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supports her call for policy that at a minimum recognizes that
1) the intended effect should not be considered to happen in
isolation, and 2) that the interventions should go on within and
not outside the processes it seeks to shape. Information about
different lighting technologies’ efficiency will, in this sense, not
in itself be enough to ‘persuade’ people into acquiring the most
energy efficient solutions –
the processes connected to what
defines ‘quality light’ within and across homes are equally impor-
tant to understand
. It may be argued that some of the earliest
pamphlets are in fact trying to do this.
If one insist on the importance of informing the consumer, it
is still interesting to look at the, perhaps contested, nature
of the given information - both in the pamphlets and on the
actual packages. The pamphlets argue that consumers should
be aware of the color rendering capabilities (the Ra value),
the level of luminous flux (measured in lumen) and the color
temperature (measured in Kelvin). But as documented by the
pictures, this information is not always available. There may be
many reasons for the absence of this information, but further
research on the role of standardization of packaging informa-
tion could be of importance. If there is a lack of standardization
in terms of what should be presented on the packages and
how it should be presented, it is an important thing to sort out
if information is supposed to have the opted effect of guiding
the consumers. As Bartiaux (2008) explains,
if
information is
to play a role in ‘behavior change’, the information at least has
to be based on
converged knowledge
, and that it is brought into
the discursive consciousness. This could presumably apply for
information and symbols on the light bulb packages as well –
as long as the symbols differ from each other or if the informa-
tion is in fact incomprehensible, it will be difficult to obtain any
influence in the discursive ways of referring to lighting. For
instance, as the interviews with the residents in the previousely
mentioned casestudy show, people still refer to the ‘strength’
of light in terms of wattage and only to a very limited extent
lumen. This makes sense as the incandescent light bulbs for
long have been referred to as ’40 or 60 wattage bulbs’, and this
association is therefore deeply rooted in our ways of talking
about lighting products.
Concluding remarks
This paper has assessed a number of pamphlets that aim to
demonstrate how to illuminate the home with energy efficient
light, published by the Danish independent, public body Danish
Energy Savings Trust, and compared it to actual information
available on light bulb packages as well as to how people use,
refer to and talk about light in their homes. There seem to be
a mismatch between the public bodies’ emphasis on informing
the consumer to make the ‘best choice’ and the actual tools
available for making these choices. Information about as well
as ways of assessing color rendering capabilities seem to be
particularly ambiguous. Further, it seems that people do not
relate to the technical and neutral aspects of lighting, which
the information in the pamphlets seem to emphasize, but rath-
er to the activities and spaces connected to the home, in which
light play a crucial part. This seems to support the ongoing
critiques of policy makers and public bodies emphasizing too
much on information targeting the individual consumer as the
main driver for behavior change. Illuminating the home does
not seem to be about individuals making cost-effective choices,
but to a greater extent about performing certain everyday life
activities that certain lighting patterns are a part of - these
lighting patterns being implicitly acknowledged and expected
across households.
1
translated from Danish: ”Efterhånden som de gamle
glødepærer forsvinder fra hylderne, og nye kilder til belysning
kommer til, kan det føles som lidt af en videnskab at finde den
rigtige pære, der oplyser dit hjem, som den skal.”
2
Many of the pamphlets use terms such as ‘right’ or ‘good’
light – in Danish, ‘rigtig’ or ‘god(t)’ – which in itself is a bit am-
biguous – it is not obvious what is meant by right, for whom it is
meant to be right, and for what reasons.