A Naperville-based company is planning to bring the most energy-efficient lighting to the market as early as May.

Polybright International, Inc., is poised with its LED lighting technology to revolutionize the lighting industry, making incandescent, fluorescent and compact fluorescent lighting (CFL) remnants of the past.

“We’ve seen the transformation from analog to digital for decades—LPs to CDs, VHS to DVDs, analog phones to cell phones—but lighting technology has not changed much since Thomas Edison invented the light bulb 125 years ago,” said Carl Scianna, president and CEO of Polybright International. “The world is ready to move to an energy-efficient alternative in lighting.”

For years, LED technology was affordable mostly to large industrial enterprises alone such as the U.S. armed services. Since then, Polybright’s client list has grown to include McDonalds, Nike, the Pentagon, and Chicago area landmarks like Navy Pier, Soldier Field and the Merchandise Mart.

Consumers rarely used LED technology. The most notable use of LED lights was in headset lighting fixtures marketed for camping, cave exploration and other outdoor activities.

But now, LED lighting is hitting the mass consumer market.

Distributors from Walmart to Menards to Home Depot are expected to carry it. And Polybright is ready not only to change how the world is lit—in corporations, homes, and in government—but to also save the environment in the process.

LED, or light-emitting diode, lighting, uses crystals that convert small amounts of electricity into light. This photon energy, then, is powered by a technology that allows LEDs to maximize energy-efficiency, making LEDs the most eco-friendly lighting on the market.

For starters, Polybright’s LED lighting consumes 90 percent less energy than standard lighting. A typical 60 watt incandescent bulb and 15 watt CFL equivalent are both dwarfed by the 4 watt LED equivalent. While these numbers may initially seem inconsequential, over time the energy savings of using LED are monumental.

Macy’s retail store in Chicago, for example, expects to save more than $47,640 annually in its store by using LED lights. If Macy’s were to use LEDs in 180 of its North American stores the annual savings would total $8,575,200 annually and over a 10-year period account for nearly one-half billion dollars in total savings.

Chicago area small businesses—while not as Macy’s—stand to save significant funds as well by switching their inventory from fluorescent overhead lighting to LED lights.

LEDs also have the added benefit of being 100 percent green.

“With our technology you solve all the problems” of incandescent and fluorescent lighting’s environmental hazards, said Scianna.

“We’re 100 percent green. There are no chemicals in our bulbs. All solid states. When they’re finished you can put them under the ground. After years they disintegrate and disappear. They’re all bio-degradable.”

Experts view the bio-degradability as a huge step up from current forms of lighting. CFLs, for instance, which once were touted as the “next big thing,” have recently been attacked for their overall toxicity, high mercury content and difficulty being disposed of.

But isn’t CFL lighting the newest environmental—and energy efficiency—craze? The answer is yes. It has achieved notoriety as being better than incandescent and fluorescent lighting, but it’s a marketing façade, say experts.

“CFL is a mistake,” Scianna confirmed. “It’s an environmental disaster.

The media is saying it’s green. It’s not green. People are buying those bulbs thinking they’re going green and they’re not. They’re being misled.

“You do save energy (using CFLs over incandescent), from 30 to 40 percent, but at the same time you’re putting lighting into the environment, that, between the mercury and the gas, is terrible.”

Finally, rounding out the benefits of LED lighting is that one bulb lasts, on average, 50,000 plus hours of use (34 years of home use versus 12 years commercial use), that they’re made of indestructible plastic and, unlike CFLs, they can be dimmed, operated in cold settings and have various color temperatures.

Polybright expects its 40-60 watt bulb to be marketed at a cost from $12-15.