It’s Earth Day and what a beautiful day it is! The weather really showed up today as it is by far the nicest spring day this season. Today Home Depot was handing out a free compact fluorescent light bulb in honor of the glorious occasion. I, of course, ran over to get one while I was out taking care of some errands. (That makes two free bulbs in one weekend including yesterday’s!) I also took an inventory of all the bulbs in the house and what the most used wattage was so I could start replacing them. There are 28 60-Watt bulbs in this house alone! Not including the various other wattage light bulbs, as well as all of the decorative chandeliers and halogen varieties. Wow! I bought three packages of four to start. So today I replaced a total of 14 incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving and carbon-dioxide reducing CFLs. I replaced bulbs in high-traffic, most-frequently used areas to start (ie. the kitchen, bathroom and automated-timer lamps).

To learn more about the differences between incandescents and CFLs, check out some info from Home Depot. With a quick click of a button, I found out that I’ll save $47 per year, that it’ll only take 10 months for the energy savings to pay for the CFLs, that over the lifetime of the bulb I’ll save$634 which could buy me 229 days of electricity. Most importantly, I’ve reduced the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by 1,300 pounds over the lifetime of the bulb.

You can also estimate your household carbon footprint using BP’s Carbon Footprint Calculator.