Is the actual footprint of the cfls so terribly much better than the incandescent bulbs anyway? I'm incredulous given the mercury content of the cfls.

Ban starts in 2012, to be phased in over a few years (first 100 watt bulbs, then 75s etc,) HOWEVER, manufacturers are working on incandescents that meet the 30% reduction in electric consumption thus eligible to remain on the market.

If not, I will start hoarding (though I generally use 25 watt bulbs, which will not be banned). I despise the light from cfl's, and the mercury disposal issue is a real problem.

Yup. The mercury issue will come back and bite us all in the arse.

Where is that first pendant from? I love it!

Are they really forcing a ban on incandescent lights? What about all of the health concerns surrounding cfls?

Researchers were unable to remove mercury from carpets where bulbs had broken; this led them to find that if you disturb the carpet in the area a bulb broke, the air around it was temporarily filled with unsafe levels mercury. Forget letting your baby crawl around!!

In addition, as far as the environmental side of things, the EPA reccommends double-bagging any bulb if disposing of it. Doesn't this add to environmental waste?

Anyway... I use some cfls in my home, but I don't particularly like the light they give off, and I'd never put them somewhere that the bulb could be exposed to breaking.

I recently bought some cfls which had covers on them (for fixtures where the bulb is prominent). I had choice of 3 types of light: "soft", something I forgot, and "daylight". I bought daylight, put them in the fixture, and wow! The light was blue! Creepy. Anyway, I'll be using those bulbs in closets. I put "soft" lights in, and they seems just like incandescent.

BTW, good to know about mercury and broken bulbs.

I would use low electricity bulbs if the quality of light wasn't so terrible. I'm a photographer and really particular about lighting, and I only use those "reveal" daylight bulbs. Everything else looks so yellow and ugly, unless you go with some of the bulbs above that are particularly yellow. If they ever stop making those, I will be so incredibly disappointed.

If you choose CFL's that have outer bulbs - ie: They look like regular lightbulbs with the twisty CFL encased inside - the likelyhood of breakage and mercury contamination is far diminished.
Their appearance & lighting quality is much better too, IMO.

Otherwise, there are always LED bulbs that don't have these issues.

Re: "the likelyhood of breakage and mercury contamination is far diminished."

Until they end up in a landfill.

Bepsf, true.

I also have a huge issue with cfl lights, though, because of social issues. Did you know that workers at cfl factories in China have been getting mercury poisoning and having to be hospitalized? I heard about it here:

http://ecolocalizer.com/2009/05/04/energy-efficient-lightbulbs-poison-hundreds-of-chinese-workers/

It's pretty awful, and I'm kind of appalled that congress is forcing us into supporting this industry.

hopefully LEDs will be widely available by that point

"Until they end up in a landfill."

Aren't we supposed to recycle them?

MarianneT --

Consider purchasing bulbs that are made in the US:
http://www.usstuff.com/lightinc.htm

Not only are worker protections in place in this country, but they're "Greener" since they've not been shipped halfway around the planet...
...and you wouldn't be sending US dollars overseas.

Antique bulbs make me happy.

MarianneT: Because of my ingrained habit of breaking a glass object every 1.563 weeks, nowhere in my apartment is any bulb ever safe from being exposed to breakage. In fact, pretty much everything in my house, glass or not, suffers daily the indignity of my clumsiness.

I am in awe of you that you have places where things are safe from breakage. Brava!

One of the brownstones on my street has that Lindsey Adelman chandelier/light fixture (the branching version) or something similar; it's pretty stunning. I sort of stopped and stared the first time I walked by it at night.

Also, the merits of or lack thereof CFL technology should really be discussed separately from the companies that make them - hopefully there are companies that produce CFL bulbs and create a safe work environment for their employees, but the existence of companies that don't shouldn't mean writing off the entire industry...

In any case, the owner of my apartment installed track lighting, so I'm definitely not saving any electricity with my halogen lighting. I have put in soft light CFLs for my table lamps though and they work fine for me. I've never been concerned about the mercury in them because a) the likelihood of breaking any lightbulb doesn't seem too high because I only ever touch them once a year if that, and b) there are 100x more fluorescent lights in my office, so if I'm going to get mercury poisoned by fluorescent light, it probably won't be at home...

I installed a tankless gas water heater, new windows and doors, and switched out all the old 70s appliances in my new place. After all that, I think I can keep my beloved silver bowl bulbs.

@Renngrrl: if you're looking at your new environmental impact only relative to your old one, not what the planet can actually sustain, sure. People need to let go of the "I do X, so I get a pass on Y!" Nobody's making you do anything, but we can all do better.

Exactly why big government control isn't the way to go.

There are halogens inside a outter case with a screw base available that have enough efficiancy to not suffer from any bans, which dim properly etc since they are still incandesent.

As for the colour, I find that CFLs are a great improvement on the crusty orange of incandesents. The reason a daylight looks "blue" compared to a yellow lamp is because it is white, not yellow/orange.

Yellowey light makes things look old and ick. daylight lighting for the win IMO.

@richms

Totally agreed; I'd try to avoid yellow light, but I think most of the energy-efficient bulbs my mom bought are "soft", so it will have to wait until they blow (hopefully in eight years?)

... and then she breaks a CFL while swapping it out to another lamp. >.>

On the other hand, from wiki:
In areas with coal-fired power stations, the use of CFLs saves on mercury emissions when compared to the use of incandescent bulbs. This is due to the reduced electrical power demand, reducing in turn the amount of mercury released by coal as it is burned. In July 2008 the US EPA published a data sheet stating that the net system emission of mercury for CFL lighting was lower than for incandescent lighting of comparable lumen output. This was based on the average rate of mercury emission for US electricity production and average estimated escape of mercury from a CFL put into a landfill. [...]

[The] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that if all 270 million compact fluorescent lamps sold in 2007 were sent to landfill sites, that this would represent around 0.13 short tons, or 0.1% of all U.S. emissions of mercury (around 104 short tons that year.)

So there's that. Of course, if you tend to break bulbs, you personally may be at elevated risk, but if not, then....