Because compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) contain trace amounts of mercury, there are concerns about their broader use (saving energy and reducing heat). Now Home Depot has announced it will recycle CFLs.
Until now, consumers had to seek out local hazardous waste programs or smaller retail chains willing to collect the bulbs for recycling, like Ikea and True Value. Some consumers have waited for retailers like Wal-Mart to have a designated recycling day. Others bought kits to mail the bulbs to a recycling facility.
The Environmental Protection Agency has been looking into putting bulb drop-off boxes at post offices, said Jim Berlow, director of the agency’s hazardous waste minimization and management division. But those plans are not final, and across most of the country, recycling the bulbs has been inconvenient at best. Industry professionals estimate that the recycling rate is around 2 percent.
Home Depot’s program, which will accept any maker’s bulbs, will bring relatively convenient recycling within reach of most households. Mr. Jarvis estimated that 75 percent of the nation’s homes are within 10 miles of a Home Depot.
Cool. Of course, that means transporting them in your car, which means they could break and cause all sorts of evil.
Mercury is found in other common household items like electronics, appliances and pesticides. Its vapors, however, can harm people and pollute the environment, which is why recycling is encouraged. (In some places it is against the law not to recycle the bulbs.)
[…] The E.P.A. devotes pages of its Web site to cleanup instructions for broken compact fluorescents. Before even beginning to clean up a spill, consumers are advised to leave the room (along with their pets), open a window and shut off any operating air heating or cooling systems.
That may seem foreboding, but experts see a greater health risk from the mercury emissions produced by coal-burning plants to power less efficient bulbs. “The avoided mercury emissions are much larger than the mercury we’re using in the bulbs,” said [Steven Hamburg, interim director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Brown University], referring to compact fluorescents.
And, of course, there are probably even greater risks for those of us who, as kids, gathered around to play on our desks with little samples of mercury that some kid would bring from home …
The other drawback to CFLs has been, well, they’re fluorescent. But demand is driving improvements. There are dimmable (!) fluorescents coming soon, the start-up/warm-up time for the bulbs is improving, and the light quality is also getting better. I bought some replacement CFLs for some lamps in my office that came in a “daylight” frequency, and I like them very much.