Treehugger has an article today about falling CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lightbulb) sales in the United States.  In some states CFL sales are down as much as 50%, which Treehugger blogger Brian Merchant clearly finds both frustrating and inexplicable.

I can't speak for everyone, but here's my experience with CFLs.  When they first hit the market, I was very excited, as I had always heard about how inefficient the incandescent bulb is. (You can tell just by thinking about all the heat an incandescent bulb gives off. That heat is wasted electricity.)  I happened to need a new desk lamp, so I bought a CFL bulb for it.  The bulb cost seven dollars, if memory serves, which seemed like a fortune to me then.

Unfortunately, the bulb gave off what I would call a "cool blue" light.  Combined with the high lumens (the measure of brightness for a light bulb), it was like installing a parking garage or street light pointed at my desk.  The light was so bright that I had to take care not to point it directly at my pad of (white) notebook paper, lest I be accidentally blinded.

I switched that bulb to an upright torchiere lamp, where it seemed more appropriate.  And I took the incandescent bulb out of the torchiere and used it at my desk.  Working at my desk was great, but now my living room was brilliantly illuminated by a clinical sort of light.  It was like trying to relax at the end of the day with a football field's night game light installed beside my couch.

I finally decided that this just wasn't the light bulb for me. I talked to some CFL fanatics, got their recommendations on the CFL bulb specs that I wanted, and went to the store.  This second CFL bulb cost almost twice what the first one did, but to its credit it did produce a light which was both mild and vivid - as similar to an incandescent bulb as you could want.

So now I find myself with a CFL bulb that I don't want to use.  What can I do with it?  My local recycling center and waste transfer station doesn't accept them.  They contain mercury, as I'm sure you've heard.  I had it sitting on a dusty shelf in the bathroom, until the day when it rolled off and hit the floor.  It didn't break, thank goodness, because have you seen the crazy procedure you're supposed to go through if a CFL breaks?

That second CFL was awesome, but it burned out after two years.  A third CFL I had bought for the kitchen burned out after one year.  So far I have spent about $30 on compact fluorescent light bulbs, $10 per year, and surely that's a lot less than the electricity savings?

I found a little cardboard box, and tucked all my dead CFLs into it.  They're safe from breakage there, and my hope is that one day either the local transfer station will take them along with the other hazardous waste, or that I'll remember to take them to Seattle when I drive down there, so that I can stop off at the big city dump and drop them off.  

In the mean time?  I hate to admit it, but I've gone back to incandescent bulbs.  Sorry, planet!  (But were we really counting on using mercury to save you?)