Our Eco House blog

In the following days and weeks, many of us will take out the Christmas lights from the last year and you might notice that the bulbs are broken and there are no spare bulbs to replace with. So, you decide to buy new ones. But before you do that, let’s spend a little time on thinking.

There are several options you have.

Option 1 - buying new lights with standard bulbs

• Pros - cheaper to buy, warm light
• Cons - high energy consumption (your electricity bill will be higher, more CO2, SO2, NOx, etc. emissions), risk of fire if near the fabric, you probably end up buying new lights next year because they brake more often (more rubbish in landfills)

Option 2 - buying LED lights

• Pros - they consume only 10% of electricity and live 10 times longer compared to standard lights, no risk of fire if near fabrics or burns if accidentally touched
• Cons - more expensive to buy (but they save on electricity), colder light

Option 3 - not buying new lights at all

• You’ll save on the electricity bill and you’ll cause no damage to the environment, but we would not recommend this option especially if you have kids

As you can see there is no option with no cons, but some have more cons than others

PS: We’ve chosen an option 2 because we want light, no heat (95% of energy in standard bulb is emitted as heat) and we don’t want to buy new lights every second year.