*Correction: Since posting this blog, it has been brought to my attention that Woolworths does not in fact sell incandescent lightbulbs. As I understand it they decided a while back to remove these from their shelves and now only sell energy savers. I say big up to you Woolies (!), and my apologies for the false accusations. I’m so glad that you’re living up to your good business journey, and hope other supermarkets follow suit in the near future.
There is just no comparing incandescent light bulbs to their energy saving versions.
Energy savers last, on average, between six and 15 times longer, and they are also far more efficient, using about 80% less energy than standard bulbs. One study has found that by switching to energy saving bulbs, EU citizens would save roughly the amount of electricity consumed by 11 million European households: a reduction of 15 million metric tons of CO2 emission per year. That said, the down side of energy savers of course is that their initial cost is far more than normal bulbs, though that initial cost is easily recovered over a bulb’s lifetime.
The question then is why grocers continue to sell incandescent bulbs — particularly in the case of Woolworths and Pick n Pay who do so much to polish their images as environmentally aware businesses. I’m sure that their marketers have done their research and come to the conclusion that being ‘green’ — whatever that may mean — is a good public image to have; ultimately it means they sell more. But if that’s the case I think its time they stand up and take the decision to no longer sell incandescent bulbs. If you are going to present yourself as a green-minded business, and profit from the association of being seen as environmentally aware, then I don’t think taking this step is too much to ask.
I’m sure one of the common objections to this would be that while energy savers may be far better than standard bulbs, Woolworths simply has no place to go about telling me what I can and cannot purchase. If I want to buy normal bulbs, then, quite frankly, who is Woolies to tell me that I cannot? And your objection would be perfectly reasonable, if only it wasn’t so naïve. For starters supermarkets make decisions about which magazines and newspapers to sell you. Working for a magazine company, I know how grocery chains are able to control what types of images appear on the covers of magazines. If it’s not something they like, the mag simply won’t appear on their shelves, and sales for that month will plummet.
The industry’s response to the use of genetically engineered bovine growth hormone in milk is another example of suppliers making a unilateral decision about what to supply to consumers. Granted, the decision not to supply milk treated with hormones is very different to a decision on what light bulbs to sell, but the precedent of deciding on behalf of the consumer is there nonetheless.
There are clear cases where supermarkets play very active roles in controlling what can and cannot purchase. Sure there are many instances where grocers respond directly to what their customers want to see on their shelves. When demand for something increases they supply more of it. But I’m also convinced that their decisions about what to stock in their stores then shapes what we want to see on those shelves in future: they stimulate demand as much as they satisfy it.
The point is that companies such as Woolworths play a very active role in what we ultimately purchase. They are not simply a benign purveyor of goods from supplier to customer, but a powerful intermediary that consistently shapes what we buy, and when.
So then, it seems that the only reason they still sell incandescent light bulbs is because energy saving bulbs cost so much more in the short run. For many people, the extra R20 for an energy saver is R20 they just don’t have, regardless of the long-term benefits and savings. And in those cases I can see why people continue to buy normal light bulbs. However many South Africans could afford an extra R20 once in a five year period — especially those affording to shop at Woolies. Perhaps if those people were made more aware of how energy savers make sense in the long run, they’d understand why Pick n Pay took the initiative to no longer stock standard bulbs.
On that note, let’s not forget the decision Woolworths took to only sell free-range eggs, and the publicity they received as a result. I think in the long run taking a stand such as this would really pay off. It shows people that the respective retailer has got some integrity, and is really standing by the name it’s trying to make for itself. Anything less and they just come across as fake, having their green cake and eating it to.
Yes, but what about the mercury content of energy saving light bulbs – do you really expect the unsophisticated South African consumer will do his best to ensure that it doesn’t end up in hte trash can and ultimately in landfills? It is also extremely hazardous should one of these bulbs break in the house. The cost to decontaminate a room where mercury has been spilled can run into thousands of rands.
Building the strawman and then knocking it down as “naive” just will not do. So, they make choices on the consumer’s behalf elsewhere, why not with CFLs because, as you say, it’s good for everyone and the environment, after all?
Do the rest of us consumers get a say in this particular instance, or just you? In my house, CFLs work very well in most places, but not in others. I choose to use incandescent bulbs of varying shapes, sizes and wattages for the rest. That’s my choice about what looks and feels right to me in my house and it’s none of your damn business what bulbs I buy.
If I want to smoke, I can buy at Pick n Pay. If I want to use “green” and more expensive detergents, I can choose from the full range on the shelves. That Woolies chose to stock only freerange eggs is meaningless. Woolies stocks limited ranges anyway.
Perhaps when you’ve experienced life a bit more some of that hopeless idealism will be replaced with a sense of the benefits and costs our daily tradeoffs of life require.
Neither my local Woolies nor P ‘n P sell incandescent bulbs any more, and both have supported the ‘exchange your old bulbs for our new ones’ campaign. Strange that this hasn’t taken place countrywide already.
Uh hello? Anyone remember reading? Anyone remember that thing called a book? Ever tried reading a book using the creepy light from a long life bulb? Anyone still think we the consuemr should be allowed to have a choice of light bulb? Guess not! Ban everything you don’t like Mike Baillie, that should solve the problem.
Thank you for raising this question. To clarify, Woolworths only sells energy-saving light bulbs to customers. We have not sold incandescent light bulbs for many years. In association with Nova Lighting, offers an in-store collection facility for the safe disposal of redundant CFL (energy-saving) light bulbs in selected stores. The collection bin has been specially designed to ensure that there is no danger of CFL lamp breakage.
Possum – you’ve bought the wrong bulb for the job. I can read perfectly well using the right wattage and I read almost a book a night when I am really going!
I shop for vegetables and meat at small local stores that charge sometimes astonishinghly lower prices than the big markets. I tried once to send a letter to the editor of a local newspaper about this, but it was not published, even though it was in the public interest. Perhaps the big supermarkets also dictate to newspapers what they can publish about them??
@ Robard,
I wasn’t sure of the mercury content issue, so went along to wikipedia. There is an interesting graph that shows that although CFLs contain mercury, their overall mercury emissions are substantially lower than normal bulbs because they use far less coal power. http://bit.ly/azy3pn.
It only goes about one thing with these large firms GREED.
Sadly, poor people cannot afford CFLs or to dispose of them safely.
I hear your sentiment, one factor that you have failed to mention is that energy saving light bulbs are toxic, as far as their disposal is concerned. So it remains a catch 20/22 situation. One has to weigh every environmentally ‘conscious’ decision up against all possible factors, ie energy use( to make it,to use it, to recycle it),harm to environment ( to dispose of it without harming environment, etc) and others. We need to always be contextual in our choices as well, so what works in SA may not work in Russia etc. What are our most fragile, overburdened resources?How can we prevent them getting further damaged, depleted? These questions should frame our decisions when it comes to buying environmentally friendly goods. We need to actively participate in what is being sold as ‘environmentally conscious’. It really is up to consumers to get pro-active. For my part, the biggest culprit at present is any supermarket, retailer that glibly repackages / packages using cellophane and offers plastic packets. I am getting ready to start unwrapping cellophane, it cannot be recycled and is not only toxic to environment, it is toxic to humans to……….
The problem with the energy savers is they are too dim. They say 100 watt but they are dimmer than incandescent. I will be saving energy and going slowly blind.
Well thank God for the coming media tribunal. I am now completely at sixes and sevens as to what bulb to buy. Hurry MAT, save me from this persecusion! I was perfectly happy before and now am so confused.
Illuminate our world by putting out the light!
Reading is no problem using either cool white or warm white CFL bulbs.
All the retail chains still offer plastic shopping bags instead of encouraging shoppers to re-use.I think shopping bags should be fazed out.
Perhaps consumers should have the right to choose whether they want to pay less for a light bulb up front and face the higher electricity bill and bulb replacement costs down the line, or to pay the extra R20 up front and enjoy the consequent savings. What is freedom in a democratic state if such freedoms are taken away from us? But this freedom is only realisable if retailers have the right to stock whichever items their customers want without interference from the green thought police.
Holland has phased out the old light bulb. Dutch people go to Belgium to by them if they want/need them. In my experience, the life cycle of the saver has been disappointing. Another experience has been that savers do not take kindly to dimmers.
The quality (or colour) of the light is a personal thing and dependent on circumstances. This can hardly be discussed in this context.
Calculations on potential energy savings do sound impressive but….
…..if we all stop buying iron, aluminium and steel products, the energy savings would be much larger as furnishes will become a thing of the past; cars, planes, trains and ships will be phased out over time.
A real green future will be ahead of us
)
I hear what you are saying about eco-consciousness, supermarkets controlling what they sell and don’t sell, but in defense, I must point out that some light fittings do not take the bulky energy saving globes and some people cannot afford the expense of changing actual light fittings.
“People will go quietly and meekly to the end of the world if only you allow them to believe that low wattage lightbulbs will suffice to save them.” – Derrick Jensen
When will Woolies see the dimness of their new W logo which has lowered their image and respect fot what is a good Brand
Australia has phased out incandescent light bulbs so its not an issue anymore here but what I have noticed is that CFLs have a lot less life than they are reputed to have – in a year I have had about 6 CFL downlights go out forever .. I have started switching to LED downlights which use virtually no energy and are far longer lasting than either CFLs or incandescent. LEDs also have a lower footprint and do not have the mercury problem ( which tends to be massively overstated by the naysayers and skeptics)
Bravo Possum. Can anyone tell me how the manufacturers measure the light output of their energy saving lamps? According to my photographic light meter the equivalence figures they quote are a great exageration. People can only read with them because the human eye can adapt to work in poor light, albeit with reduced depth of field and more critical focusing point. No doubt in 10 years time optometrists will be swamped with people going blind due to the eye strain caused by energy saving lamps.
The example of hormones in milk is poorly chosen. For a start the use of hormones is prohibited. secondly you can only make a choice if you are given one and I have never come accross a bottle of milk that said: “produced from cows shot full of hormones” as opposed to a bottle that said:”no hormones used to feed the cow that produced this milk”. A “choice” is only possible if you know the difference between the alternatives and product information leaves a lot to be desired. Are you aware that recent SA legislation now allows the manufacturers to list “colourants” as an ingredient without indicating whether these colourants are chemical or natural? We are going backwards not forwards!
Please go and write about something that is really interesting – consumers are not stupid. For the record my long life bulbs purchased mostly at PnP have a short life – why, I don’t know. My incandascent light bulbs lasts a lot longer and give off better light because I read a lot. Go and do an article on the merits of the various long life bulbs and let us as readers know which ones are better for reading, bathrooms etc. (Pseudonym: TT)
On replacing all incandescent bulbs with energy savers I discovered that the green alternatives is so dim and feint that three or four 20W “savers” replaces one old style bulb in order to get the same effect.
That reduces the enregy saved to too little to make much of a difference.
I have converted my house to mainly CFL globes, but have dimmer switches in living rooms which do not operate with CFL.Therefore I still need the standard globes and hope they will still be available, as I like the dimmer facility.
@Mike
I guess that’s alright then, though I have to agree with possum that CFLs are not well suited for reading books and it casts an unpleasant, bleak kind of light.
@Mike:
Short answer: incandescents can be used with dimmers. CFLs cannot.
You may of missed the part in the study that showed that in saving electricity we should swap according to seasons.
That EU study found that incandecent systems warmed the air in households and were in fact energy savers in Winter. Where the socalled energy savers were used in winter the saving made up in the summer was for the most part lost as more electricity was used to warm the rooms. A pefect case of manufacturers / advocaters not giving the public the whole truth.
Shall we add the real cost of these expensive bulbs. I have yet to have one last longer than two years. They are expensive to despose of. Then to top that the main selling point is liftime verses cost. That tells me that they have factored into the price the lifetime and the cost of incandecent bulbs that were rate for 1000 hrs @ R 5.50 a piece. Does this not mean that we should be paying far less if it was all about planet saving and carbon emmissions? Like carbon emmission control it is smake and mirrors and an easy rip off marketing exercise.
As for organically grown well that has always been debatable as there is no set standard anywhere in the world. One man’s organic growing is anothers conventional farming using fewer chemicals.
Have we not yet learned that we have happily accepted being poisoned through chemical introduction in all foods organic or not?
@ Tee-Jay you say “a sense of the benefits and costs our daily tradeoffs of life require.” – precisely, but not in the way you mean.
One of the biggest problems of our consumerist lifestyle is that the REAL cost of goods is not included in the sale price. And by REAL, I mean a cost that includes paying for the use of natural resources (air, water, land, carbon emissions, etc) to produce something, recycle and dispose parts, as well as the cost of not abusing the environment in which you operate. (BP oil spill; Aurora mine / poison water – any ring a bell?)
Nature provides us with an immeasureable number of life-saving services that we cannot live without. (er, where do you think you’re oxygen comes from – trees & plankton; deforestation is rife worldwide and plankton are dying as our oceans warm-up…)
Eg – Bees provide US farmers with over 90billion dollars worth of free labour a year by pollinating crops – lose bees and you’ve got to hand-pollinate all the flowering food crops (fruits, vegetables, etc) 2 years ago, nearly 40% of US bee colonies died… imagine what losing bees can do to an economy and a nation…
There is a TRUE, REAL cost to our self-destructive actions that we are only starting realise. We are living in resource debt – and the bill is in the post…
The other problem with energy savers is that they don’t actually deliver on their promised lifespan. I have been using them for years, and in my experience they don’t generally last longer than incandescent bulbs.
This fact makes the pure economics of using them somewhat dubious.
In geographical locations where there are electricity surges, bulbs tend to not last long. Since energy saving bulbs cost more than the older type, people in these locations tend to stick with the older cheaper type since they are easier to replace.
Mike, both those stores are leading FMCG retailers and suppose the reason is because they listen to their wisdom and research and not those of every ‘chattering class’ person with a new mission.
Brent
PS – just love the intellectual liberal/left, only a few years ago they were in a huge frothy about mercury in our society but now that PC CFL globes (with mercury) are the ‘must do in thing’ it is not a problem because there is mercury in: most street lamps, floro lighhtening, many dental fillings, most watches and yes still many thermometers. O well guess we will all have make do with that little extra mercury in our fish, after all it does get rid of nasty carbon in our air!!
Striplights do not like to be switched on and off and I suspect the same is true for energy savers; I therefore reckon that incandescent globes still have valid uses. I notice energy savers reach full light output only after several minutes. The practical life tends to be much shorter than advertised.
Energy savings or no energy savings aside – lets stop all ideologies and purely look at pragmatic things, shall we?
Energy saving lamps do not fit in my desk lamp in my study, my oven, my fridge and my lava lamp.
But more crucially, I’m a professional photographer. Energy Savings lamps do not come in 5000k daylight-balanced variations. This is so freaking crucial to my work, it’s not even funny. When viewing commercial work – it needs to be done in a daylight-balanced environment, and until energy-savings lamps can give me daylight, I’m not going to be interested.
I’ve got no hassles using energy savings bulbs anywhere else – its fine for my passage light or my kitchen, but when it comes to certain aspects – energy savings just will not do. And the greenies can stand on their heads and whistle, I’m not going to change from incandescent to energy savings just because the hippies said I should.
There are truly bigger issues (environmental issues) at hand as to whether PnP sells incandescent bulbs – I mean, really!
Another nutshell answer: When you earn R800 a month, would love to be “green” and also save money in the long term, but all you have left for the month is R20, which buys you a cheap globe and adds a little bit of light to your miserable little single-room abode until the next slave-wage is delivered, THEN you will be quite thankful the rich, bored hippies have not been able to ban EVERYTHING they hate this year.
But this is not you, so waffle on about mercury and wattage. The rest who live in the real world cannot afford to care.
I’ve have four brand new energy-efficient light bulbs @ R30 a shot blow on me in the first four months. I have incandescants in my home that have been in use for ten years.
Oh, and I’m still waiting for my free government issue bulb.
I also have such low electricity usage that the municipality came to check my meter and the chap doing the checking begged me to tell him how I do it!
The value of having a mind is to absorb the information at your disposal but not necessarily believe every word of it.
Woolies lost my respect when they continued advertising butter-, egg- and addition-rich foods long after diabetes had been regarded a national crisis. The brand is not up-to-date or on the ball. I don’t shop at PnP because it’s too far away; why waste in petrol and time what can be saved closer to home?
Who says we’ll have nothing to talk about when the press is muzzled
Well said Grinch, those bulbs aren’t any good for close up precision work. Have you seen what happens when you switch them off? They glow a horrible green, pretty creepy if you ask me. I can’t wait for my bathroom light to burn out so I can go back to normal and actually SEE AGAIN!
Mrs Blogroid took a unilateral decision about a year ago or so to replace all the old bulbs with the new bulbs. Trust me they blow as often as the others did. I, [well she really] replaces on average two or three each month and in some months more. [i am not an electrician so don't ask me why]
We also have routine loadshedding incidents [cable thieving incidents whatever at least once a fortnight, which i'm sure doesn't help.
The old bulbs about which you are whinging probably come from china and cost about a quarter to a third of the price of the new. They are also, as various other respondents have pointed out, expensive to dispose off, so you re suggesting that i [or Mrs Blogroid ], should lay out a couple of hundred bucks a year extra, to get the same thing we could get for much less; and in fact is brighter and less stressful on our aging eyeballs than these new things are: in order to … what was that… save the planet… Wow.
You are confused surely. People who run supermarkets are in some form of conspiracy you say. Aren’t they are in one of the few really competitive businesses in S.A. They sell what people buy…Ie: They stock stuff that people want, need and buy. And that includes the old lightbulbs.
Right now people who begrudge an extra 200 bucks more than me are buying them because they are cheap.
Can’t understand all the complaints about energy-efficient bulbs, I’ve been using them for years and they do last much longer (when I replace I have to wipe the dust off the replacements which have been packed away in the store cupboard so long!); I too read voraciously and have no problems.
However, I would suggest that you take aim at something more urgent at WW and PP: packaging. It seems to undercut any good they achieve with free range eggs and all that to have so much packaging wrapped around everything!
First, the politics.
The reason retailers stock incandescent bulbs is because people buy them.
In a free market, the preferences of the buyers determine what gets sold, how much and at what price.
Suppliers supply what the consumers demand, otherwise consumers move to the competition, and the supplier who is trying a little ‘social engineering’ of his own goes out of business.
This is not ‘naive’; it is how the real world works.
I do not purchase CFLs, or anything else for that matter, from ‘Woolies’, as the ranges are limited, (no incandescents!) the price mostly uncompetitive, and the alleged superior quality questionable.
Unfortunately, people with ‘statist’ leanings (a.k.a. control freaks) do not believe freedom of choice is a good idea.
The only way to stop people buying incandescent bulbs, or exercising any other freedom of choice, is through coercion, and some people think this is a great way to run a society (esp. when they get to be the coercers and not the ‘coercees’!)
After all, bureaucrats and special interest activist groups are way, way smarter than ordinary people, and have a moral obligation to step in and stop dumb people from hurting themselves.
The only way a supplier of goods or services enjoys a monopoly and gets to determine what people will have through choice restriction is via compulsion of the state, either as a parastatal or a ‘private’ organization which has engaged in political rent seeking and has secured favour, patronage and protection.
The technology
CFLs which last 6 to 15 times as long…..Where can I buy some!!!!
The luminosity equivalence, 20W CFL = 100W incandescent, the 5 to 1 ratio from which the ‘80% saving’ is derived is a gross overstatement, both subjectively, and when objectively measured with a ‘daylight’ adjusted meter as compared to an incandescent.
But power is not the problem, it is with the spectrum.
Incandescent light sources exhibit a continuous spectrum, whereas CFLs emit discrete bands around the center frequencies of the phosphors used, with gaps between.
Using more and more phosphors could reduce this problem, but that would reduce ‘energy efficiency’, defeating the object… i.e. it is a compromise.
You can verify this by peeking through one eye at the surface of a CD (a crude spectroscope) held at an appropriate angle to the light source.
Looking at a CFL source, it looks fine, but we see things which reflect the source, and if a particular object reflects a narrow spectrum colour which lies in a band gap, it is going to look relatively blackish compared to incandescent or daylight.
That is why it is disturbing to some people, and turns working with food in a CFL lit kitchen a lurid and creepy experience.
Dining is a particularly primeval pleasure, and primitive ‘natural’ old fashioned hydrocarbon combustion (candlelight) definitely does it for me.
Moral of the story….let individuals alone to choose, including those who wish to use CFLs.
Hello Mike.
Eish!!!The reason why the normal light bulb is welcome, is because of the cost difference. I cannot afford to replace the energy saving light bulbs with the same when they go. It hurts my pocket too much.
A major point the writer misses completely is that almost all CFL lights sold here are inferior quality compared to those sold elsewhere with 4/ – 6000 hour lifespans compared to the 10 000 hours for most bulbs in Europe. And its really difficult to get a CFL that is suitable for use on dimmer switches.
The real answer is not CFLs at all but LED lights. I have shifted across to them for all downlighters and other general lighting and they are far superior, drawing around 20% of the current of CFLs for same light and last 10 times longer and contain no mercury.
LED lights are the future.
WOOLWORTHS are full of contradictions. While they may not stock incandescnet lightbulbs, they do leave a shopper with an incredible amount of plastic packaging; packaging that gives their products a more fashionable appearance so that can charge much higher prices.
All is well – except that it has now come to light (sorry for the pun) that due to the MHz at which these bulbs operate, they are a major cause of blindness, skin cancers of all types, can lead to epileptic fits, glaucoma, eczema and more…
So why are you still advocating the use of these? Rather use LED lighting (which is even cheaper to run, with the same luminosity)
A “bulb” is something you plant in the ground. A lamp is something produces light.
I think my gripe here has little to do with energy consciousness/saving but is a gripe nonetheless. WHEN will electricity appliance producers standardise on the plugs they use for everything from vacuum cleaners to cell phones and make them all one uniform size. Three pin sockets are what are installed in every home (never enough of them either) and then one still has to go out and buy yet another adapter for the B!!!!! 2 pin plug or else remove the 2 pin and replace with a new plug.
This is a minority issue