GE Closes Last US Light Bulb Factory

pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the US is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s. What made the plant vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014 but rather than setting off a boom in the US manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas. GE developed a plan to see what it would take to retrofit a plant that makes traditional incandescents into one that makes CFLs but even with a $40 million investment the new plant's CFLs would have cost about 50 percent more than those from China. 'Everybody's jumping on the green bandwagon,' says Pat Doyle, 54, who has worked at the plant for 26 years. But 'we've been sold out. First sold out by the government. Then sold out by GE.'"

Comments

Why didn't they push LEDs instead of CFL ?

[SirGeek]

I loath CFL lights. They don't last ANYWHERE near the reports say they will. Yet the power LED on one of my computers is still happily running (after 24 hours a day for 10 years).

And LEDs don't require you to use a hazmat suit to pick up pieces if you break one (since they contain Mercury).

Re:Why didn't they push LEDs instead of CFL ?

[Jeremi]

And LEDs don't require you to use a hazmat suit to pick up pieces if you break one (since they contain Mercury).

LED light bulbs are available.... pricey, but perhaps worth it?

Re:Why didn't they push LEDs instead of CFL ?

[Camel Pilot]

we pick up and vacuum up the pieces of broken CFLs without hazmat suits all the time,

Actually vacuuming is the one thing you are not suppose to do!

http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html

And sure the ill effects of one or two might not be noticeable but if you have young'ns in house it may long term

Re:Why didn't they push LEDs instead of CFL ?

[slapout]

"If they were dangerous, the government would never allow them to be sold" -- that's a joke, right?

Proper cleanup steps are only a two page PDF:

Cleaning Up a Broken Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb (CFL)
Fluorescent light bulbs contain a very small amount of mercury sealed within the glass
tubing. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends the following cleanup
and disposal steps:
Before Cleanup: Air Out the Room
  Have people and pets leave the room, and don't let anyone walk through the
breakage area on their way out.
  Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more.
  Shut off the central forcedair heating/air conditioning system, if you have one.
Cleanup Steps for Hard Surfaces
  Carefully scoop up glass pieces and powder using stiff paper or cardboard and
place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed
plastic bag.
  Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass
fragments and powder.
  Wipe the area clean with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place
towels in the glass jar or plastic bag.
  Do not use a vacuum or broom to clean up the broken bulb on hard surfaces.
Cleanup Steps for Carpeting or Rug
  Carefully pick up glass fragments and place them in a glass jar with metal lid
(such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.
  Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass
fragments and powder.
  If vacuuming is needed after all visible materials are removed, vacuum the area
where the bulb was broken.
  Remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister), and put the bag or
vacuum debris in a sealed plastic bag.
Cleanup Steps for Clothing, Bedding and Other Soft Materials
  If clothing or bedding materials come in direct contact with broken glass or
mercurycontaining powder from inside the bulb that may stick to the fabric, the
clothing or bedding should be thrown away. Do not wash such clothing or
bedding because mercury fragments in the clothing may contaminate the
machine and/or pollute sewage.
  You can, however, wash clothing or other materials that have been exposed to
the mercury vapor from a broken CFL, such as the clothing you are wearing when
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency June 2010
you cleaned up the broken CFL, as long as that clothing has not come into direct
contact with the materials from the broken bulb.
  If shoes come into direct contact with broken glass or mercurycontaining
powder from the bulb, wipe them off with damp paper towels or disposable wet
wipes. Place the towels or wipes in a glass jar or plastic bag for disposal.
Disposal of Cleanup Materials
  Immediately place all cleanup materials outdoors in a trash container or
protected area for the next normal trash pickup.
  Wash your hands after disposing of the jars or plastic bags containing cleanup
materials.
  Check with your local or state government about disposal requirements in your
specific area. Some states do not allow such trash disposal. Instead, they require
that broken and unbroken mercurycontaining bulbs be taken to a local recycling
center.
Future Cleaning of Carpeting or Rug: Air Out the Room During and After Vacuuming
  The next several times you vacuum, shut off the central forcedair heating/air
conditioning system and open a window before vacuuming.
  Keep the central heating/air conditioning system shut off and the window open
for at least 15 minutes after vacuuming is completed.

Re:CFLs won't last

[westlake]

In 3 to 5 years when all the CFLs start dying, there will be a huge furor over the mercury they contain leeching into landfills.

Or not.

In the United States, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that if all 270 million compact fluorescent lamps sold in 2007 were sent to landfill sites, that this would represent around 0.13 metric tons, or 0.1% of all U.S. emissions of mercury (around 104 metric tons that year.) Compact fluorescent lamp

Re:You gotta compete on the global marketplace!

[Anonymous Coward]

First, you have the problem of power factor, which means that with fluorescent bulbs, you're often drawing a lot more power than you think, it just isn't getting metered that way.

I'm sorry, this doesn't make any sense. Are you talking about reactive power here? Reactive power is important in grid control... but it is not energy. Energy is the issue here. Fluorescent bulbs do not, in fact, use more energy than incandescent-- they use less.

Second, you have the spectrum of light, which because it is balanced towards the blue end and because it isn't a continuous spectrum, isn't perceived as being of equal brightness.

Actually, the reason that fluorescent bulbs are more energy efficient is because their emission puts out more of its light in the parts of the spectrum that the human eye uses efficiently, not less. Incandescents are way too red-rich. (As should be obvious-- there's no way to get a thermal source to an emission temperature of 5800K, which is the sun's temperature.)

Re:The easy way out

[Entropy2016]

The LED light does actually produce significant heat. It's nowhere near as much heat as an incandescent or CFL, but because LED's have such a very low heat tolerance (heat reduces their lifespan), keeping them cooled them isn't as easy as simply removing the AC/DC converter.

how did this get modded up?

[YesIAmAScript]

Bad math and Jenny McCarthy-style pseudo science (with a Fox question mark no less!).

I'm ashamed of you slashdot.

Fluorescents are 3x as efficient as incandescents. Yes, the efficiency is exaggerated on the labels because the bulbs don't quite put out as much light as the incandescents they are comparing against. But even if you correct for that fluorescents are far more efficient.

Heck, to prove it, just light up a bulb and touch it. Feel that heat on the incandescent? That's wasted energy that didn't go to light. Now touch an equivalently bright fluorescent bulb, it's only a little warm.

Power factor doesn't mean it's using more power than you would think from the wattage, it means it's using more CURRENT and less voltage. Anyway, changing phase like this (low power factor) doesn't mean that the meter isn't measuring correctly. If this were true, people would be strapping inductors onto the lines in their house right before the meter to get free power.

Power factor is only an issue for the electric company, they have to adjust for it. And they are adept at adjusting for it. This is evidenced by how the electric companies are very interested in you using CFLs, my electric company sends me mail about it twice a year. If the low power factors of CFLs presented problems to them, they wouldn't do this, would they?

If you don't like bluish CFLs, get yellowish ones. There are 3 colors, one is very yellow.

I agree LEDs still have limitations. I'd like to get some for my hallway but I"m not ready to make that move yet.

Dimmers are not suitable for fluorescent or LED bulbs, each should really be dimmed with a control signal instead of a rheostat. Hopefully this kind of technology will be common in homes soon so we can get rid of the buzzing from dimming fluorescent and LEDs.

The government is subsidizing your fossil fuels significantly. You don't see it in your bill, because it isn't being subsidized by giving you money to give the electric companies to pay for electricity. We massively subsidize oil drilling and production.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=how-much-in-subsidies-do-fossil-fue-2009-09-18

Your electric bill would be noticeably higher without these subsidies and solar would look correspondingly a little cheaper.