An article about a Buffalo suburb where local residents are fighting the town to remove the solar street lamps brings up an important point. In order for environmentally "friendlier" products to succeed they must be able to compete with other products in their class.
When I first read the title of the article I thought, "Why would people be so against solar street lamps?" It sounds like a great idea, right? It should save energy, and lots of it. According to the article:
At the time the contract was approved, town officials said the contract was projected to save the town $1.2 million over the next 15 years.
Complaints regarding the lamps range from aesthetics to brightness (not bright enough) to outages.
Although some people in this world are willing to make large compromises in order to help out the environment, new eco-products and services will not be able to survive in the marketplace if they can not live up to the standards of consumers.
In this case in Buffalo, what will happen if the residents win and they replace the solar lamps with regular gaslights or electric lights? Will it create even more waste than if they hadn’t changed anything at all?
Buffalo News: ‘Residents want town to get rid of solar street lights’
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I am thinking about putting solar street lights on my street as a neighborhood project, but I would hate to run into the same problems! Any clues who the manufacturers of the products were?
January 7th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Diane, sorry I don’t, and the article is outdated now for me to re-check it. If you try to view the article from your public library, they might have a password to the newsbank to view the archives.
Good luck. A suggestion might be to ask the manufacturer you are looking at to provide you with some references of other neighborhoods and a contact person to see how their experiences have been.
January 10th, 2006 at 12:33 pm