Bright Ideas

I don't know if anyone has noticed or heard, but the month of October is National Energy Awareness month. In this months issue of "Waste News" they write about dozens of ways you can save on energy. In one article, "Bright Ideas" it talks about one of the easiest ways to save energy, as easy as changing your light bulb! Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL's) are one of the easiest things you can do. For a long time, these weird looking bulbs were ignored because of the cost associated with them, now, companies have coupons and incentives to switch over. It was apparent to me that the writer of the article spent some time researching various energy and utility companies, but what was interesting was (I can't believe I am going to say it) Wal-Marts participation. Wal-Mart must have spent some time crunching numbers, all this in an effort for good publicity. Here are some interesting numbers Wal-Mart gives in this article. Wal-Mart has surpassed its goal to sell 100 million CFL's by the end of 2007 (thats great, so how many more?) "Over the life time of the bulb, Wal-Mart customers will save some $30 per bulb and could save some $3 billion on electricity and conserve the energy to power 450, 000 homes and reduce emissions as much as taking 700,000 cars off the road". Huh? What in the heck does that mean? What is Wal-marts operationalization of "save". I can understand the 3 billion, simple math, but the homes and the cars, is that savings for a day, week, month, year, forever? I believe that the content of this article was written under good intentions. It just makes sense that a simple thing as changing you light in your home can save, but to have figures like that with no real knowledge of what is actually saved, it just draws some skepticism by this reader.