Your Light Bulbs Waste Energy
Series: Your Choice; Your Planet series
From: The Environment Report
Length: 00:04:05
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- Your Light Bulbs Waste Energy
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- The Environment Report
It's been 125 years since Thomas Edison introduced his incandescent light bulb to the world... and we're still using that old, inefficient technology in our homes. Light bulbs waste 95-percent of the energy they consume. There are more technologically advanced alternatives, but we insist on incandescent lights... and the trend is toward more light, more energy wasted.
This piece is part of the 'Your Choice; Your Planet' series. It was first offered to Great Lakes Radio Consortium stations on March 14, 2005.
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Piece Description
It's been 125 years since Thomas Edison introduced his incandescent light bulb to the world... and we're still using that old, inefficient technology in our homes. Light bulbs waste 95-percent of the energy they consume. There are more technologically advanced alternatives, but we insist on incandescent lights... and the trend is toward more light, more energy wasted. This piece is part of the 'Your Choice; Your Planet' series. It was first offered to Great Lakes Radio Consortium stations on March 14, 2005.
Broadcast History
First offered to Great Lakes Radio Consortium member stations March 14, 2005.
Transcript
LEDE: Many of us say we want to be good environmentalists. But we often make choices based on other desires. One of those choices is lighting. Most of us use lights that are very inefficient, and the trend in home lighting is moving toward using more energy, not less. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham takes a look at light bulbs and starts at the beginning:
We’re getting a behind the scenes look at a pretty significant historical artifact. Marc Gruether is pulling back a plastic tarpaulin that covers a row of file cabinets.
Gruether: “We are in one of the storage areas in the Henry Ford Museum. And drawer eleven has this light bulb in it which I will very carefully remove. It’s certainly one of the oldest Edison light bulbs that’s in existence. This is one of the lamps that was used in the December 1879 demonstration at Menlo Park.”
Graham: "Now, looking at it,...
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