Times Square New Years Eve Ball Goes Green with LEDs

This year revellers at Times Square in New York will be greeted with the most energy efficient new years eve countdown ball ever. The star of the world-famous holiday extravaganza was revamped by Philips Lighting.

The new 6ft (1.8m) ball, weighing about 1,100lbs (500kg), is covered with 9,576 light-emitting diodes, Philips Lighting, which created the light-emitting diodes, or LED bulbs, specifically for the event, says they are smaller but more than twice as bright as last year's lights, which were a mix of more than 600 incandescent and halogen bulbs. And the new lights can create more than 16 million colors for a kaleidoscope of hues against the 672 Waterford Crystal triangles.

More than a million revelers were expected to crowd the streets for the annual New Year's Eve celebration tonight, the $1.1m (£550,000) New Year's Eve Ball will descend creating a kaleidoscope of colours and patterns on each of its 672 crystal triangular panels, emitting a brightness of more than 625,000 lumens.

Whilst I don't want to be a party pooper, again, I have already been nagged for targeting Christmas, I thought I would look at a positive to the NYE ball in Times Square, and that is highlighting LEDs, the news coverage will certainly ensure that this technology is firmly in the minds of individuals as the real alternative for lighting their homes and businesses and not just a big ball.

LEDs last about 100 times longer than incandescents, 10 times longer than CFLs, and use about 1-3w per light fixture depending on the brightness you require. The technology is becoming more mainstream, and prices are decreasing. I have seen bulbs for as low as $10/£5, so in terms of value compared to incandescents they are value for money.

Typical home energy bill savings by implementing LED lighting in your home is about 18% (from incandescents) and 5% (from CFLs). Offices adopting the technology could save 37% off their energy bills (from incandescents) and 10% (from CFLs.

Don't forget if you do replace your old bulbs, please recycle, especially if you are replacing CFLs which contain mercury.

What Could be Better than the iPhone?

Since I got my iPhone last month, which I cherish, it is the ultimate item for the gadget lover. But it failed to win Popular Science magazine top Innovation of the Year 2007. (check this link out for lots of pics and more background information). Ranked overall winner was a product by a company called Nanosolar.

Nanosolar, after five years of product development – including aggressively pipelined science, research and development, manufacturing process development, product testing, manufacturing engineering and tool development, and factory construction have just began shipping their first solar panels. You may ask why this is an exciting development, and why their product is sold out for 12 months.

Their product is defining by being:

• the world’s first printed thin-film solar cell in a commercial panel product;
• the world’s first thin-film solar cell with a low-cost back-contact capability;
• the world’s lowest-cost solar panel – which we believe will make us the first solar manufacturer capable of profitably selling solar panels at as little as $.99/Watt;
• the world’s highest-current thin-film solar panel – delivering five times the current of any other thin-film panel on the market today and thus simplifying system deployment;
• an intensely systems-optimized product with the lowest balance-of-system cost of any thin-film panel – due to innovations in design we have included.

A truely exciting development in the world of renewable energy technology, Nanosolar have been developing this technology for years and have attracted some high profile investors too, none other than the Google founders Larry Page and Sergay Brin in the early days. I just can't wait to get my hands on all the solar power I can afford and set up my own solar farm on my roof.

Recycle Unwanted Gifts with 10p Listings Day

After some research by eBay, unwanted presents worth £1.2bn were bought this Christmas. People spent an average of £20 on unwanted presents for other people.

49% of the 1960 18 to 34-year-olds questioned would consider selling their unwanted gifts online.

Only one in every 25 of those questioned would throw their unwanted gifts out. People spent an average of £31 per gift, the survey found, while the average spend on all gifts, food and decorations totalled £641.

As part of an annual tradition, eBay are holding their post-Christmas 10p Listings day on 29th December 2007, so get listing.

How Much Extra Waste this Christmas?

According to new research from Recycle Now, the national recycling campaign, households are set to produce nearly three quarters of a million tonnes (736,574) of extra waste this Christmas.

This means on average each family will throw out an additional five sacks of rubbish over the festive period. That's the equivalent of generating 1.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Each family in the UK creates at least 68kg of carbon dioxide from this extra waste which would provide enough energy to power home fairy-lights continuously for 18 years.

Recycle Now has also teamed up with the Woodland Trust Christmas Card Recycling Scheme to enable people to recycle their cards throughout January at participating Tesco (excludes Express), mainland WHSmith high street stores, TKMaxx and Marks & Spencer stores throughout January.

"All this festive consumption means extra waste, which if consigned to the bin will end up in landfill and potentially generate methane, a potent greenhouse gas. One way in which we can all make a difference this Christmas is by recycling and the good news is that nine out of ten homes now have a doorstep recycling service for a range of materials including paper, card, glass, metal cans. Recycling also has a positive impact on helping to tackle climate change, with current recycling in the UK saving greenhouse gases equivalent to taking 5 million cars off the road."
Dr Liz Goodwin, Chief Executive, WRAP

Thanks to the public's support last year, 93 million cards were collected. That's enough to enable the charity to plant 22,000 trees or a forest the size of 44 football pitches. This year the scheme hopes to raise funds to plant 24,000 trees by collecting 100 million cards.

Ed Byrne Christmas Recycling Video
Joanna Lumley Launches Christmas Card Recycling Appeal