In the never-ending quest to reduce our electricity bill and our overall carbon footprint, my husband and I have used compact fluorescent bulbs and high-output halogen bulbs for quite some time. We like the natural color of the halogen bulbs, and since most of the time we use dimmer switches, they last a very long time. A 50 watt bulb has a life expectancy of about 3500 hours of light.

But household lighting uses 12% of our electricity bill (according to this source: Wikipedia: Energy use in the US), so imagine my delight when I discovered this new lightbulb: Ushio’s New LED bulbwhich uses 4 watts to produce the same light at a 50 watt bulb. It even has a life expectancy of 50000 hours. It costs five times as much, lasts more than ten times as long (meaning fewer trips up and down ladders), and uses one-tenth of the electricity. I’ve been trying to calculate how much money you’d save over the course of the bulb’s life, and it’s a lot. First off, there’s half the cost of the bulbs (so, $30), and then one-tenth the electricity use. 50,000 hours at 50 watts (2500 kW) would cost another $30 or so (average US cost is $11/kW hour), so one tenth of that is $3. So each bulb would save you $60.

Imagine if EVERYONE switched to these bulbs! One-tenth the bulbs in landfills, one-tenth the electricity use. And $60 more in your pocket for every single bulb you replaced.