{"id":13209,"date":"2008-06-24T09:26:24","date_gmt":"2008-06-24T16:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2008\/06\/24\/home-depot-will-recycle-compact-fluorescents.html"},"modified":"2008-06-24T09:26:24","modified_gmt":"2008-06-24T16:26:24","slug":"home_depot_will_recycle_c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/24\/home_depot_will_recycle_c.html","title":{"rendered":"Home Depot will recycle compact fluorescents"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n

The Environmental Protection Agency has been looking into putting bulb drop-off boxes at post offices, said Jim Berlow, director of the agency\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Home Depot\u2019s program, which will accept any maker\u2019s bulbs, will bring relatively convenient recycling within reach of most households. Mr. Jarvis estimated that 75 percent of the nation\u2019s homes are within 10 miles of a Home Depot.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Cool. Of course, that means transporting them in your car, which means they could break and cause all sorts of evil.<\/p>\n

\n

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.)<\/p>\n

[…] 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.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cThe avoided mercury emissions are much larger than the mercury we\u2019re using in the bulbs,\u201d said [Steven Hamburg, interim director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Brown University], referring to compact fluorescents.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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 …<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":43280,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/26\/recyling-single-use-batteries.html","url_meta":{"origin":13209,"position":0},"title":"Recyling single-use batteries","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 26-Jun-14 2:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"For a long time I was storing all of my used up alkaline AA, AAA, and 9-volts for some sort of recycling. \u00a0I finally looked up information in it to discover, as noted here, that they are no longer considered hazardous waste, so I've been slowing adding them back to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26405,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/15\/dim-bulbs.html","url_meta":{"origin":13209,"position":1},"title":"Dim bulbs","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 15-Feb-12 12:44am","format":false,"excerpt":"For the record, I'm not thrilled by CFL bulbs. The light quality is a little bit off from the incandescents I grew up with, and the time lag to come to full illumination is maddening. I am waiting the day for reasonably priced LED bulbs, to be honest.That said, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17271,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/05\/04\/the-power-is-yours.html","url_meta":{"origin":13209,"position":2},"title":"The Power is Yours!","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 4-May-10 1:19pm","format":false,"excerpt":"We've been on a recycling kick at home. For quite some time, we were mostly recycling aluminum cans and wine bottles, but I finally looked up our garbage company's site and found out that, in fact, they did a single-stream recycling where they took pretty much anything with a plastic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Environment"","block_context":{"text":"Environment","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/science\/environment"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/recycle.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5775,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/07\/20\/old_pcs_never_d.html","url_meta":{"origin":13209,"position":3},"title":"Old PCs never die …","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 20-Jul-04 9:18am","format":false,"excerpt":"... they just stack up in closets and back rooms because people don't know how to dispose of them properly. Which makes this welcome news: Office Depot and Hewlett-Packard yesterday...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":23689,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/11\/13\/mutter-mutter-recycle.html","url_meta":{"origin":13209,"position":4},"title":"Mutter, Mutter, Recycle","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 13-Nov-11 2:37pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Recycling is cool, and I get a frisson of virtue every time I empty a trash can full of junk mail into my recycle bin, but the whole idea of not bothering to Reduce and Reuse bugs the heck out of me. Especially since Recycling isn't a panacea (and has,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":18993,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/10\/23\/unblogged-bits-sat-23-oct-10-0531.html","url_meta":{"origin":13209,"position":5},"title":"Unblogged Bits (Sat. 23-Oct-10 0531)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 23-Oct-10 5:31am","format":false,"excerpt":"Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries .... Laying the groundwork for future obstinacy - \"Eleven days before Election Day, high-profile Republicans want Americans to know that a vote for the GOP is a vote against compromise, against bipartisan agreements, and against\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}