San Francisco: A coalition of private companies and government agencies is launching a grassroots marketing campaign to persuade more Americans to help combat global warming by using energy-efficient light bulbs.
The ‘18Secondsmovement’ is aimed at getting Americans to replace electricity-wasting incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs that are up to five times more efficient and last several times longer.
The campaign—named for the average time it takes to change a light bulb—is scheduled to launch on Thursday at the Tech Museum of Innovation in downtown San Jose, California.
The coalition includes Yahoo Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Environmental Defense, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Department, U.S. mayors, retailers, religious organizations and conservation groups.
The campaign's goal is to increase awareness of energy-efficient light bulbs as a way to slow global climate change, organisers say. If every American swapped just one bulb, advocates say, the country could save $8 billion in energy costs and eliminate 2 million cars worth of greenhouse gas emissions.
''It's a huge savings for the country and consumers, and it gets people thinking about what can they do,'' said Lawrence Bender, producer of An Inconvenient Truth, former US vice-president Al Gore's documentary on global warming.
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, Bender said.
Yahoo has created a website—www.18seconds.org—that will track bulb sales and energy savings nationwide and encourage bulb-switching competition among cities and states.
''We're using technology to illustrate that small lifestyle changes can indeed add up to having tremendous collective impact on the planet,'' Yahoo co-founder David Filo said.
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