Here in the UK, people are apparently stockpiling 60-Watt incandescent lightbulbs because rules on importing these energ-wasting products will fall under new import regulations and we may have to start using the much more energy-efficient compact fluorescent tubes or, perish the thought, LED lighting. People are complaining about it all over the place and buying up large numbers of incandescent bulbs (19th century technology, by the way) to keep the dark at bay. It’s what realists call “First World Problem”. Whereas in the parts of the world where poverty, starvation and disease are much more of a concern they are finding ways to bring light to the dark corners, places that have no access to electricity, where the inhabitants spend much of their daily lives in gloom.
Check out the “Liter of Light” project – www.islanglitrongliwanag.org. These bottles are approximately the equivalent of the illumination one gets from a 60W bulb and are made from recycled and quite readily available materials. The project is hoping to light a million homes in the Phillipines by 2012. The light source, of course, only works during the day, but as you will see from the video, the homes of so many people are almost completely dark even at noon…