Well, yes it is.
And is it to do with animals and the Natural World?
Um... no, it's not. Well, sort of.
Please allow me to explain. Recently I decided I should get a new torch to help me observe the beautiful creatures of my garden at night - moths, spiders, slugs (that last one is my Dad's hobby - saving the veggies!). So I saw an advert describing a fantastic looking torch, with is a low-energy, but extremely bright LED torch. It said it was 60 Lumens! I know, exciting huh?!Hold on, what do you mean you don't know what a lumen is? Well don't worry, most people don't know either. A lumen is a measure of light as perceived by the human eye. This is a much more effective measurement than candle-power, visible distance that the light travels, or equivalent to a 60-watt bulb!
I liked the look of this particular torch, but really wanted to know how it compared to a non-LED torch. So I tried to find out how many lumens my old Mini Maglite was. It took AGES! But I finally found out from an online shop (who'd run their own tests on torches) that the Maglite put out less than 15 lumens. Well, that was good to know and I have since bought that LED torch ('LED Lenser Police Tech Focus' approx £30) and have been so impressed with it. The first night I had it I took it out in the garden and identified a beautiful moth - The Herald.
Being a high quality LED, the power consumption is only about 1.25 watts, so the battery life is about 50 hours (on 3 AAA batteries), and the light itself is a pure white, making it much easier to identify delicate moths at night compared to squinting at them in a yellowy glow from my old torch!And so to the petition...
I decided that if people were aware of how energy-saving equivalents (like LEDs) compared to normal (incandescent) bulbs, they may be able to make good choices about saving the planet (there's the nature link!!). So I have begun an ePetition on the Downing Street website. The petition is to make it a requirement for bulb and lighting product manufacturers to put a lumen rating on all their products, so that the public can easily compare them. Knowing what a lumen is scientifically (check out Wikipedia's Lumen article if you want to know more) doesn't matter, as long as you can see that one product is 15 lumens and the other is 60 lumens, that will be enough to make a more informed decision.
Click on this ePetition Link to go there (if you want to... no pressure!)
I'm off to look in dark corners with my wonderful new torch!
Enjoy saving the planet, Nature Gazers!
