Ecological advantages

Less heating

By replacing your traditional incandescent bulbs with LEDs you can save up to 90% on the cost of lighting your home and help the environment by reducing your carbon footprint. This is because LEDs are more efficient. About 90% of the energy consumed by an incandescent light bulb is radiated as heat, rather than visible light. In contrast, less than 10% of the energy consumed by an LED is emitted as heat.

The semiconductor inside an LED degrades at a much slower rate than a filament, typically lasting for up to 50,000 hours. Compare this to a halogen which only lasts 1,000 hours and a compact fluorescent lamp, which lasts 10,000 hours. LEDs don't fail abruptly like other light bulbs either. Instead, they fade away slowly over time, and will even continue working at a very low light output.

After a halogen bulb has been on for a while it becomes too hot to touch. This isn't the case with LEDs. As explained before, LEDs are more efficient at converting energy into light and therefore emit less heat. So, even after prolonged use, any LED Bulb can still be handled safely. They are less of a fire hazard and won't leave unsightly scorch marks on your luminaires either.

Life cycle

Light Emitting Diodes are among the most energy-efficient light sources available on the market. LED lamps are already today more than five times more efficient than incandescent lamps and future technical achievements offer additional potential for the coming years.

At present, artificial lighting accounts for around 19% of global electricity consumption – that corresponds to 2.4% of worldwide primary energy consumption. 70% of the energy used for artificial lighting is consumed by lamps for which there are more energy-efficient alternatives. Simply replacing conventional light sources with LEDs would theoretically halve global electricity consumption for lighting. The potential savings are therefore enormous.

LED lamps need less than 2% of their energy consumption for their manufacture – over 98% are used for their task: illuminating the world.

No mercury

No mercury is used in the manufacturing of LEDs.

The use of LEDs almost completely eliminates pollution from lighting products, and the danger of related mercury absorption into the environment. Even more, there are no carbon dioxide emanations either. This technology allows lighting a house with less than one tenth of the usual wattage (and save big money and energy), doing away with the danger of mercury pollution in the environment, and reducing drastically the level of CO2 shot into the atmosphere, all without compromising on the quality of light. That is indeed a technology worth keeping around for the next 13 centuries.

Recyclage

LEDs are great news for green enthusiasts.

To examine the CFL-LED comparison, start with the production of each bulb. Both bulbs take very little to manufacture. The light bulb’s purpose takes up 98% of its life, leaving only 2% of the light bulb’s life in manufacturing. Studies performed found that CFLs require a little more in the manufacturing process, but not enough to conclude that LEDs have a more efficient manufacturing process.

One aspect that gives LEDs a one-up is that they do not contain mercury like CFLs do. This affects the disposal process. CFLs need to be recycled with care in order to remove the mercury. LEDs are considered less hazardous when it comes to disposal and LEDs are constantly improving their manufacturing and production processes.

No UV or IR radiation

• Ultraviolet radiation (UV)  
  LED based light sources do not emit any UV radiation (unless specifically designed for that particular
  purpose). Therefore, they are not harmful to people with a specific sensitivity for certain UV radiation and
  can bring relief to certain groups of patients. In this respect, LED based light sources provide advantages
  over traditional incandescent, halogen and Compact Fluorescent lamps. 
• Infrared radiation (IR)
  In contrast to most other light sources, e.g. halogen and incandescent lamps, LEDs hardly emit IR light
  (unless specifically designed to emit a certain type of IR). For available types of indoor light sources the IR
  radiation is not powerful enough to pose any risks to human.