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Green and Clean Holiday Season: The Lights

Posted by Candice on December 15, 2009 at 23:44 pm

Green Holiday Season with LED Lights

The appearance of Christmas lights around the neighborhood is one of my favorite things about the weekend of Thanksgiving. Evening drives to see what how our community neighbors have decorated are so much fun and then there are the famous neighborhood where every house goes all out. In our attempt to be more eco-friendly we’ve been wondering whether we should make the switch to LED lighting. We looked at LEDs last season but there was a very limited selection of very basic lights. It seems like there are more choices this season but how much of a difference does using LEDs really make?

LED lights use 90% less electricity than traditional tungsten bulbs which lowers your energy consumption and be extension reduces your carbon footprint. Not to mention the saving on a reduced electricity bill. Another way LED Christmas lights save you money is that they last much longer than traditional Christmas lights – about 100,000 hours – and you don’t have to throw away a whole strand if one bulb burns out. LEDs also burn brighter so you don’t need as many to get the same effect. They also don’t get as hot which can be a benefit if you have children around the house who might touch tree lights.

So it looks like LEDs are the eco-friendly choice when it comes to Christmas lights. Seems the Whitehouse is on board with LEDs and there are talks of making LEDs mandatory in certain cities and states.  If you make the switch – how do you responsibly dispose of your old lights so they don’t end up in a landfill? Don’t throw them away, recycle them! Send us your old Christmas lights to Environmental LED and they will recycle them … and send you a coupon for 15% off new LED lights.