1. Total # of bulbs;
2. Wattage of the individual individual incandescent bulbs to be replaced. (C9s are generally about 8-9 watts; C7s are generally about 6-7 watts; and mini lights are usually between .50 and 1 watt;
3. Amount of time bulbs will be illuminated; and
4. The average cost of a kilowatt hour of electricity in your area. ($.10 is typically a safe number.)

Step 1: Calculate total watts

Multiple the total number of bulbs by the wattage of 1 bulb. This equals the total watts of the display

Step 2: Enter data into conversion calculator

Enter the product of the formula in Step 1 into the “Watts” field in this calculator. Next, enter the total amount of time the lights will be illuminated in the “Time” section of the calculator. (Note that the time can be in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, or years.)

This calculator will calculate the total kilowatt hours consumed by this lighting display.

Step 3: Determine cost of electricity

Multiple the total kilowatt hours the display will consume (as determined by the calculator in Step 2) and multiple it by the average cost of a kilowatt hour of electricity in your area. The Department of Energy website has statistics on the average cost of electricity.

Step 4: Determine to cost to operate Christmas lights using LEDs

Repeat steps 1-3. The average LED holiday style light is between .05 and .07 watts.

Step 5: Calculate the savings

Subtract the cost of operating the LED lights from the cost of operating the incandescent lights. This is the total cost savings you can expect by switching to LEDs.

Right now, HolidayLEDs.com is seeking suggestions for qualified charities. The site will be accepting suggestions for the next 14 days. All suggested charities who meet the minimum requirements will be placed on a ballot. Upon closing of the suggestion period, HolidayLEDs.com will conduct an online vote to determine which charity will receive the donation. The date for the official vote will be announced at a later date and will also be posted on this blog.

Please visit the site and suggest a worthy charitable organization.

Apparently, there was enough concern about this and our practices had a significant enough impact to warrant special consideration.  In 2002, the National Lawns and Environment Initiation was founded.  The goal of this initiative is to encourage environmentally responsible lawn care and landscaping practices in residential design and maintenance.  The initiative is run by a committee of governmental and non-governmental organizations including the EPA, USDA, the National Gardening Association, and the University of Florida.

The initiative has develop several useful resources for home owners and landscape professionals.  Particularly useful is the list of 10 Guiding Principles for Responsible Lawn Care and Landscaping.   I think this guide is the best place to start if you want to learn about some things you can do to minimize the impact your lawn care practices have on the environment.   The first guideline on the list is probably the most important.  The #1 guideline is to spend the time to learn about your lawn.  If you want to improve your practices to minimize their environmental impact you have to first understand the environment.

Take a walk around your yard.  Look carefully at the types of plants and wildlife inhabit your outdoor living space.  Try to identify all of the plants and do some simple online research to learn as much as you can about them.  Do the same for the wildlife that inhabits your yard.  Learn about what types of habitats the various creatures that live in your yard like.  All of these things will create a good foundation of knowledge that will help you make decisions about yard care that are both effective and not harmful to your environment.   I think it also makes sense to take a walk through the woods or other unimproved habitat closest your house.  Look around and observe the types of plants and animals that live in this natural environment.  Carefully analysis the habitat.  This information will help you create a lawn and landscape plan the fits into the natural environment.

Once you spent the time to learn about your yard go back to the guidelines and use them to help you prepare a plan for caring for your yard.  If you use a lawn care service make sure to discuss your plan with the company you use.  In many places there are lawn care and landscaping companies that specialize in environmentally friendly lawn care.  Seattle, San Francisco, and many of the other larger cities on the west coast have a number of companies that specialize in green lawn care.

We sent a free set of LED Christmas lights to the first 100 participants and the remaining participants who submitted their lights to us before January 31, 2008 will receive a coupon.   For those of you who participated, thank you for helping us make the program a success and you can expect your coupon to arrive via email or regular mail within the next month.

We are going to expand the program next year and substantially increase the number of sets we give away.  We are also looking for people or organizations who may be interested in participating in next years program.  We will be looking for groups willing to set up collection sites as well as sponsors who may be interested in helping us develop a Christmas light exchange program.   Please contact us if you or anyone you know may be interested.

So far the company reports that it has recycled over 3,000 pounds of incandescent holiday lights which it received from several hundred participants. Anyone who is looking for some place to send their old Christmas lights to die can mail them to HolidayLEDs.com for recycling.

And because I know it will be asked, the lights are sent to a independent recycling company which chops the lights into little tiny pieces using a commercial shredder. The various components (copper, PVC, glass, etc.) are separated and then processed. The lead is extracted from the PVC and shipped to Chinese toy manufacturers who use it to make paint for toys for children. I’m kidding. But I did read a report about a “recycling” company that was actually shipping the old light strings to China where the insulation was manually removed and the copper was extracted for smelting…not sure that this is a net gain.

There is one example in particular I think warrants recognition. We occasionally purchase shipping supplies from Uline because they offer next day shipping. Every time we order from them they send us a 1 inch thick glossy print catalog with our order. And just in case we lost the catalogs they sent us with our orders they kindly send us another one in the mail. Over the course of 4 months we collected about 50 pounds worth of catalogs from them. We never ordered from the catalog–we always ordered online. (Its almost as bad–if not worse–than the AOL CDs that used to be everywhere.)

We are considering adding a print catalog to our business this year but we are only going to send the hard copy upon specific request and where the customer can not be convinced to accept an electronic version. I also got a lot of other good tips from Ecowriter’s post about green ad materials so we’ll try to minimize our impact there too.

We are going to do what we can to minimize the ad waste that we create but we are also going to look for suitable alternative vendors who make reasonable efforts to do the same.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this issue while evaluating our companies’ recycling program and environmental policy. For the most part our programs have worked well and we’ve had a lot of participation within our organization and from our customers. I think a big part of the effort is just getting people in the mindset of looking for ways to conserve resources and produce less waste. However, I think that once an individual or organization has obtained this awareness it is important to shift focus and attention to refining the underlying processes and programs. For example, we are looking at implementing central collection points for our recycling program so the lights do not have to be mailed to us.

I use this example only because it is one that is familiar to me and to illustrate the point that we need to be cautious in evaluating the net impact of our efforts. This is not to say that we should over analysis this matter and waste untold resources trying to determine which option is more green. In some respects I think there is a substantial and immeasurable benefit to fostering a mindset in consumers towards environmental awareness–even if the net benefit is questionable.

We all need to develop an awareness of the impact our lives have on our environment and the cost of gaining this awareness may mean that some of our efforts fall short of a net environmental gain. However, it is important that we do not loose site of the ultimate objective during the development of this new awareness.

What surprised me about this was not that a corn by-product was a natural herbicide and also acted as a fertilizer; I was surprised that our patent law system allowed a Iowa State University researcher to patent the use of corn gluten as a herbicide. I understand the basic policy behind patent law: to encourage people to expend their time and energy developing new products by rewarding them with exclusive rights to the fruits of their labors for a period of years. This makes sense to me and I think it is generally a good system in most cases, but sometimes it just seems to go to far.

Take corn gluten for example, this is a product that has probably been around for thousands of years. People have used it for a number of different uses, the primary use being feed for livestock. Sometime in 1985, a scientist at Iowa State University is claimed to have discovered that the product can also be used as a herbicide. Shortly thereafter he filed for, and obtained, a patent for the use of corn gluten as a herbicide.

So I’m a little bit torn about this. The lawyer in me says, “well, without the protection of the patent law system Dr. Corn Gluten and Iowa State wouldn’t have any incentive to discover new uses for products and it may have never happened.” The normal person in me thinks, “what the fu@%!, its corn meal mush! How can you patent that?!” I understand the policy from an intellectual standpoint but is seems that in some cases (like this one) it goes a bit too far.

The part about this that I think most concerns me is that I’m not sure if the patent system actually achieves its intended result. At least in this case (and the case of my relative) the fact that the patent exists will likely prevent him from producing and selling corn gluten. I am sure there are several other potential marketers of this product who will be deterred from bringing a environmentally friendly alternative to toxic herbicides to market because they do not have the capital to pay Iowa State licensing fees to sell it.

I guess I’m still not entirely certain about how I feel about this. I guess there is just some part of me that feels like ti is unfair to let someone of exclusive rights to any use of something as common as corn. From a legal prospective, I think the fundamental flaw in our patent law system is that it assumes that the patent holder will do a good job of bring the product to market or finding those who will. That doesn’t always happen and as a result we are deprived of use of a valuable product until the patent expires.

One lesser know alternative to compact fluorescent lights for people looking for energy efficient replacement for their incandescent lights are LEDs or light emitting diodes. LEDs are very efficient as they waste very little energy on heat. LEDs can also easily be recycled and contain no toxic components. LED lights will also outlive even a compact fluorescent lamp by thousands of hours. The downside is that LEDs are still a bit expensive and the technology has not developed entirely so that it is a suitable alternative to incandescent or fluorescent.

However, it has been effectively adapted and applied to lighting applications such as Christmas lights, rope light, and landscape lights. The technology for use of LEDs has been developed well for use in these applications and the cost of these products in an LED is still higher than incandescent but is not unreasonable given the cost savings.

LED alternatives are also available for other lighting types as well. LED replacement bulbs are currently available for MR-16 type lamps that are commonly used in track lighting. LED lamps for the common PAR style bulb are also now available online but have not made it into big box stores and do not quite pack the same punch as their incandescent ancestors.

Lots of cool things are happening in lighting and most of us don’t get exposed to all the options because they haven’t hit the big box stores yet. However, if you do a little research and look around a bit online you can find some great lighting solutions that are more efficient than CFLs and better for the environment too.

One common area we can all seek to improve our impact is lawn care and landscaping.  For many suburbanites the absolute goal of the summer is to have a lawn that is greener than the Jones’ at all costs.  So each spring we can find an army of suburbanites dumping pounds of harmful chemicals and nitrates on their lawns.  I’m sure that most of these well-meaning home owners have not considered the cost and impact their ultra-green lawn has on the environment at large–and it is probably not feasible to try and convince them.  The better solution is to teach them how to achieve maximum greeness and neighborhood domination without the use of harmful chemicals.

The recent revival of the environmental movement has spurred the growth of a cottage industry of green lawn care companies.   This movement, largely pioneered by Seattle landscape companies and other progressive landscape companies has been gaining traction.

“This is not something that is driven by the marketing efforts of landscape and lawn care companies,” said Andy Nicholls of Ecoyards, LLC based in Seattle, Washington, “this is driven by a very strong consumer demand for environmental responsibility in all services and goods.”

Environmentally sustainable lawn care can be as simple as recycling rainwater for irrigation; use of natural pesticides; and implementation of a compost program.