How to Properly Dispose of CFL Light Bulbs
If you are doing your part and making the necessary changes in your life to be more eco-friendly, your responsibility doesn't stop once you replace your energy-munching incandescent lights with compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs. In fact, all of your efforts to go green can be for naught if you haphazardly toss out your old CFL bulbs in the trash. CFL bulbs contain small amounts of mercury, which needs to be disposed of properly to protect the environment. Does this Spark an idea?
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Instructions
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Contact your garbage service provider to see if it has a CFL recycling program already in effect.
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Contact your municipal landfill to find out how to recycle your CFL bulbs. More and more municipalities are starting CFL recycling programs, but you might have to physically take it to the landfill.
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Check with big box home improvement retailers in your area. Many of them are now making it possible for you to bring your old CFLs back to the store for recycling. If you discover that your local retail giant doesn't offer the service, call its headquarters and ask that they do.
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Take your search online. Many commercial services offer safe and effective recycling of your old CFL light bulbs. Some are more expensive than others, so it pays to look around.
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Store the bulbs yourself in a tightly closed container in the corner of your basement as a last resort. The bulbs don't take up much room and you can fit a dozen or so in a large bucket or sturdy box. Because CFLs last so much longer than traditional bulbs, you don't have to worry about collecting a huge number of old bulbs.
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Comments
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How can they be considered eco-friendly when the mercury is so deadly? All it takes is for families to be careless, or not read the instructions for getting rid of the bulbs, and we will have our landfills full of mercury laden light bulbs that will eventually weaken and break. I still prefer the old ones and resent the mischief out of any government telling me what I can buy, but that seems to be the going trend. I prefer the republic we signed up for not a dictatorship in the middle of my private life. I think I'm quite capable of making my own decisions without their usually bumbling help.
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Jerry Buerge
May 16, 2009
Thanks, Dave: You've given me a few other places where I can dispose of worn CFL bulbs. Like most folks, I do my best to find recycle locations that are cost free.
