Talking About Green

According to The Nielsen Company, which tracks television viewing, the average consumer household watches approximately five hours of television each day.  Whether its straight viewing as a program airs, or time-shifted viewing (stuff you’ve got on the DVR), your tube is still on several hours a day, sucking up electricity and raising your utility bill.  And with many homes containing more than one TV, that number could be even higher.  Either way, you’re also contributing to the pollution of our planet with every hour that your TV is on, whether you’re intently watching a missive from the President or you’ve just got American Idol on for some background noise while you cook dinner.  Whatever prompts you to run the boob tube, you should know that you could be doing it in a greener way, and it mainly revolves around the screen you choose.

Your first option is to go old school with a boxy TV set that houses picture tubes.  Does anyone even use these anymore?  The answer is overwhelmingly “No!”  While you can still find some of these older sets around, there are a couple of reasons that they are rarely in use.  For one thing they’re huge, heavy, and expensive to operate.  For another thing, you have to have a converter box to use them since the 2009 transition to digital broadcast took effect.  So, there are a lot of reasons to ditch the old set and go for something leaner and greener.

This brings us to the modern flat-screen TV, and there are several options for a television sans tubes.  You can either go for a plasma, an LCD, or an LED TV, and although they are all a step above their ancient brethren of the tube variety, some are better than others.  Let’s start with plasmas and LCDs.  These have been on the market for a while, so the purchase prices are fairly reasonable (considering how much they would have cost a few years ago).  As for the eco-friendly factor, you can reasonably assume that you will see a savings on your utility bill when you trade up, but only if you buy a screen of the same size.  Since flat-screens are lighter and take up less space, most consumers are inclined to purchase a larger set than before, meaning you may see a bump in energy usage rather than a drop.  However, you should know that plasmas suck up 2-3 times the energy of LCDs, so the choice here is pretty clear.

The LED TV, on the other hand, may use only about half the electricity of an LCD TV of the same size, conserving even more energy and dropping your utility bill further.  However, LED models are currently the most expensive on the market since the technology, in terms of TV usage, is relatively new.  But considering you’re going to enjoy more savings over time, it may be worth it to splurge a bit at the outset, especially if you don’t plan to upgrade again for quite a while.  No matter which option you choose, you want to ensure that you are getting the most for your money while still doing your part to protect the environment.  And if you end up paying less to the power company as a result, then so much the better.