What is Sustainable Outdoor Lighting?
Sunlight is free, but lighting at night is not.
There is a cheaper way to light up the night!
Light pollution - the artificial sky glow that dims the stars - now affects 63 percent of the world's population and 99 percent of people living in the European Union and continental United States, according to some estimates. The Milky Way is not visible in most cities, much less a meteor shower, Orion's shield, or, in the biggest cities, the North Star.
Outdoor lighting is an indispensable element of modern civilized societies for safety, recreation, and decorating purposes. However, poorly designed lighting system and excessive illumination level lead to a huge waste of energy and money. It is not uncommon to find poorly designed outdoor security light not using a lamp shade so that only a small fraction of light generated is directed to the ground, with a majority of light directed upwards towards the sky. These poorly designed outdoor lightings not only waste energy, money, and valuable earth resources, but also rob us of our beautiful night sky. The saved electricity from improper outdoor lighting would also means less air pollution, which can then reduce global warming caused by the power generation process
The Area to be Lit is what all outdoor lighting should to focused on. All other light is WASTED. Glare results from the Spill Light and Light Trespass is what keeps us up at night. SkyGlow is the result of the Direct Upward Light. Please link to the other pages for more details.
