It’s now been about a week since the incredible Opportunity Green Conference held on UCLA’s campus. For me, this conference infused fresh and exciting life into the ever-growing green movement. Kudos to Mike Flynn and Karen Solomon for standing for something in this crazy world, for taking action, and thereby inspiring others to take action.  They took a single idea – a thought that could have remained just a thought – and created one powerhouse conference that exceeds expectations.

The speaker and panel line-up was remarkable and had a broad reach. One speaker was the internationally renowned photographic artist Chris Jordan. Jordan’s work focuses on translating vast numeric figures (ex: 320,000 light bulbs equaling the number of kilowatt hours of electricity wasted in the US per minute from inefficient household electricity use) into the more digestible visual language of photography. Each photo makes a statement about consumerism, planned obsolescence, and the havoc we wreak on our environment.

Since seeing Chris Jordan speak at the conference, I have been compelled to share his work with everyone I come in contact with. As one of the first speakers at Opportunity Green, he shed light on the devastating situation off of the coast of Midway Island (halfway between the US and Asia). Prior to seeing Jordan speak, I was only remotely aware of the pacific garbage patch problem. I had zero awareness that most baby albatross birds do not get to take their first flight because they die from ingesting plastics and other trash from the pacific garbage patch. Jordan created a (must-see) montage filled with stark images of dead albatross birds – their bodies decomposing, while the plastics remain. I know that it sounds frightening or sickening, but it really is something that everyone should see.

It’s so easy to remove ourselves from these albatross birds because this is happening so far away. But, when you think about it, we are all one – we are all individual parts that make up the web of life – when one living organism falls out of balance, we all do. You see, these toxic plastics are also eaten by jellyfish and jellyfish are eaten by larger fish, which are in turn eaten by humans. Yes, that’s right, these chemicals and toxins are being unknowingly transferred to the human body.

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Hi Blog readers!

In writing blog posts for PureLight LED, my hopes are to educate the reader about LED bulbs, the various misconceptions that people have about them, lighting, and share other green news/thoughts. In order to best serve you, I’d love to know what you already know about LED bulbs. What do you want to learn about?

I will be writing a post soon that breaks down the basics of the technology itself – and, of course there are other things in the works!

Email us at info{@}purelightled{dot}com or you can comment below!

We look forward to lighting up your life!

-The PureLight LED Team

Wal-Mart’s tag-line and purpose is: “Save Money. Live Better.” Their commercials paint a picture of happy employees and little bouncy, bright smiley faces alongside thrilled customers. However, the public has been made painstakingly aware of their poor business practices over the recent years. They employ cheap sweatshop labor, have weak environmental standards – and for those of you who have seen: “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” know that they treat their employees and community members in a manner that has been anything but kosher.

This past July, Wal-Mart announced that they were creating a sustainability index that surveys their 100,000+ suppliers world-wide, which rates each product’s sustainability on 4 different levels. They aim to reduce packaging by 5% by the year 2013. Their sustainability index is a follow-up to their package scorecard released in 2006, which was created to assist buyers in making an informed purchase with regard to product packaging.

At first glance, this seems so oxymoronic! Here’s a company whose entire business model is dominated by negligence and a lack of concern for consequences – a company who sells HUGE amounts of low-cost items shipped from ALL over the world in GIANT energy-sucking stores, trying to convince us of their green agenda.

Well, let’s take a deeper look at this. With $400 Billion in sales (for the 2009 fiscal year), greening their supply chain could make an enormous difference for the planet.

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A woman in a clothing shop in the German city of Hanover arranges lights. The European Union ban on some bulbs is a conservation effort aimed at slowing global warming. (Jochen Luebke / European Pressphoto Agency / August 27, 2009, LATimes.com)

I recently read an article in the LA Times about a German man and his wife who frantically bought enough light bulbs to last them a lifetime. This seems to be a growing trend as of late. A worldwide effort has been in put in place to phase-out incandescent bulbs by the year 2012 and ever since this legislation has been implemented, panic buying and bulk purchasing has been evident.

At 50 years old, Mr. Ziegler created a floor plan of his apartment in Frankfurt, Germany and calculated that he would live 30 more years in order to finally figure that he needed 3,000 bulbs to last the rest of his lifetime. To think – he was willing to guesstimate how many years he had left to live – a rather bizarre and depressing thought process – just so he wouldn’t have to live without his treasured incandescent bulbs.

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This past Sunday, PureLight LED participated in Temple Beth Hillel’s Think Green Day! We wanted to engage in a community event that shares the same values as our company and gives us an opportunity to share how LED lights can help our environment. Sunday’s event was geared toward teaching students about respecting their environment and taking action toward ‘Tikkun Olam‘ (the idea that we can make the world a better place through action). With these values behind Think Green Day, we couldn’t wait to participate.

We had an electrician build a platform to show students the visible difference between our LED bulbs and other conventional bulbs. The kids loved stopping by our booth and learning about how LED bulbs can positively change the world around us.

(pictured above: Marlo teaching people about the LED switchboard with a variety of LED bulbs)

One of the best things about LED bulbs is that they don’t contain any mercury or lead and they are completely non-toxic. None of the kids knew that all of the fluorescent light bulbs that other green events were giving away for them to use in their homes needed to be recycled at a toxic waste center because they contain mercury. If a fluorescent bulb is dumped in our landfill, mercury leaches into the ground and therefore into our clean water supply. There is no worrying about special trips to the toxic waste center with LED bulbs and there is no worrying about toxic material being released into the air if a bulb accidentally breaks. The students also learned how LED bulbs help save energy because they emit zero heat and require significantly less air conditioning to cool off a space.

There were many other vendors in attendance including Tree People - all there to teach the students of Temple Beth Hillel about going green and helping our environment. It was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon!