7.04.2008

Recycling (or Oops, Breaking) Our CFLs

Good news! On June 24th, Home Depot launched a national CFL recycling program:
http://www6.homedepot.com/ecooptions/index.html? So now you can bring in expired, unbroken ones when you go to buy a new one. Most of ours have come from Home Depot, so that's fitting. IKEA, True Value, and Whole Foods already accepted burned-out ones. So far, we've broken a couple on hard surfaces, and the clean-up was easy, if a little spooky the first time (leave, wait, scoop with cardboard and then a damp paper towel into a plastic bag, put in the trash). Broken CFLs go in the regular trash since the mercury has mostly been released into the air.

Wendy Reed, who manages EPA's Energy Star program, says that even though fluorescent bulbs contain mercury, using them contributes less mercury to the environment than using regular incandescent bulbs. "That's because they use less electricity ­ and coal-fired power plants are the biggest source of mercury emissions in the air."
bath mirror CFL

The Maryland Department of the Environment says CFL bulbs contain up to 5 milligrams of mercury, the amount that would cover the tip of a ballpoint pen, as compared to older home thermostats and mercury fever thermometers, which contain between 500 to 30,000 milligrams of mercury. Most of our exposure comes from eating fish. The Maryland Department of the Environment urges consumers to use care when handling CFLs by screwing and unscrewing the bulb by the base. If a CFL bulb breaks, the amount of mercury released can evaporate into the air where it will likely remain at a level below safety standards set by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration.

In the DC metro area, many local governments accept expired CFLs at their periodic household hazardous waste (HHW) collection events or permanent HHW drop off sites: see http://www.mwcog.org/dep/gorecycle/cfl.htm.

And if you get one of those emails forwarded to you about how dangerous CFLs are, send the person you know this link to Snopes.com, the great muckraking site: http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp. It's good to separate the myths from the facts.

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