Jewish Energy Guide: Green Your Home

Summary: David Krantz, president and chairperson of the Green Zionist Alliance, shows how easy it is to go green at home. He offers up some interesting tips to help you get started!

Compact fluorescent light bulbs use about a quarter of the energy of their traditional incandescent lighting brethren. Compact fluorescents last for years, and although they contain mercury, it’s still less than the amount of mercury released into the atmosphere by producing the extra amount of energy needed to power conventional bulbs. But the best option may be LED bulbs. They don’t use mercury and they only use about a quarter of the energy of compact fluorescents — or about 1/16th of the energy of conventional bulbs.

LEDs also last much longer: One incandescent can last about 1,000 hours, or a few months at normal usage. One fluorescent can last about 8,000 hours, or a few years at normal usage. But one LED can last about 50,000 hours, or about 25 to 30 years at normal usage.


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David Krantz is the president and chairperson of the Green Zionist Alliance, as well as a leadership fellow at the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life. A founding member of Jewcology.com, Krantz is also a journalist whose work has been published around the world by media outlets including The Associated Press, espn.com and the Jerusalem Post. He serves on the cabinet of the board of directors of the American Zionist Movement, and he earned his master’s degrees at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism and at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, where he studied environmental policy.

The Jewish Energy Guide presents a comprehensive Jewish approach to the challenges of energy security and climate change and offers a blueprint for the Jewish community to achieve a 14% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by September of 2014, which is the next Shmittah, or sabbatical, year in the Jewish calendar.

The Jewish Energy Guide is part of COEJL’s Jewish Energy Network, a collaborative effort with Jewcology’s Year of Action to engage Jews in energy action and advocacy. The Guide was created in partnership with the Green Zionist Alliance.

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