divine green: Sustainable Home, Beauty, & Lifestyle

Metropolitan cities are setting the example this year on decorating with eco-Christmas lights. San Francisco this weekend, followed by Paris on Monday, lit massive holiday trees with mini light-emitting diode bulbs, which burn brighter than typical bulbs and emit no heat. The LEDs consume about 90 percent less electricity than typical lights and can last as many as 20 holiday seasons.

Paris’s tree on the Champs-Elysees was donned with close to 1 million new LED bulbs, according to a story from the Associated Press. A joint project by General Electric and French gas company Gaz de France, the energy efficient lights are expected to cut the city’s electricity bill by 70 percent for the holiday tree over previous years.

In contrast, San Francisco’s Union Square tree was decorated with about 20,000 mini LEDs. At the city’s annual lighting ceremony this weekend, PG&E gave away 3,500 sets of LED holiday lights to promote the technology.

With luck, the hundreds of thousands of tourists that visit the Champs-Elysees and the tree in San Francisco’s Union Square will take a cue. A set of 100 LED Christmas lights costs about $25 at the local hardware store or shop online at Holidayleds.com.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 3:11 am and is filed under design, environment, home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.