This New Year, pledge to change your light bulbs. It’s really a no-brainer. Just swap your standard, but extremely outdated, incandescent bulbs for the latest and greatest bulbs on the market: compact fluorescents (CFLs).

Yes, that’s all you have to do. By exchanging your regular lightbulbs for those funny-looking swirly bulbs you’ll save energy and money.

Here come the stats . . . according to Energy Star, CFLs consume up to 75% less energy than incandescent light bulbs. CFLs also last up to 10 times longer. Those numbers add up for the environment. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, if just one million households replaced four traditional light bulbs with four CFL light bulbs, Americans would eliminate 900,000 tons of greenhouse gases. And get this . . . if every American household changed just one light bulb to a CFL we’d would save enough power to light more than 2.5 million homes. That’s doing far more than taking 3.5 million cars off the road . . . permanently.

Enough with the stats. Point is, there’s no good reason not to switch to CFLs. And several years ago it was difficult to even find a CFL. Today, you can find them everywhere. So take advantage in 2008 and change your lightbulbs.

It is important to note that CFLs contain an insignificant amount of mercury. If a bulb breaks, however, you want to clean it as specified by the Environmental Protection Agency. For more information on CFLs and tips to clean up a broken CFL bulb, without dispersing the mercury, click here.