LED lightbulbs are touted as a major way we can all make a meaningful difference against climate change as they consume less power and require less frequent changes compared to the ancient incandescent design. At point of use there’s undoubtedly energy savings but when considered as a whole – from manufacturing to disposal – LED bulbs are far worse for the environment. (TL;DR at bottom.)
1. Materials.
LED lightbulbs are riddled with single-use plastics and electronic components which increase our reliance on petrochemicals and contribute to our worldwide epidemic of unrecoverable eWaste. While there are some recycling processors who will take LED bulbs, the vast majority of recycling systems available to the public will not because they lack the equipment or financial incentive to process them. As a result, most, if not virtually all, consumer LED bulbs end up polluting landfills around the world when they reach end of life.
Conversely, incandescent bulbs are naught more than glass and metal. While they’re also not taken at recycling plants, it would be significantly easier to set up a process to recover and recycle the components of incandescent bulbs than it would be to dismantle and recycle the components of most consumer LED bulbs.
As an aside, I find it somewhat ironic that the same people who rant about the environmental impact of single use plastic bottles and plastic bags have fully embraced LED bulbs despite the fact that the plastics of LED bulbs are worse than single use bottles and bags. At least bottles and bags can be easily recycled.
2. Manufacturing.
Due to the more complex design and the aforementioned difference in component materials versus an old incandescent bulb, the energy cost to manufacture each LED bulb is vastly higher than the cost of incandescent manufacturing. Plastic molding, control board manufacturing, diode manufacturing, and final assembly all consume much more energy than creating a simple incandescent bulb. The increased amount of carbon expended to create LED bulbs arguably directly offsets the amount of carbon saved by households that switch to LED bulbs as their primary source of lighting.
3. Longevity vs. Marketing Hype.
Proponents of LED bulbs claim that the longevity of LED bulbs – frequently advertised as 10 years or longer – offset the points regarding materials and manufacturing. However, the longevity claims are mostly marketing hype and LED bulbs rarely, if ever, last as long as claimed. A cursory glance at shopping sites that deal in LED bulbs will net you a truckload of complaints regarding the bulbs dying or not living up to their expected lifespan.
I jumped on board the LED lightbulb bandwagon early (think $20+ a bulb level of early) and have had everything from high end Cree and Philips bulbs to cheaper GE and Walmart brand “Great Value” bulbs. The high end bulbs lasted longest, averaging 3 to 4 years before failure, but still well under the advertised 10-year-plus lifespan. The cheaper bulbs rarely last longer than one year. Case-in-point: When I moved into my new place in October of 2020, the landlord installed all brand new GE 60-watt equivalent LED bulbs in every fixture. At time of typing, fifteen months later, I’ve had to replace half of them. That’s roughly the same frequency with which I had to replace the old “long life” 60-watt incandescent bulbs in fixtures that were used regularly.
Replacing these bulbs after only 1-3 years directly negates the long term energy savings the supposed longer life of these bulbs were supposed to provide.
TL;DR:
LED bulbs give a false sense of environmentalism because they save a few cents per kilowatt hour for the end user but are exponentially more damaging to the environment as they require more energy to manufacture, rely on petrochemicals, contribute to eWaste, cannot be recycled, and rarely last as long as marketed. Cheaper LED bulbs fail almost as frequently as old ‘long life’ incandescent bulbs and all LED bulbs end up polluting landfills where they'll never decompose.
A parting thought:
Lighting is a minuscule amount of a household’s total energy bill and is practically insignificant compared to the energy cost of climate control (heating, air conditioning, water heating), for which we still rely on 20 to 40 year old technology. A house with a 10 or 20 year old forced air electric heating system will use more energy in a week than a whole house of incandescent lightbulbs would use in a year. Rather than banning lightbulb choices, a more meaningful act to combat climate change would be to promote development and widespread adoption of better, more efficient, climate control systems.
