Community : Brainstorm : CFL Bulbs Contain Mercury

The recent reduction in price and cost benefits of CFL bulbs has increased usage exponentially. The ideal benefit outside of energy reduction savings is that you typically will not have to change a bulb for five years.

However, a new predicament has arisen with the discovery that CFL bulbs contain trace amounts of mercury. The amount of mercury is relative compared to the amount emitted from power plant pollution – but if tens of millions of CFL bulbs are in use and than in several years start to collectively show up in landfills all at once – the amount of mercury will definitely implicate the environment.

The Chicago-land area as well as other major metropolitan areas need to find a recourse to exert pressure on retailers and/or energy companies to provide a recourse to recycle or safely dispose of spent CFL bulbs.

Would a sizable public display of commitment to recycle CFl bulbs compel Comed to set up a disposal program?

Wikipedia Fact Sheet

NPR Article

How CFLs Can Cost You More!

Groovy Green

GreenLivingTips.com

EPA CFL Bulb Recycling Center Hub

From: ComEd Media Relations FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thomas Stevens
(312) 394-3500
(312) 405-0126
ComEd Discounting 1 Million CFL Bulbs for Residential Customers
ComEd partners with IEPA and Ace Hardware on pilot CFL recycling program

CHICAGO (Oct. 1, 2007)

Although good news – the ComEd IEPA partnership is a mere pilot program – consumers need to ensure that the program becomes a permanent staple of conservation efforts so no more mercury makes its way into our environment!

Perhaps we could go about this by targeting the bulb manufacturers: X number of people will purchase CFL bulbs from whichever manufacturer sets up a permanent recycling program for the bulbs or else donates a certain portion of their profits to a non-profit that manages a recycling program. The manufacturer must include a warning about mercury on the bulb itself, as well as a toll free telephone number and website for customers to use in order to find out the most updated list of recyling locations by zip code.

Of course, there is always the challenge of convenience. The Walgreens battery disposal program is brilliant b/c there are so many Walgreens stores that a Chicago resident doesn’t have to travel all that far to dispose of her batteries. So the order of things would be to set up a permanent recycling program (via the manufacturer, the electric co, or some other entity/funding), have an ongoing public awareness campaign, and make recycling so commonplace that to throw bulbs aways would be taboo.

I don’t know exactly how product distribution works, but it would be great if bulbs that are taken out of the delivery truck to be sold at xyz stores could be replaced by used bulbs…that wouldn’t require extra to-and-fro trips. I have a feeling that’s not how distribution routes work, though.

Why must we always be left with fixing the governments mistakes! Boycott buying these stupid bulbs and replace your lighting with clean, environmentally friendly LED bulbs. They contain no mercury or PCB’s, the quality of light is better and they last for ten to twenty years in a home enviroment.

Part of the reason CFL recycling isn’t at full speed is that CFLs have very long lifespans. Since the bulbs last 8-10 years, the current buying boom isn’t going to be recycled for quite a while. CFLs existed in 1998, but they were much less common. While it certainly makes sense to get recycling going ASAP, there’s some practical reasons it isn’t on every street corner: I’ve heard (anecdotally, no link, sorry) about recycling pilots that just didn’t get any bulbs.

But the bottom line is, even if you smash the old bulbs on your front lawn, CFLs take mercury out of the ecosystem. Most American power comes from bad, dirty coal… which also emits mercury. Over it’s lifespan, a CFL will use much less power, and thus emit less mercury from power plant stacks than a conventional bulbs. CFLs are greener tech than incandescents. LEDs are better still — give them a few years.

Now, it’s reasonable to ask why we have to emit mercury at all, and there’s no good answer for that (LEDS don’t), except that the engineers are working on the problem. The mercury content is coming down, and pretty quickly. Big retailers (Wal-Mart and others) are leaning on suppliers to reduce the mercury content.

The best idea I’ve seen for this purpose was a pitch to sell new CFLs in a mailable return box. Buy a bulb, swap it out and send it, prepaid, through the US mail. Not as energy efficient as an in-store drop box, but easily scalable, and easy on the consumer and good with the consumer-education angle.

I already have about 10 used-up CFL bulbs after using them only for a year or two. (I have them stored at home until I find an easy way to recycle them.) The mercury build-up could happen much sooner than the predicted bulb life.

I went through one in a couple of months. I just replaced every single light in my house with these bulbs and just had to replace one recently and I originally installed all of them about 3-4 months ago.