MAR 01

I just don't know quite how to feel about this! After a few years of seemingly logical replacement of hotel and office lighting with compact fluorescent light bulbs, a problem has arisen. It seems that demand for the bulbs, while slacking in store sales, goes way up when the bulbs are just a few twists away.

Office and hotel mangers have begun to complain about CFL theft in a big way. While the bulbs save a ton of money over their lifetime in energy costs, they don't save money when they disappear after a few months and need to be replaced.

The alternative, it seems, is to either stop using CFLs or use theft-proof fixtures that need a special key to be replaced. We assume the key is only held by the maintenence staff. It's good that we've got these solutions now, since LED bulbs, just around the corner, promise to be even more expensive, while saving more energy in the long run.

The good news is, the more CFLs offices and hotels buy, the more CFLs there are in the world. However, it seems odd that hotel-goers and office workers, not known for their levels of extreme poverty, are the ones stealing the bulbs. It seems to me that they could afford to save money the old-fashioned way...by making a modest investment in slightly-more-expensive bulbs at WalMart.

Via MT.GOV

Comments (9)

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written by bob, March 01, 2008

boy, that's an interesting story. A couple of years ago, someone swiped the CFL out of the front porch light at the rental condo I own. I never really thought that much about it at the time - some people are always looking to get something for nothing. Where I work they once caught an employee stealing rolls of toilet paper!

One other thing about the "common objections" to CFLs in that article you linked to - the biggest issue that I have with CFLs is the warmup time. That really bothers me - even the ones that advertise instant-on take some time to come to full brightness. That's the main reason I haven't gone full blown CFLs in my house.

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written by rob, March 01, 2008

It is amazing what people will steal. At work when we swapped from toilet rolls, to sheet dispensers, in lockable boxes, consumption dropped by two thirds.
Swapping from soap bars to liquid soap saved at least 50%.
And painting yellow stripes on all the Stanley knives, stopped them going "walkabout".
If it's not nailed down some people with nick it.

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written by Rob, March 02, 2008

There is another option, and that's light sockets of a different form factor (no extra embodied energy there). They do already exist. In the UK, there are sockets that will only fit specially designed CFLs. They're used,

a) to prevent theft, and
b) to ensure that certain buildings meet their legal requirement to have a certain number of CFLs

For example, planning legislation required the house my in-laws' just built to have 50% CFLs I think, so they were required to make sure that 50% of their sockets would only fit CFLs (they've gone 100% CFL anyway, of course).

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Totally Legit
written by Preston, March 02, 2008

I interviewed a hotel manager two years ago and they were having the theft problem back then. So hotels end up putting CFLs in high-traffic, hard-to-steal areas.

I asked about charging guests for stolen CFLs and they basically said it's impossible to put that on a guest because you need prove that the CFL was there before the guest entered the room and gone when they left (and you show that there wasn't some other reason/cause for the missing CFL). Pinning a missing bulb on the guest is just not something they're able to do.

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written by Magnulus, March 02, 2008

But they EXPECT you to steal stuff at the hotel!! That's the point of going to a hotel, so you can see how much you can steal, isn't it? ^_^

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Different fixtures
written by Lou Grinzo, March 02, 2008

I've already seen oddball CFL's in some hotels. The bulbs appeared to have some sort of plug-in base, not a screw-in. That would definitely cut down on theft, as even the cheapest person wouldn't steal something they couldn't use or sell.

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Heard of "EnergyStar"?
written by Janne K. Flisrand, March 02, 2008

An obvious solution is to use Energy Star certified light fixtures. For a light fixture to be certified, it has to be a "pin" florescent. That doesn't mean it's long like a shop light, they tend to look just like a screw-in CFL. But - it does mean that they can be used only in very specific fixtures. Also, Energy Star ensures the fixtures are high quality.

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Except
written by Nicholas, March 02, 2008

Lots to ponder here, especially in advance of real LEDs coming into the fore. The catch with the proposed solution, however, is the cost of making any broad changes to support a change in bulb type. The savings from CFLs would be more than offset by the costs of, say, putting new lamps in every hotel room. Catch-22.
Updating common areas with updated fixtures might work and then just bill the guest when light bulbs disappear. Worked for towels and bathrobes, right? Only problem there is that it may not be guests, it might be underpaid hotel workers with the sticky fingers.

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Misplaced?
written by Brian, March 14, 2008

Approximately half of retail theft is an inside job, why couldn't this be the same case? Pinning it 100% on travelers can't be true. I'm sure most of the staff of any given hotel can get into any room alone.

Plus, why couldn't hotels use different sized sockets for their CFLs - they already do with coat hangers? Yes, I see others have thought of similar ideas and posted to that effect here. I'd also like to point out hotels really can't charge customers for missing items not only because it's hard to prove (see Preston's comment), but because it's usually their gold card members who are doing it, and they aren't going to risk their ire over something relatively inexpensive.

Third, I'd like to point out when we transition to LEDs this problem will go away because LEDs should last about as long as the appliance they come with (20-50 years), so they wouldn't be used in a bulb form factor, they'd be soldered on. Now, if someone is stealing the entire desk lamp, at least you can make it bulky enough to be difficult to carry.

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