I don’t know about where you live but I can say that where I live in the City of Darebin it’s dark.  And I mean real dark, man.

The reason for this is that the street lighting is worse than bad.  The lighting would have been bad at the time it was installed – 80W mercury vapour lamps attached to the overhead power lines – a ghostly white light with bad colour rendering.  But I’m tipping these lights have been installed for 20 years without being relamped.  A charachteristic of the mercury vapour lamp is that they don’t die they just fade dimmer and dimmer with time.  In my street I reckon the lights emit about 5% of the original light output while the power consumed stays the same which makes them incredibly inefficient.  Add the environmental imact of disposing of these lamps (they contain high levels of mercury) when they eventually are replaced and you can see that it’s not a great situation.

But perhaps things are going to change.  I came across this website this week which is trying to do something about it.

www.greenlightourstreets.org.au

They say…

You’ve made the switch to energy-efficient globes at home, now help us make the switch in your street by signing our online petition. It only takes a minute.

Replacing old street lights with new energy efficient technology would save significant greenhouse gas emissions – equivalent to more than 340,000 cars off the road for a year.

I have done the sums.  I think that we can replace all of the existing mercury vapour fittings and replace them with compact fluorescent alternatives.  We would get really good colour rendering and much improved lit environments making us feel safer all for a fraction of the cost and carbon footprint of the existing arrangement.

Please join me in signing up to support this fantastic initiative.