Thursday, June 11, 2009

My Most Un-Green Appliance

We all have them. Those energy-sapping appliances that we know we should toss, but still hang on to for whatever reason.

In my case, I have just officially gotten rid of my torchiere lamp. Why did I even still have the same lamp that has caused hundreds of fires? I guess my illogical reasoning was that if the lamp had never caused a fire in the twenty-odd years we've had it, ours must be somehow different than the rest. I learned tonight that most fires were caused by the lamps being tipped over or something being thrown on top of the bulb. Let's see, it was in between the foosball table and the Wii. Likelihood of tipping over? Very high.

Why did I still have a light with a 300 watt bulb when most of the rest of my lightbulbs are tiny little CFLs? Um... because it gives off really good light? Okay, lame reason, but it's the truth.

The final straw? About a week ago, I went to turn it on and found it was already on--and hot. That's one of the problems with them - kids twist the knob to to turn the light off, but don't twist it all the way so it continues to consume energy. How long had it been on? Hours? No, probably more like days. I resolved to throw it out immediately - then had a second thought. No, I'll blog about it, take a picture, then throw it out. Today, when I took the picture, it was on and hot - again. It's now unplugged and on its way to the dump. This is one item I don't feel bad about adding to the landfill. I can't even imagine how much money we have spent over the years to provide energy to an ugly lamp that probably cost $19 in the first place.

What energy-sapping appliance lurks in your house? What's keeping you from getting rid of it today?








2 comments:

  1. hey it looks cool but i came across other one which is really cool in shape, reachargeable and has a battery back up of six hours. Check out :
    BPL Studylite

    ReplyDelete
  2. I remember having a few of these lamps. I feel lucky now that mine got way too hot and we through them away early. The energy costs and safety issues were not worth it. Although, they did make the rooms bright. Thanks for the memories..

    ReplyDelete