Lifecycle Of Incandescent Light Bulbs

The greenhouse gas that is emitted during the transportation of the materials depends on where the light bulb facilities are. Philips Lighting(light bulb company) have manufacturing facilities in few places. Since Philips Lighting light bulbs are manufactured mostly in Mexico, the raw materials are mostly flown, shipped or trucked to their destination. All of these vehicles creates tons of greenhouse gases(not exact information). For example, if the copper has been extracted from the open pit mines in Peru and it needs to be transported to the Philip lighting facility in Baja California, greenhouse gas emissions would be 0.71 tonnes.

Processing of light bulbs requires many natural resources to be extracted, for machinery and other components production, contributing to the demand of natural resources. The main natural resources used in the processing of light bulbs are non-renewable resources and they are mined, having a negative environmental impact. Environmental impacts of mining copper/trona/tungsten or any metal occur at all levels. Impacts can result in erosion or the contamination of soil, groundwater, and surface water by the chemicals emitted from mining processes. These processes also have an impact on the quality of human health and biodiversity. Turning Bauxite( aluminum ore) into Aluminum requires a lot of energy and has a variety of environmental impacts. Both open and underground mines affect the plant and animal life immediately surrounding an area. Light bulb demands influence the business of mining creating these negative environmental impacts. Quartz or opal are also used, but rarely, in light bulbs. Mining quartz and opal have a negative environmental impact but mined for the light bulb processing. Quartz is extracted from open-pit mines. Miners only use explosives on rare occasions when they need to expose quartz.  mining operations use bulldozers to remove soil and clay and expose the quartz. This method destroys the land and can disrupt ecosystems. The negative effects of opal mining on the environment include erosion and compaction of the soils. Soil compaction occurs when the heavy machinery that is used to drill holes for finding opals.

Where the final product is transported to be sold depends on the company and where the manufacturing factories remain and where the testing facilities remain. Philips Lighting(light bulb company) has manufacturing facilities in Monterrey, Nuevo León Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and Tijuana and Baja California, Philips Lighting also has its testing facility in Mexico. This company sells it’s light bulbs all over the globe because their manufacturing facilities are at many locations in Mexico. These light bulbs are shipped straight after they are examined at testing facilities, to various regional distribution centers, where they are shipped to stores and other shops. There are many types of transportation that may be used through the time frame of shipping the final product and it arriving at the location where it is sold, usually, more than two transports are used to get the final product to where it is finally distributed to the public. 

Most Philip Lighting lightbulbs are produced in Mexico, in locations such as Monterrey, Nuevo León Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and Tijuana, Baja California and then sent to the Philips Lighting testing facility in Torreon, Sonora, Mexico. All of these locations are in Mexico. After the Philip lighting light bulb has been tested at the testing facility in Torreon, Sonora, Mexico, it is directly shipped by plane to Toronto, Canada.

When it comes to old light bulbs, recycling is a must. Once they break, the mercury inside the bulb will be released into the atmosphere and storm water runoff, which totals 4 tons annually. Still, more mercury is released through the fossil fuels burned to provide electricity to light inefficient incandescent bulbs. The world’s waste production is increasing all the time, and most of it still goes to landfills. That means we’re running low on space and any space that can be saved in landfills is definitely a good thing. Landfills can pollute the soil in the area around them as well as leach chemicals into the groundwater, which can result in the death of aquatic life. While many landfills these days are securely and responsibly maintained, they can still have adverse effects on our health and the environment, and reducing the waste you contribute to them is a positive goal. Another important benefit of recycling is that the raw materials can be recovered and reused letting us recover some of the energy that was used to make them. Aluminum, for example, requires 96% less energy to make from recycled cans than it does to process from raw materials. Recycling just one glass bottle can save enough energy to light a 100 watt light bulb for 4 hours. And recycling your light bulbs gives their parts a new life, rather than adding to a landfill that will be around for up to 1,000 years. When you bring your light bulbs to be recycled through our light recycling program, they’re transported to an authorized processor for recycling. Wearing special respirators and other personal protective equipment, workers sort light bulbs by type(Incandescent, LED, fluorescent Lamps, CFL, etc) and stage them for manual and/or mechanical processing.