May 31, 2021
To celebrate the international day of sustainability, Signify and Vattenfall donated 47.000 Philips LED lights to around 200 secondhand stores across the Netherlands.
Mark van Zon, Consumer Director at Signify Benelux explains that “only 23% of the lamps people have in their homes are LED lighting. Most of the lamps in the house are still halogen, energy saving, or even incandescent lamps.”
However, LED bulbs have a much lower impact on the environment, as they use up to 90% less electricity than a regular lamp. In the long term, it pays to replace old lamps with LED, even if they still work. The energy it takes to make a new LED lamp is recovered within 300 burning hours, and on average, 92% of the materials of the old lamps are recovered through recycling.
As van Zon says, “Switching to LED can mean an average of 90 kg less CO2 emissions per year per household, and about 10 euros savings on energy costs per lamp! The more people we reach with that message, the better. That’s why we’re very enthusiastic about this collaboration with Vattenfall. We hope that today, many will make use of the opportunity to buy a used fixture from one of the thrift shops of the Dutch Trade Association Kringloopbedrijven Nederland (BKN), equipped with a free energy-efficient Philips LED lamp.”