ZooLights offer to recycle those old Christmas bulbs

Annual festival adds more energy-saving LEDs to its display

Pamplin Media Group, Dec 7, 2009

One of the Oregon Zoo's trains is covered in lights as part of the annual ZooLights festival. The event features about 1.25 million lights, about 770,000 of them the energy-saving LEDs.

Michael Durham / The Oregon Zoo

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This year’s annual winter ZooLights festival is going to do a little recycling.

The Oregon Zoo’s signature holiday event that uses about 770,000 low-energy LEDs to light its displays is asking the public to follow its example and dump those energy-sucking old Christmas lights.

Until the end of the year, the zoo will collect the old conventional Christmas lights from people and in return offer a coupon for a free piece of fudge at the Zoo Store.

“LEDs are a great way to enjoy the beauty of the holiday without wasting so much energy,” said Russell Guinn, the zoo’s event technical coordinator. “At one time, LEDs were difficult to purchase locally, but now you can easily find them in any home improvement store.”

Here’s how it works: Zoo visitors can drop off their old Christmas lights at the zoo and get a coupon for the free piece of fudge.

The ZooLights festival, which began after Thanksgiving Day, features about 1.25 million lights, more than 770,000 of which are the low-energy LEDs.

The zoo has been using LEDs for its ZooLights displays since 2000, and continues to add more each year, replacing its conventional bulbs. LEDs use only about 1 percent of the power of standard (C7) holiday lights, and about 10 percent of the power in mini-lights.

More than 100,000 LEDs have been added for this year’s festival, including nearly 1,000 of the C9 LEDs.

“In the past, an animated display may have used standard C9 lights, which use a whopping 18,000 watts of energy,” said Guinn. “The new C9 LEDs use only 144 watts of energy. That’s an incredible difference.”

The eco-friendly displays also save energy for ZooLights crew members, who won’t spend nearly as much time replacing lights and troubleshooting dark strings. With traditional lights, when one bulb goes out, the entire string goes with it.

The 22nd annual ZooLights festival is on display through Jan. 3.