February 23, 2007

Yahoo Develops Web Site for CFL Campaign 18Seconds

Yahoo, Wal-Mart, Environmental Defense, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Energy, along with other private companies and government agencies, has launched a marketing campaign called 18Seconds to persuade people to switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs, AP reports.  

For the campaign, Yahoo has developed a Web site designed to track CFL purchases at national, state and local levels, ranking each city and state based on per capita sales. The site also shows the equivalent dollar, energy and greenhouse gas emissions savings of CFLs bought across the country. It also represents the sales of many retailers across the country, with more anticipated to participate in the coming months to improve the accuracy of the data. A downloadable badge allows people to syndicate the content onto Web sites.

AC Nielsen is collecting the purchase information for most grocery store, drug and mass merchandise retailers and is feeding it to the site, WebProNews reports.

The coalition plans to create a series of “hip and cool” public service announcements featuring Hollywood actors, sports stars and other celebrities to play on Internet video sites and at movie theaters.

This is just the latest in a long line of CFL news. Recently, California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine introduced legislation to make his state the first to ban incandescent lightbulbs. Earlier this week, Australia announced it would phase out incandescents and Greenpeace asked India to follow Australia’s lead. Wal-Mart has set a goal of selling 100 million CFLs by 2008.

In addition, people are pointing to the fact that CFLs contain mercury, a neurotoxin, and that manufacturers, retailers, and the government haven’t come up with effective ways to get Americans to recycle them.

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