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Wal-Mart to sell its own brand of compact fluorescent light bulbs

Posted at 11:14 AM on 20 Sep 2007

Giganto-retailer Wal-Mart announced today it will roll out its own brand of compact fluorescent light bulbs in nearly 75 percent of its U.S. stores by the end of the month. The company plans to price the energy-saving bulbs cheaper than the brand-name CFLs they carry, offering a four-pack for about $7.58, comparable in price to a typical brand-name three-pack. Wal-Mart hopes the rollout will help meet its goal of hawking 100 million CFLs by the end of 2007. At last tally, they'd sold some 80 million and counting, making up about 15 percent of their overall light-bulb sales. Wal-Mart General Merchandise Manager Andy Barron said, "The introduction of our Great Value bulbs make CFLs a more accessible option for our shoppers."

sources: Reuters, The Wall Street Journal (access ain't free)

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Comments: (4 comments)

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Have you seen the light?

How very nice.

I recently toured an aisle of CFC's in a local retailer. Not a Wal-Mart as I won't patronize that enemy of the earth. What I found is that every package of CFCs was manufactured in China?

China.

Two coal plants a week China. Rivers so poisoned they burn China. Air so filthy it kills China. Toxic mercury clouds that reach the US China.

But, hey, Wal-Mart is greenwashing and that's all that matters. Buy Wal-Mart CFCs and burn with abandon. Its not like we live in an enclosed biosphere or anything ...

by cyberfarer at 10:34 AM on 21 Sep 2007

Wal-Mart-CFC's

I hope that Walk-Mart will initiate a re-cycling program for the CFC. Many of mine are starting to burn out after 3-4 years of use and I am very frustrated at how difficult they are to re-cycle. I live in a suburb of Chicago and there is no program my village offers, few hazardous waste pickups (and they are not close). Sadly, I have heard that the garbage men tell people to just bury the bulbs in the garbage for disposal.

Two steps forward, three steps back.

by jchomko at 11:17 AM on 21 Sep 2007

Recycling centers.

While my community has a free waste disposal center that is open every other Saturday and recycling CFLs is not hard, I agree with the comment on Recycling. I would hazard a guess that most of Wal-marts customers do not recycle at all, let alone think about the hazards of CFL bulbs in the waste stream.

However, I think more impact would be made if Wal-mart got rid of their plastic shopping bags and encouraged people to reuse cloth bags. Heck, it would be an entirely new money stream for them.

by wayneluke at 11:37 AM on 21 Sep 2007

CFL's and ballasts

All of this euphoria about converting to CFL's misses a huge environmental negative. The kind of CFL they are trying to force down our throats is the most wasteful kind they can build. Each bulb has two parts, a ballast (at the bottom) and a bulby thing (the glass corkscrew). The ballast lasts much longer than the bulb. The CFL's could be made in two separate pieces (modular design is a core principle of Zero Waste) so that a burned out bulb could be replaced while its ballast continued to be used (the bulb would just plug into the ballast). That's how the government specifies its CFL's. They do exist. But wastefulness of every kind is built into all the market choices we are given and if they can sugar coat it with "energy saving" so much the better. The gullible public never questions these "environmental products" at all but just cheers. The same wastefulness is built into the biodegradable boondoggle, recycling in general and much more. See this website for a discussion www.zerowasteinstitute.org/ and go to Mainstream Shenanigans.
Paul Palmer

by Polamca at 12:55 PM on 21 Sep 2007

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