How can they justify that price tag when they're effectively getting a lot of the materials for free?

I expect an article on Make to build this light for the cost of materials in a couple days. It doesn't look like it's more than a tin can, a fixture set, and a lens.

I understand needing to price something at a higher price if you're a small business but the price of these "sustainable" designs is outrageous

Great idea. But why does it have to be so expensive?

It's expensive, because it is a low-volume production, probably done here, rather than overseas, and they are selling through retailers, which pretty much doubles the price.

We have the same problem with our products.

I whole-heartedly agree. If you're making products out of throw-away or recycled materials, then why price them outside the price range of much of your core target market? They're beautiful lamps, but I would really like to see what the profit margin on these things is...

Based on how this usually works out ($300 product) :

Profit for retailer - $150
Profit for manufacturer, designers, and component makers - maybe $50-60 to split.

Sourcing, dismantling, cleaning and modifying recycled parts can easily cost much more than just getting new parts, especially if their 'readymades'.

I get disappointed when recycle/reduce/reuse efforts get spent on making lamps(or clocks). Thrift stores are inundated with lamps.

I agree, these are way overpriced. The components look as if they are already made (probably in China) and the glass is (I presume) free (otherthan the cost of wiping off streetgrime and drilling hole).

When "green" products such as these are sold at such highfalutin prices (in the neighborhood of new highend products) it's a turn off for me.

To sum up, if I want one I'll make my own.

I think Carl makes an important point. It is disappointing that a recycled product that looks so easily DIY is expensive. But these lenses aren't necessarily free, and when an independent company manufactures a high-quality product on a small scale in the U.S., where compensation standards are usually higher than overseas, it's going to cost money.

Though we should support companies like this when we can, if you love the lamp but hate the price -- definitely go out and do it yourself. It will likely be much cheaper, and more personal (if not as professional).

I think it's beautiful. For a DIY project, where do you get the lenses?

How is buying new stuff recycling? What are you expected to do with your old lamp? These look cool but the fact that the glass came from a stoplight doesn't make this a particularly green choice if it means throwing another lamp into the trash. A huge part of sustainability means making do with what you already have rather than submitting to the urge to buy more stuff.

--
editor note: Who's talking about throwing an old lamp into the trash? Who says there's even an old lamp to begin with?

Here in DC, we've converted quite a few traffic lights to LED. I'm not sure what happened to the old fixtures but it'd be fun to track them down.

Okay everyone, here’s the breakdown on the Greenlight Concepts.

We enjoy our concept of saving items that would have been thrown out and re-using them in new and interesting ways for people to enjoy, but this is not always the cheapest way to go (definitely not in our case).

When we started making our pendant fixtures with the traffic light lenses, we thought that we'd be saving money by recycling, however re-using these glass lenses is not a cheap process, especially when it costs us money to take away other peoples garbage. Actually having a new glass lens made in a similar shape would be cheaper that re-using the traffic light lenses that we love! Who would have thought? We didn’t, but we quickly found out.

All of our major lamp components are custom made. We’re designers and we wanted to create something beautiful. Off the shelf parts we not working for us (even though they would have been cheaper), so we designed everything ourselves. The aluminum body of the pendant fixture is tooled to our specifications by a local manufacturer. Even the canopy that sits against the ceiling is specifically made to order. The equipment and cost for this kind tooling and manufacturing is expensive. We are Greenlight Concepts, not Walgreen’s, Target, or Ikea. This means that we cannot manufacturer and assemble our products as cheaply as they do because the volume of our orders is not high enough. Designing and manufacturing our own components allows us to produce the finished product that we want. Using stock catalog parts would be cheaper, but they would not allow us the flexibility to create our vision.

Greenlight Concepts is dedicated to creating beautiful, high quality products. If you have any ideas to help us get our costs down we'd greatly appreciate it. We're always looking for new ideas.

Best,

Nicholas Lee
Greenlight Concepts
www.greenlightconcepts.com

I love the dumbass that says how can they justify that price when they get the materials for free.

Think about how they get them idiot.

How much can I pay you to go to a landfill and scavenge for glass moron boy?

I think it would be more than 250? :-P