Clean Lighting Act signed into law

On Friday, Governor J.B. Pritzker signed the Clean Lighting Act into law. This law marks a win for the environment, public health, and consumers’ wallets.

The Clean Lighting Act will phase out fluorescent light bulbs in favor of the more efficient LED bulbs. This move will save Illinois consumers more than $1.5 billion on utility bills, avoid 2.2M metric tons of C02 emissions by cutting energy waste, and reduce mercury pollution by 419 lbs by 2050, according to analysis by the Appliance Standards Awareness Project.

In comparison to fluorescent bulbs, whose LED replacements of all shapes and sizes are readily available, LED bulbs cut energy consumption in half. This switch will result in less wasted energy and more consumer savings.

Shifting to LED bulbs is not only beneficial from an economic standpoint – our health will benefit too. Fluorescent bulbs contain mercury, a potent neurotoxin with no safe level of exposure, by design and release mercury when broken. Given that three in four fluorescent bulbs are improperly disposed of, this chemical will inevitably contaminate our waterways  putting all of us at risk of mercury exposure. LED bulbs, free from any mercury, avoid this danger entirely.

We would like to thank the law’s sponsors, Rep. Nick Smith and Sen. Adriane Johnson, for their hard work on getting this law passed, as well as the dozens of organizations and thousands of Illinois PIRG members whose support and action made this victory possible.