A $14 shield clipped to the flood light on your garage can help save the world.
Poorly designed and installed outdoor lighting in the United States wastes billions of dollars each year in energy costs, harms wildlife, blots out the stars and has little effect on crime, according to lighting and environmental experts.
"The answer is not more light but the right kind of light," says Cindy Luongo Cassidy, co-owner of Green Earth Lighting of Driftwood, Texas, one of the growing number of companies specializing in environmentally friendly outdoor lighting.
That $14 shield will point the light down where it is needed and reduce glare. "Consumers have been told that if some light is good, then more must be better,'' Cassidy says. "Cities and towns have never been more brightly lit, yet there is more crime than ever before."
Less light at night actually improves security because excessive glare blinds onlookers. Using dimmer lights reduces the stark contrast between lit and unlit areas. The reduction in contrast allows your eyes to adjust more quickly, making it easier to spot prowlers. "If you tone (lighting) down, you will be able to see where you didn't before," Cassidy says.
Properly placing lights and using lower wattage bulbs saves money, an advantage attracting interest from more cities across the country. In the United States, $4.5 billion in energy costs are wasted each year in outdoor lighting that shines up into the sky, according to Cassidy.
Increasing security and saving money are two reasons why thousands of communities have tackled the issue of light pollution, says Robert Gent of the International Dark-Sky Association in Tucson, Ariz. The non-profit IDSA, with 11,000 members in 75 countries, promotes quality outdoor nighttime lighting.
A dozen states, including California, Georgia and Texas, have laws regulating highway lighting. More cities are adopting ordinances regulating outdoor lighting, including Ames and Hiawatha in Iowa.
Former Hiawatha Mayor Tom Patterson received an IDSA Executive Director Special Award in 2007 for his efforts in making Hiawatha’s commercial lighting ordinance one of the strongest in Iowa.
In Hiawatha, a suburb of about 2,600 north of Cedar Rapids, residents living near car dealerships initiated the push for tougher lighting regulations. Patterson says he was surprised when businesses embraced the regulations. “It was a big risk (for Hiawatha). It’s easier for big companies to challenge a small community.”
More businesses are discovering bright lights don't pay off. A study at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., showed bright lights at service stations created safety hazards because motorists' eyes took too long to adjust after leaving the stations. "What they did not expect was the sales increases from reducing the glare of lights," Cassidy says. Reducing the glare made stations easier to spot by customers.
Artificial illumination from diverse sources, including businesses, homes and street lights, may also contribute to health problems by upsetting the 24-hour day/night cycle in human and animals.
Medical studies show that exposure to artificial light at night stops the production of hormone melatonin in humans. Melatonin, which is triggered by darkness, has been shown to stop the growth of breast cancer cells.
The reproductive cycles of turtles and frogs are also interrupted by artificial light, Cassidy says.
"By regulating lighting we reduce energy consumption and take better care of the environment," she says.
Reducing light pollution, Gent says, is a "gift to everybody, and to our future. The greatest tragedy of all is the loss of imagination and wonder at the night sky."
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