What Can We Do with All of those Old Incandescent Light Bulbs?

And, the second question that begs to be asked: What on earth are we going to do with those mercury-containing CFL's when they (eventually) burn out?

Michael Bergman

Community Outreach and Environmental Education Specialist
Reducing Toxic Threats Initiative
Washington Department of Ecology
360.407.6243
[email protected]

Personally, I am more concerned about the big push to get folks to convert to fluorescents not including enough information on CONVENIENT, LOCAL disposal options for the fluorescents!! It's many years off in the future, too, so any info that gets given out now probably won't be a) around or b) accurate anymore...!

Dear Friends--

CFL's can be easily recycled and will be more so in the future. Incandescent bulbs can be recycled for tungsten, glass, other metals in the base, etc. I'm sure this will be done more in the future as well.

Tom

Tom Shelley
118 E. Court St.
Ithaca, NY 14850
607 342-0864
[email protected]
http://www.myspace.com/99319958

Greetings! Below is an article I wrote last year on recovering old lamps in USA. http://www.mswmanagement.com/mw_0606_mercury.html Making it easy to recover CFL lights/e-waste is critical. I know that Slyvania and a major recycler have formed a partnership to recover old bulbs. Mail-back may beone convenient recycling option for homeowners, commercial, institutional, municipal, and governmental waste generators to manage their lamps, ballasts, batteries, mercury devices, computer monitors or other harmful electronic products. One easy way to handle small amounts of your universal/e-waste is to send it to be recycled via mail, UPS, FedEx, etc. Mail and/or ship your lamps, ballasts, batteries, mercury devices or computer monitors (and other materials). Prepaid packaging can conveniently manage your lighting and electronic and other harmful waste. Usually the total price to ship includes - packaging, freight, insurance, liability protection and certificates of recycling. Guidelines to Ship E-waste: Depending upon what your sending back there are designed containers and packaging instructions subject on what your sending back. Complete the enclosed labels and affix the prepaid shipping labels to the container. Mail, UPS and FedEx Ground will not accept any package usually without some sort of pre-payed label. Type of Containers: There are a variety of fiber drums, boxes and pails that can meet your individual needs. Simply fill, seal and return via the prepaid shipping label. Your boxes, drums or pails will be delivered to the recycler. Check the web sites to see if they have adequate insurance and good environmental compliance info.

Kindest regards,
Rob Arner

President, Recovery Enterprises
301-613-7414
http://conservationmatters.blogspot.com

Hello,

No current suggestions as to what to do with incandescent bulbs but I do have a question about incandescent vs. energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). I recently heard that CFLs may be harmful to humans I believe because they may have mercury in them? Has anyone heard of this or can substantiate it? IF CFLs are harmful are we seeking a better solution that is not harmful and is energy efficient? Any thoughts?

Thank you.
Serena Jennings

Health Promotion Worker - Social Marketing
Sudbury and District Health Unit
1300 rue Paris Street
Sudbury, ON P3E 3A3
Ph: (705) 522-9200 ext.
534 Fax: (705) 522-5182

All fluorescent lamps have mercury in them. That is what makes them operate. The amount in a compact fluorescent lamp can be as little as 5 milligrams. This does not make the lamp hazardous for the homeowner to operate - no mercury is emitted during operation. The mercury will be released if the bulb is broken. However, this amount of mercury will probably not cause any physical ailment if broken in a person's home. A greater danger is from cutting themselves on the glass. And an even greater problem is with improper disposal of millions of these lamps because of the cumulative amount of mercury, even at 5 milligrams per lamp. Fluorescent lamps are more energy efficient than incandescent lighting and less mercury is emitted from coal-fired generating plants as a result of their energy efficiency. I am part of one national group (US) that is working on improving recycling methods for fluorescent lamps, especially compact fluorescents. Luckily we have some time to develop these programs since increased sales are not going to cause increased disposal until some years have passed - I think most fluorescents are rated for about 10,000 hours use (unless used improperly, like with dimmer switches). My recommendation - use fluorescents throughout your home! New technology has improved the color, increased the sizes and applicability, and brought down the price. Here's a good site to learn more about fluorescent lamps: http://www.almr.org/

Laurie J. Tenace

Florida Department of Environmental Protection
PH: (850) 245-8759
[email protected]

"All fluorescent lamps have mercury in them. That is what makes them operate. The amount in a compact fluorescent lamp can be as little as 5 milligrams." Does anyone have a reliable estimate of the amount of mercury that would have been emitted by a typical coal-fired generator in the production of the electricity saved by a CFL or standard fluorescent over its life as substitute for equivalent incandescents? I have heard that the CFL contains less mercury than would be emitted by the extra coal burning * and the CFL's mercury is of course more containable and recoverable than the mercury escaping in air emissions from a coal plant.

Bill Carter

Water Quality Monitoring & Assessment MC
165 Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
P.O. Box 13087 Austin, TX 78711-3087
Phone: 512-239-6771
Fax: 512-239-4410
[email protected]

LED bulbs are many times more efficient than CFL's. Are there issues with those other than expense?

LEDs contain no filament. Because of their size and low output, dozens of these LEDs are arranged to create enough light. Although LED's are twice as energy efficient as incandescent bulbs, they are still not as high as fluorescents. LEDs have an incredibly long life, some 30,000 to 50,000 hours. It is important to note LEDs are the only non-incandescent light source that does not rely on mercury vapor. Conventional LEDs are made from a variety of inorganic semiconductor materials such as aluminium gallium arsenide (AlGaAs) - red and infrared aluminium gallium phosphide (AlGaP) - green.

David P. Kunz, MRP

Senior Natural Resource Specialist
Environmental Partnerships Program
503-229-5336
503-229-6945 (fax)

Availability of LED lights has been an issue for me. I don't shop much, but I've had trouble finding LED bulbs in southern Minnesota (USA), other than strings of Christmas tree lights. I finally found some in the Real Goods catalogue -- which sells a lot of renewable energy/sustainable living type things. A friend with chronic fatigue cautioned me about the older CFL bulbs, which apparently are missing some colors in the spectrum and adversely impact people's sleep patterns or something. I've been buying full spectrum CFLs that I use for all my main lights and reading and have put all my older ones in the basement and places where I don't use them much so haven't noticed a problem.

Nancy Adams

Many incandescent lamps have a drop of leaded solder on the bottom. The solution is for local governments to provide convenient HHW collection through door to door collection programs. Convenience is a barrier to proper disposal of HHW. We have had a door to door collection program since 1994. We collect all HHW through appointments at resident's homes. We just completed a case study. We will try to post it on the CBSM website when final. Survey and data suggest over 50% of our 22k households have used our program. 70% of households properly dispose of their HHW in Folsom. Annually we have over 6000 appointments to collect HHW. The cost of collection in an urban area does not have to be more than the per household cost of permanent HHW collection facilities.

Rod Miller

Senior Environmental Specialist
City of Folsom Hazmat Division
50 Natoma St. Folsom, CA 95630
[email protected]
www.folsomhazmat.com
Land: 916-355-8361
Cell: 916-439-0445
Fax: 916-355-8351

What is the maximum amount of mercury that can be found in CFL's? Also are there any comparisons to LED's? Thank you for the information and websites.

Serena Jennings

Health Promotion Worker - Social Marketing
Sudbury and District Health Unit
1300 rue Paris Street Sudbury, ON P3E 3A3
Ph: (705) 522-9200 ext. 534
Fax: (705) 522-5182

Ease of recycling per se, that is the physical process of capturing mercury and other components of the CFL's is no doubt quite feasible. The key issue, to my mind, is the infrastructure necessary to get used CFL's into the recycling stream: Do they go into the curbside recycling bin? Must they be taken to a government Household Hazardous Waste facility? Will manufacturers and retailers (e.g., Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Ace Hardware) get on board and accept them as part of a manufacturer's take-back program? Per Rob Arner's posting, there are multiple promising options for dealing with the CFL's once they are collected. The 'weak' link is the handoff from the consumer to the recycling program. It is an issue ideally suited to community-based marketing.

Michael Bergman

Community Outreach and Environmental Education Specialist
Reducing Toxic Threats Initiative
Washington Department of Ecology
360.407.6243
[email protected]

All of this speculation might lead to a joke starting with the line "How many environmentalists does it take to dispose of an incandescent light bulb?"

Dear Friends--

Although mercury in the environment and in our bodies is harmful at concentrations above a certain level, CFLs themselves are not harmful. The amount of mercury in a CLF that is not "green" is about 5 milligrams and in the "green" bulbs even less. If one breaks the components should be swept up, stored in a sealed plastic bag and disposed of properly (saved for a household hazardous waste day, if possible). The level of exposure to mercury at the concentration of a broken CFL is so small that it is not a health hazard. If you were in a room with hundreds of CFLs and they all broke at once, this could potentially be an exposure risk. Many of us have been "exposed" to mercury containing devices all of our lives and have had no adverse health effects since the mercury was sealed in the device in use--thermometers, thermostats, blood pressure cuffs, and on and on. There is much needless public paranoia about exposure to mercury ( and many other substances as well). Now the disposal of tens of millions of CFLs in use, over time as they expire, is another matter. CFLs would need to be collected by manufacturers' take back programs (like ink cartridges) or by hazardous waste collection programs in order for this much larger aggregate of mercury to be safely handled and reprocessed. But this can be done. Eventually, I think that mercury will be eliminated from CFLs as the technology evolves. My &.02.

Tom

Tom Shelley,
Laboratory Ventilation Consultant
Department of Environmental Health and Safety
Cornell University
125 Humphreys Service Building
Ithaca, NY 14853
607 255-8200 (message at EH&S)
607 342-0864 (cell)
[email protected]

Mercury is already in flourescent lights in homes, schools and offices. Its in street lights. The amount varies by size and technology, but it escapes whenever these bulbs are broken. As people switch to CFL's, which last a LONG time, there will need to be a more user friendly approach to disposal than waiting for one-day Household Hazardous Waste Collection events. My guess is that more retailers will take them back or maybe some businesses will allow employees to bring them there. There is a device called a bulb-eater that we use where I work. The drum allows you to place the mercury containing bulb inside a sealed area and then it breaks it, capturing the mercury vapor, consolidating the glass, etc. When its full, it is emptied by a company specializing in recovery of these materials. Why couldn't these systems become more prevalent? They are certainly cost effective over many alternatives that are not user-friendly.

Marta Keane,

Recycling Program Specialist
Will County Land Use - Waste Services
58 E. Clinton Street, Suite 500
Joliet, IL 60432
815-774-4343
[email protected]

We don't endorse the use of bulb eaters because they all leak mercury vapor - some as significant as approaching OSHA levels. It's a good idea to sniff test when using the device to make sure you are not getting exposure....

David P. Kunz, MRP

Senior Natural Resource Specialist
Environmental Partnerships Program
503-229-5336
503-229-6945 (fax)

There is currently a bill introduced in California, AB1109, by Assemblyman Huffman that would require manufacturers of CFLs containing mercury to ensure that a system is in place for the collection and recycling of end-of-life general purpose lights. Currently in San Francisco there are some hardware stores and the city's hazardous waste dump that take the used CFLs for free. To get the San Francisco list go to sfenvironment.org

Pamela Wellner

Marta Keane said, "There is a device called a bulb-eater that we use where I work. The drum allows you to place the mercury containing bulb inside a sealed area and then it breaks it, capturing the mercury vapor, consolidating the glass, etc. When its full, it is emptied by a company specializing in recovery of these materials. Why couldn't these systems become more prevalent? They are certainly cost effective over many alternatives that are not user-friendly."
Drum top crushers ( or DTC, of which the Bulb Eater is one brand) are not permitted for use in most states. In some their use is considered treatment. Florida is one of the states that is an exception. I have studied DTCs in Florida for the last few years. The concept is great, but how people use them and maintain them varies tremendously. A poorly maintained or improperly used DTC can emit mercury during use, exposing the user and possibly putting mercury vapors into a building's air handling system. However, bad storage of lamps (like leaving open containers with broken bulbs around or leaving glass and powder from broken lamps on the floor) prior to sending them off for recycling can also emit mercury vapor and, in my experience, bad storage is more common than proper storage. If anyone wants more information about drum top crushers, feel free to contact me personally.

Laurie J. Tenace

Florida Department of Environmental Protection
PH: (850) 245-8759
[email protected]

Marta--

"Bulb-eaters" can be acceptable, except their management without the release of Hg vapor can be really tricky and I know of haz waste handlers that have used them and decided that they don't work very well. Our haz waste vendors (under, I believe, NY St. regulation) only take whole bulbs. Our fluorescent bulbs, for example, are repackaged in their original containers or in special containers designed for recycling fluorescent bulbs. This is designed to prevent the release of Hg to the environment as the average facility or janitorial staff person would not be able to crush the bulbs without the release of mercury. State regulations on the handling of Hg containing bulbs vary substantially, so check with your local State EPA, DEC, DEP or whatever it's called.

Tom

Tom Shelley,
Laboratory Ventilation Consultant
Department of Environmental Health and Safety
Cornell University
125 Humphreys Service Building
Ithaca, NY 14853
607 255-8200 (message at EH&S)
607 342-0864 (cell)
[email protected]

Good day from the land of 10,000 lakes,

Just to add 2 cents from Minnesota, we have had a fluorescent bulb recycling program in place since 1994. I have included a link to our fact sheet. Bulbs are collected at a number of hardware stores and household hazardous waste facilities/events. Retailers remind consumers of the requirements at the point of sale. There is a small fee for collection but it is easily offset by coupons available from the major power companies (frequently sent out with the bills), online, and from the hardware stores. It has worked fairly well (not perfectly, certainly). We do not have good numbers on how many are collected statewide because there are different recycling systems throughout the state. http://www.pca.state.mn.us/publications/w-hhw4-30.pdf
One other note, our Department of Health is planning a study of mercury levels, over time, in a residence when a bulb is broken. Could be interesting.

Best to all,
Cathy Jensen

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
St. Paul, Mn
651-296-7753

Oh, that consumers would refuse to accept the goods in that packaging in the first place. It all comes back to us and what we are willing to accept. Yes, it is hard, almost impossible at times, but, whenever I can, I choose items without the packaging or I remove the packaging at the store and make them deal with it. Every action sends a message and every little bit helps.

Cheers
MOC

Not wrong Mike,

Saw a very interesting article on TV last night about shopping being an addiction and how it is raising alarm in psychology circles as to its ramifications through life in general. It occurred to me that this is the driving force behind consumerism in it various and at times scary forms and the whole shebang that is packaging. Well, a great part of it anyway. So, you comment about how it gets back to us is very astute. Further, a friend of mine is talking about this kind of addiction and other dysfunctional activities perhaps being caused by less than effective and supportive parenting. A long bow to draw maybe, then again, perhaps this is the area to focus on when seeking to foster sustainable behaviour: parenting. Ok, maybe we parents cop it too much as being the cause of all the world's ills yet we are products of our parenting and they of theirs so on, back to Adam. How to break the cycle? Having not been a parent - as a stepparent I maybe qualify nonetheless - I am in a different position from which to view this and I concur that we need to be conscious of our actions and their impact o children of all shapes and this awareness can change through Emotional Intelligence, as one way at least. How we deal with our emotions indicates our acting out of sustainability or not, I feel, so perhaps this kind of evaluation could be included in school, college and university curricula as a step in the sustainable direction.

Kind regards,
Paul Payten
GEENI