Clean Energy Springfield

Thinking about replacing your incandescent lights with more efficient compact fluorescent light (CFLs) bulbs? Or perhaps you want to replace an old wall-mounted thermostat with a programmable unit that allows you to scale back on heating and cooling to save energy when you're away or sleeping. If the answer is “yes,” there are a few things you need to know about mercury, a toxic metal that is found in many household and commercial products.

Let’s focus on CFLs first. They contain a small amount of mercury, an average of 5 milligrams – about the amount that would cover the tip of a ballpoint pen. Mercury is a key element of CFLs that makes them an efficient light source. Unfortunately, there’s no better substitute right now.

The mercury in a CFL is not a threat to the environment unless the glass is broken. Even though the bulbs are rarely touched while in use, they can break if dropped or roughly handled. So be careful when removing the bulb from its packaging, installing it, or replacing it.

If a CFL bulb breaks, the most important thing to remember is to never use a vacuum to clean up the broken glass. A standard vacuum will spread mercury-containing dust throughout the area as well as potentially contaminating the vacuum.

U.S. EPA has published guidelines for consumers on how to cleanup a broken CFL bulb. While the broken bulb and cleanup materials may be set out in a sealed plastic bag with your normal trash for disposal, an environmentally preferable approach would be to take these items to a household hazardous waste (HHW) collection event for recycling. This would mean labeling the sealed bag “Mercury Waste – broken lamp, “ and storing it in a safe place until a collection event comes to your community.

To determine if your town has made arrangements for hosting an event of this type, check out Illinois EPA’s web site. The City of Springfield and Sangamon County have sponsored HHW collections at the State Fairgrounds in the past and it’s likely that more events will be scheduled. They have normally taken place in the spring.

And what should you do with a burned-out CFL? While consumers can lawfully dispose of CFLs in household garbage, the preferable approach again would be to take them to a HHW collection event for recycling. Put each used CFL in a sealed plastic bag and store the lot of them in a padded box in a safe place until the collection event takes place. At the event, the bulbs will be packaged and sent to a processing center where the mercury is reclaimed and the glass is reprocessed.

Unfortunately, HHW collection events are held only a limited number of times at different locations around the state each year. Most consumers do not like to keep waste materials around between collections. More convenient recycling and disposal mechanisms are needed. The long-term solution is for U.S. EPA and state solid waste officials to work with the bulb manufacturers and major retailers to create more convenient options for recycling. In Vermont, a collection program was established through a partnership between the state and True Value hardware stores to take back spent fluorescent lamps from consumers. The program has been expanded to include Ace hardware stores as well. More than 60 stores in that state now provide lamp recycling services to consumers.

In my next posting, I’ll discuss ways for "do-it-yourselfers" to properly dispose of old wall-mounted thermostats that contain mercury tilt switches.