Buy a Bulb – Save the World (I’m not making this up)
Yes, Canadian Tire has been running a new series of ads: buy a blue planet CFL light bulb and “save the world”.
From every sale of these $6 light bulbs, CT donates $2 “towards planting a tree” (only for the first 125000 sold). As I’ve said before, it costs about 7 cts to plant a tree in Ontario (the program is in collaboration with Trees Ontario), so someone either at blue planet, TreeCanada or Trees Ontario is making a profit of $1.93 somewhere (I’m guessing the only commercial one of the bunch: blue planet. I guess the name “green planet” was already taken. What “blue” has to do with “trees”, I don’t know).
Incandescent light bulbs are mostly made right here in North America and contain no toxic materials. On the other hand, these blue planet CFLs are made in China, no doubt in a dirty, Kyoto-exempt coal-powered plant, using such nice materials as circuit boards containing plastic, and the extremely toxic mercury. It is filled with argon gas mixed with a low pressure mercury vapour. Then it’s shipped across the ocean in coal-powered ocean liners. Then, when it has finished its lifespan, it will have to be driven to a hazardous materials depot or, like most people do, dumped in regular household garbage where it ends leeching lead and mercury into the groundwater somewhere in a landfill.
For all this, CT will “pay towards” planting ONE TREE. This somehow “saves the world”.
We still don’t know HOW they save the world, or from WHAT.
Copyright 2010 ERWIN GERRITS. All Rights Reserved.
6 COMMENTS
1 Kat
Plant a tree and save the world…I’m tired of it all. Planting a tree is one thing, nurturing that tree for the first two years to ensure it survives the planting process is quite another. Ask any gardener, you can’t just stick a sappling in the ground and walk away. It needs to be watered daily for the first few weeks and then weekly for the next few months. As a gardener, I walk the other way when someone tells me they will plant a tree on my behalf. No thanks. I know better.
2 Steamboat Willie
I am trying to expand my horizons, where can I get one of those coal powered ocean liners?
3 admin
Fine. Diesel burning ocean liners. That’s a lot better, isn’t it? As usual, the point is lost on people who need to nitpick because they have no other argument.
4 Jim Harder
This makes about as much sense as driving electric cars powered by electricity generated with coal power…
5 Jim Harder
Here’s an idea…incandescent bulbs don’t waste as much energy as previously thought. Most of the energy used by a conventional bulb is used to generate heat and the rest makes light. It was previously thought that this heat energy was wasted and thus incandescent bulbs were not efficient. In the our case here in Canada however, incandescent bulbs are inefficient for only a few months out of the year. As soon as the merury dips and the thermostats are turned on, then the lowly incandescent bulb is no longer inefficient. The energy “wasted” by creating heat is now being used to heat our homes…
6 Erwin
Jim: that is true. So, all of this considered, why are incandescent light bulb being banned in Ontario? Who lobbied McSquinty to make this happen? McSquinty isn’t smart enough to hatch a scheme like this by himself.
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