My Fantastic Light Bulb Adventure

(For my DES116 assignment, I had to document buying a CFL bulb...)
I walked to Ace at Davis on Wednesday afternoon, planning to buy a compact florescent light bulb for the storage closet in my apartment. It’s been almost half a year since that light went out, so I thought it’d be a great idea to hit two birds with one stone (assignment and finally getting to see what's in that closet).

First lesson learned. Light bulbs are in Hardware, not Houseware...

Walking into the store, I realized a couple of posters urging people to make environmental friendly choices. Even though they were not necessarily the coolest illustrations, I give Ace props for doing the world a favor.

His nose is huge. I would be intimidated if I saw him in real life.

All the incandescent light bulbs were deeper in the aisle. Their packaging always bothered me; wrapping the fragile glass bulbs in simple cardboard never made sense to me. The CFLs seem to have made the packaging a little safer; I saw actual boxes and plastics. Perhaps this was because they cost more problems when they break.

Haha, losers.

After buying the bulb, I told a staff member I was documenting my experience for a design project. She was very enthusiastic and told me her theory on why CFLs are not as popular as they can be. She thought the main problem was the disposal process, and how regular people did not know where and how to dispose them. She said that a while back, Ace used to collect CFLs and recycle them for the customers. But more recently, the government had cut back funding on the matter. Therefore, Ace was not able to carry out the service anymore. She then handed me an informational flyer on how and where to dispose the dead CFLs. These flyers are great, but this is the first time in my life I’ve ever seen the disposal information on paper. Turns out, there was a Yolo County Planning and Public Works Department I was not aware of. They collect household hazardous waste such as acids, batteries, paints, and CFLs every month. This is a great service, but I believe there should be more places and more days we can drop off wastes. This is incredibly inconvenient. Why do we not have trash bins in every household (or at least every neighborhood) for hazardous wastes just like recycling bins?

Also, there is a problem on the packaging of the CFLs. The most eye catching information is on money saving. CFLs are no longer noticeably more expensive than incandescent light bulbs. I don’t think saving money is the main issue, at least not around here. I could not find information on method of disposal within 10 seconds. In the end, I noticed a couple line of words behind the box, reading:

Design fail. This is like food expiration dates, I can't find them!

Honestly, if it was not for the assignment, I will not know where to dispose my CFL. And I don’t think I would go on the website to find out more if I was busy; it was one step too many. When I got home, I asked my housemate whether or not he knew how to dispose CFLs. He said no, and he usually throws it away in the trash. There is a big problem when college students do not know how and where to dispose CFLs.

Problems:
1. Not enough people know the why’s, when’s, how’s, and where’s of CFL disposal.
2. Information is not as accessible as it should be.
3. Lack of services and places for hazardous waste management.
4. Wrong visual hierarchy for packaging; method of waste disposal should be a lot clearer.
5. Much more…


Well, that's all. In the end, I changed the bulb in the storage closet. So small mission complete, big mission is far from being complete.

This is my metaphor for the future.
Bright it up and save us all by buying CFL and disposing them correctly!

Make Captain Planet proud, save the Earth.
-Kevin Han-Chia Chen