T i m wrote:

On Sun, 12 Feb 2006 10:03:12 +0000, Kate wrote:


So if you live nearer than 103 litres of petrol away from your dump,
you will save by replacing one 100W filament bulb with a 20W
fluorescent.

If even if you live in Land's End, and dump your tube in Scotland, the
planet will be better off.

;-)

And (as mentioned elsewhere) most of us don't drive to the tip with
just one tube.

Quite! I was looking at the energy balance for just one bulb; if you
took a crateful, plus all the other junk etc in one run, it makes
perfect energy sense!

It has been pointed out that one of my figures was wrong, by a factor
of four. I posted a reply to that a little while ago. The break-even
trip for one low-consumption bulb is now 25 litres of petrol to the
dump.

Put the wrong figure down to too much sherry over the years LOL.

And ignoring the fuel use pollution for a sec, wouldn't all the stuff
that would have probably ended up in landfill also equal 'pollution'
if we hadn't bother to filter and recycle it (or bother to dispose of
it properly)?

Quite!

What I often see is those folk with (typically) Merc 4X4's stacking
empty 42" Plasma TV cardboard packing boxes, XBox boxes, and at least
5 bags of rubbish (each week) up against the nearest lamppost (on a
Thursday night ready for a Monday collection) sigh ;-(

Maybe the one kid they drive 1 mile to school (past the recycling
centre) is illergic to flat packed cardboard (there must be room in
that great big vehicle surely ..?).

OTOH you see an old dear *walking* into the recycling centre with one
carrier bag full of neatly torn up cardboard and one empty sherry
bottle (bless) ;-)

What astute observations of our modern society. Cheers!

Kate