We´ve already come a long way in the area of lighting. In the 20th century, the classic incandescent bulb was still the undisputed king. But the yield of the incandescent bulb is low: most of the energy (up to 90%) is lost in unusable heat.
At the beginning of the 1980´s, the compact fluorescent lamp was already a major step forward. And the LED lamp showed up on the scene a bit later.
An LED lamp can function for at least 15,000 and even as much as 50,000 hours. That’s 50 times longer than an ordinary incandescent bulb.
LED and compact fluorescent lamps have a label ranging from A to A++ and so both of them are energy-saving. However, LED lamps score better in terms of service life.
|
Average service life |
Consumption costs per year |
Processing via Recupel |
LED lamp |
25 years |
€ 1.50 |
Yes |
Compact fluorescent lamp |
6 years |
€ 2.50 |
Yes |
Incandescent bulb |
1 year |
€ 14 |
No |
- Replace 1 incandescent bulb (60 Watt) with 1 LED lamp (7W) and you save up to € 10 per year.
- An average household that changes over to low-energy lighting saves between € 25 and € 50 per year.
Compact fluorescent lamps: sort correctly
Don’t throw compact fluorescent lamps into the ordinary waste. Strictly considered, they are small hazardous waste. But many of the substances that they contain (such as mercury) can be perfectly well recuperated, so they are environmentally-friendly - provided that you sort them correctly.