2,500 Bulbs Sold!

Happy July 4th everyone!

We hit a great milestone today in our effort to sell 10,000 bulbs. As of today we broke the 2,500 bulb barrier and reached 2,529 bulbs sold!

These bulbs represent:
$22,172/yr saved in electric bills
224,074 lbs/yr CO2 saved = 19.4 cars removed from roads = 30.6 acres of forest planted

In the coming months we'll continue to ramp up our efforts by creating more partnerships with other websites and stocking a greater variety of bulbs. We sold ~2,500 bulbs in the first half of the year, let's see if we can beat that in the remaining half.

NYC Proposes Energy Efficient Taxi Fleet

Reading news like this makes me happy. All of NYC's cabs will be converted to hybrid vehicles by 2012.

New York Times
May 22, 2007

Bloomberg Proposes Energy Efficient Taxi Fleet

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR and RAY RIVERA

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced today a plan to replace the city’s entire yellow cab fleet with environmentally friendly hybrid vehicles over the next five years.

The proposal is the latest push in Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC to create a more environmentally sustainable city and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The new taxi standards would be phased in over a four-year period and would lead to a full fleet of hybrids by 2012.

“There’s an awful lot of taxicabs on the streets of New York City obviously, so it makes a real big difference,” Mayor Bloomberg said this morning on the NBC News program “Today.” “These cars just sit there in traffic sometimes, belching fumes; this does a lot less. It’s a lot better for all of us.”

Full Article

The current Crown Victoria taxis get 10-15mpg and the new standards will require taxis get at least 30mpg. I did some quick calculations to see how much oil this will save and how much CO2 this will save from the atmosphere.

Gallons of gasoline saved: 87.3MM/year!
CO2 reduction: 873,313 tons/year!!!

My calculations (if you care to see the assumptions I used)

It's amazing what public policy can do to address environmental issues.

We've been selling lightbulbs for a while now and as of today are removing ~80 tons of CO2/year. We'd have to sell 18MM lightbulbs to equal the effects of NYC phasing out their cabs! Well, every little bit helps I suppose... onwards selling lightbulbs.

1500 Bulbs sold!

It's been a while since I've last posted and things here at ecoLightbulbs are going well. Here are some highlights since March:

4/10/2007 - 1,000 bulbs sold! Thanks to a customer in New Mexico.

4/26/2007 - Attend the Google Environmental fair. This was a great event for us as we got a lot of encouragement and support from our coworkers at Google. The fair featured over 30 booths with organizations ranging from PG&E (who was giving away free light bulbs, which made it a bit difficult for us to sell them) to ecoFabulous (a blog that features sexy sustainable stuff, to make being eco friendly a fashionable and trendy thing to do).

5/15/2007 - 1,500 bulbs sold! Thanks to a big order of 150 bulbs from Arizona.

What does 1,500 CFLs replacing incandescent bulbs mean? Well look below.


Onwards to our goal of 10,000 bulbs sold this year!

Behind the scenes at ecoLightbulbs

Every weekend, we gather our light bulb orders from the week and we set forth in a packaging and shipping frenzy. We thought we'd let you take a peek at what it's really like behind the scenes...





First, we count out all of the orders...











And then we pack up each order with care, and packing peanuts...lots of 'em!










Here's Wayne overwhelmed from the excitement...we had a record week!










And here are the final packages all ready for this weekend's trip to the post office!





We hope you'll keep supporting us in our goal to save the environment by switching to CFL's today!

Support Al Gore and his global warming fight

Al Gore is testifying before Congress on March 21st about the climate crisis. Help him out. He's gathering 350,000 signatures to bring with him into the committee room to show the public's support.

Visit http://algore.com/cards.html if you want to help out. Below is his letter asking for support.

Dear Friend,

On March 21st, I will testify before Congress on the immediate action that needs to be taken to end the climate crisis. At the hearing, I will deliver the 294,374 messages you signed, demonstrating that hundreds of thousands of people share my sense of urgency.

If an additional 55,626 people sign our message, it will be as though 350,000 of us are there at the hearing expressing our determination to convince Congress to act. Having served in the House and Senate, I can tell you that members of these committees would find this to be a meaningful and impressive show of support.

There are only 5 days left before the hearings begin, so please do not pass up this opportunity to join in showing the broad public support we need in order to solve the climate crisis. I know you have friends or family who care deeply about this issue but have yet to sign our message to Congress.

The reason Congress has so far failed to act is not because there are no solutions to the problem. Nor is it because the majority doesn't believe that the climate crisis is real. They have failed to act, because they have not yet faced a sufficient expression of political will on the part of the American people demanding they confront our climate crisis head on. You and I know that political will is a renewable resource, and enough already exists to start solving this crisis. We just have to communicate that forcefully to the political leaders of our country.

In the last two weeks alone 101,673 people visited AlGore.com and signed our message to Congress. This is an incredible demonstration of the energy behind this issue.

In my testimony, of course, I will speak about the scientific evidence for global warming - just reiterated six weeks ago by the world's scientists in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But frankly, the debate on the science has long been over - except for a diminishing number of skeptics and deniers.

At this point, it is far more important to deliver your message about the urgency with which this crisis must be faced. Political leaders need to know that you intend to reward those who do the right thing and that you will work to replace those who do not.

Together we are building a movement that has the potential to translate your strong feelings into effective change for our country. And we all know that when the United States changes - and offers leadership - the entire world will follow.

Thank you,
Al Gore

Lots of "firsts" today for ecoLightbulbs!

Today was a very big day for us here at ecoLightbulbs. We've been in operation for roughly 40 days and we've come a long way. Here are some of the major things that happened to us today, Feb 28, 2007...

We sold our 500th bulb! This has greatly exceeded our expectations, as our initial site was setup as an experiment to see if online distribution of lightbulbs would work. We've heard a resounding YES! to this, so are now moving forward with the next phase of our growth. In the coming days you will see a revamped website and more products.

In addition, we were mentioned in the Asheville Citizen Times by columnist Dave Russell. This is the first time we've been mentioned in a news publication, and it's really helped us drive sales of our bulbs. Here a short snippet of his column.

Yes, each of us can play at least a small role in reducing energy consumption, pollution

Dave Russell

Asheville Citizens Times
February 28, 2007 12:15 am

All this recent talk about saving energy at home by installing compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) reminds me of the time we had our oil tank filled when we lived on the coast of Connecticut. We called for a delivery when the first hint of cold weather blew inland from Long Island Sound, as we’d never lived in a place as cold as Connecticut. Nor had we ever burned oil to stay warm, so I had quite a few questions for the local man who backed the small tanker truck into the driveway.

...

CFLs are a good investment now that they have improved. The DOE says CFLs use at “least two-thirds less energy than standard incandescent bulbs to provide the same amount of light and last up to 10 times longer.” Over those 10 years, homeowners will save $30 or more in energy costs. Sure, they cost more — about $7 a bulb at our local big-box home improvement store.

Interested parties can buy two dozen 100-watt equivalent CFL bulbs for $25 from www.ecolightbulbs.org.

Here's a full link to the column: link Dave - thanks for the mention to ecoLightbulbs!

Finally, I noticed today that we're finally in the search results on Google. So go Google "ecolightbulbs" and you'll be able to find us! Haven't showed up on Yahoo or MSN yet, but hopefully that will happen soon.

Australia bans traditional light bulbs

Today, Australia announced that it was phasing out the use of traditional light bulbs in favour of energy efficient fluorescent ones. Traditional incandescent light bulbs will be banned Down Under by 2010. Bravo! Hopefully, Australia will be the first of many developed nations to start enforcing such policies. See the NYT article and the official announcement from the Australian government (in PDF format).