Heatball
A heatball is an alternative term for an incandescent light bulb which was part of a satirical project of the Siegfried Rotthäuser, a mechanical engineer from Essen in Germany. In this project, Rotthäuser tries to stimulate a discussion on the EU Regulation 244/2009[1] in public, which provides for point light sources to forbid sources with worse energy efficiency than class C gradually up to September 2012. The declared purpose of the engineer and his brother-in law is to sell incandescent lamps as small heating elements for winter or chicken farms.[2] The project got a lot of international press coverage.[3][4][5][6][7][8]
History
In April 2010, two brothers Rudolf and Siegfried Rotthäuser Hannot started selling light bulbs over the Internet. They referred to them as heatballs and sold them as small heating devices with a price of €1.69. 30 euro-cent per ball sold would be donated to a project to protect the rain forest, which, according to Rotthäuser, would benefit the climate more than the light bulb ban.[2] Within a few days, the initial stock of 4,000 bulbs was sold out and orders of 40,000 heatballs was in the line. The second batch was ordered but the shipment was held back at 16 November 2010 by the customs officials at Cologne Airport.[9]
References
- ^ Commission Regulation (EC) No 244/2009 of 18 March 2009 implementing Directive 2005/32/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council with regard to ecodesign requirements for non-directional household lamps.
- ^ a b Kathrin Dorscheid: Heißer Importschlager. Frankfurter Rundschau Online, 28 October 2010
- ^ Günter Pilch: Ingenieur trickst EU-Verbot aus. Kleine Zeitung (Ostrich), 8 November 2010
- ^ Carl Alfred Dahl: Dette er en varmeball! Aftenbladet (Norway) vom 27 October 2010
- ^ Vale Decir: Hágase el calor. Pagina 12 (Argentine) 24 October 2010
- ^ Agencija Tanjug: Biznismen prodaje sijalice kao grejalice. Glas Javnosti (Serbia)
- ^ German Firm Bemoans European Ban on Incandescent Bulbs, to Sell Heatballs Bloomberg, 19 October 2010
- ^ German "heatball" wheeze outwits EU light bulb ban Reuters 15 October 2010
- ^ Philip Plickert: Kleinheizgerät „Heatball“. Zoll hält 40.000 Glühbirnen auf. FAZ.NET vom 18. November 2010
External links
- Homepage to the Project
- Heatball – das Comeback der Glühbirne. ZDF heute, 21 October 2010
- L. Becker, E. Körner: Heatball ersetzt Glühlampe. ZDF, 24 October 2010 (In the ZDF sending Volle Kanne)