing for rising seas.

Protecting black gold from modern Blackbeards. Eric Rosenbaum. Don't laugh: Lack of toilets signals deadly crisis. My mom cleaned the floor several more times that day, all while murmuring about the risks if children one day played in that spot. Not everyone has a car or easy access to a hazardous waste collection site, so the reality is that many people chuck the remains of broken or merely burnt-out CFLs in the trash. Certain localities require fluorescent bulbs, broken or not, to be recycled.

Meanwhile some companies, such as Home Depot , offer recycling services but accept only unbroken CFLs for recycling. In the absence of a CFL recycling site, consumers should place old compact fluorescent bulbs in plastic bags before discarding, to help protect the environment from leaking mercury.

After the broken bulb debacle, CFLs are effectively dead to my parents. Not so for all shoppers; some 46 percent of consumers who responded to a recent Osram Sylvania survey say they plan to switch to CFLs. CFLs, with efficiency measured in lumens per watt since lumens tell us how a bright a light bulb is while watts tell us how much energy the bulb uses , sap 75 percent less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs and last up to 10 times longer than incandescents.

But concerns have also been raised about what CFLs do to already-vulnerable skin cells. My parents could also check out the pricier light-emitting diodes LEDs , appealing because they have the longest life, progressively dim instead of burning out and turn on instantly with no warm-up time.

Prices on these are dropping to make them competitive with CFLs. But LEDs usually only produce light in one direction, making them less appealing for some household uses. With LEDs, too, some health experts are concerned about toxic substances inside the bulbs and cleanup procedures, but new cheaper, shatterproof options that look and produce light more like incandescents are showing up on store shelves.

The U. Environmental Protection Agency says with LEDs, too, consumers should recycle them whenever possible, but if local retailers do not have a drop-off program for the recycling of LED lights the agency says disposing of LED lights in household trash is acceptable.

A more energy-efficient incandescent that uses 28 percent less energy than regular incandescents is now available. Dina Fine Maron, formerly an associate editor at Scientific American , is now a wildlife trade investigative reporter at National Geographic. Already a subscriber?