I’d laugh, if I wasn’t crying so hard:
Mercury in new light bulbs not being recycled, escaping to environment
The nation’s accelerating shift from incandescent bulbs to a new generation of energy-efficient lighting is raising an environmental concern — the release of tons of mercury every year.
The most popular new light — the curly cue, compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs — account for a quarter of new bulb sales and each contains up to 5 milligrams of mercury, a potent neurotoxin that’s on the worst-offending list of environmental contaminants.
Demand for the bulbs is growing as federal and state mandates for energy-efficient lighting take effect, yet only about 2 percent of residential consumers and one-third of businesses recycle them, according to the Association of Lighting and Mercury Recyclers.
“If the recycling rate remains as abysmally low as it is, then there will certainly be more mercury released into the environment,” said Paul Abernathy, executive director of the Napa-based recycling association. “Until the public really has some kind of convenient way to take them back, it’s going to be an issue.”
As a result of discarded fluorescent lights, including CFLs, U.S. landfills release into the atmosphere and in stormwater runoff upward of 4 tons of mercury annually, according to a study in the Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association.
There was essentially zero demand for these eyeball-unfriendly monstrosities until the Federal government (and some states) passed laws banning normal incandescent bulbs, which had been working glitch-free for well over a century until they were suddenly deemed evil energy vampires that cause global warming. 2013 (just 21 months from now) will be the last year you’ll be able to legally buy incandescent bulbs in America, and soon practically every bulb in the country will be a mercury-spewing time-bomb.
California proponents of CFLs claim that, when the entire state makes the switch-over two years from now, it will be “equivalent to taking 414,000 cars off the road” due to the lower energy costs to power the new bulbs. But left out of this calculcation are the innumerable driving-hours required to recycle every single one of these toxic grenades:
For about a decade, Bill Wygal, owner of four Bill’s Ace Hardware Stores in the East Bay, has accepted spent fluorescent bulbs at his stores. And each week, his staff leaves about 60 fluorescent tubes and 30 CFLs at the Contra Costa County-run household hazardous waste facility in Martinez.
They’re sent to lighting recyclers, who reclaim the mercury for reuse.
So, for each and every bulb, someone has to drive to one of the out-of-the-way recycling drop-off centers; then the centers have to deliver them in small batches to even more distant hazardous waste facilities; and from there they have to be shipped to faraway reclamation sites where the mercury is salvaged. And then, of course, all that mercury has to be shipped back around the world to make new bulbs. Add that all up, and I suspect that it would be “equivalent to putting 414,000 cars on the road,” completely negating any environmental benefit.
Add to the equation all the other issues associated with these new federally mandated bulbs, and it becomes clear that we just “solved” a “problem” by creating an even bigger problem. (And let’s not get into the faulty assumptions underlying the EPA’s calculations about mercury emissions from power plants making electricity for regular bulbs; if you doctor the variables to your liking, you can draw any conclusion to fit your agenda.)
Me? I plan to start hoarding incandescent bulbs soon. Luckily, I won’t need too many because for some reason my bulbs always seem to last for years and years, far beyond the paltry lifespan predicted on the box. (Never have figured out why; I currently have one bulb that’s still going strong after 15 years.)
I don’t want to end up in back alleys buying illicit old-fashioned bulbs on the black market. Stock up now to survive the Filament Prohibition!
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