[Grovenet] It's Not Easy Being Green

Wed Feb 28 20:38:11 PST 2007

Quite true. Fluorescent bulbs are full of mercury which gets into people and
the soil.

For many years, as those articles mention, industrial bulbs have been
recycled as hazardous waste due to the high volume of burned out bulbs a
factory or office building produces. It's now that they are becoming common
in homes that the "solid waste" from our residential trash cans is seeing a
huge increase in them. That's how they are finding their way into our
environment.

And now, some green advocates are pushing for outlawing the normal
incandescent bulb we've used since Edison finally got one to work. That
would increase the number of fluorescents and the mercury and other
contaminants many thousands of times over.  

Ron D'Eau Claire 

-----Original Message-----
From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
Behalf Of Meredith Bliss
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 7:42 PM
To: Forest Grove local interests list
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] It's Not Easy Being Green

Why is there all this concern about the mercury in compact fluorescent
bulbs, 
as if ordinary fluorescent bulbs haven't always been equally full of
mercury? 
Do you suppose stores have been dutifully sending them to hazardous waste 
sites all these years?

On Wednesday 28 February 2007 17:15, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
> ---From Electronic Design at 
> http://www.elecdesign.com/Articles/Index.cfm?AD=1&AD=1&ArticleID=15026
>
> CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps) have been in the news recently 
> because a California legislator (Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys) 
> wants to mandate "Dairy Queen" bulbs to replace incandescents. That 
> same week, the Australian government announced plans to phase out 
> incandescent light bulbs and replace them with more energy-efficient 
> compact fluorescent bulbs across the country...
>
> ...the fact that politicians around the world are warming up to CFLs 
> is just goofy, and the reason can be summed up in one word: mercury.
>
> The news outlet that got it right was National Public Radio (NPR), 
> although it took some listener thumping to get their attention. The 
> original feature aired on "All Things Considered" (ATC) on Feb. 8, 
> 2007, a puff piece about Wal-Mart's push to sell 100 million compact 
> fluorescent bulbs in 2007. The result, Wal-Mart said, would be grand 
> savings on the part of consumers-to the tune of $3 billion over the 
> life of the bulbs. There was a lot of happy talk after that.
>
> The following Thursday, when ATC aired its segment with listener 
> responses, there was a moment of clarity. NPR Environmental Editor 
> Elizabeth Shogren responded on-air to a listener's criticism with some 
> hard facts. She had talked to John Skinner, executive director of the 
> Solid Waste Association of North America, a national trade association 
> for trash and recycling companies and dumps. Skinner noted that while 
> it's legal in most states for people to throw out compact bulbs, it's 
> not a good idea because the bulbs often break before they get to the 
> landfill. As a result, trash collectors can be exposed to very high 
> levels of mercury or the mercury could seep into the soil.
>
> Shogren went on to look into recycling the bulbs. She discovered that 
> even cities that have curbside recycling wouldn't take the bulbs; they 
> have to go to a hazardous waste collection bay. The closest center to 
> Shogren's home turned out to be 95 miles away. (One good source of 
> this information is www.lamprecycle.org. They list 25 companies in the 
> U.S. where you can drop off your CFLs, and 30 that have some kind of 
> pickup service.)
>
> Then Shogren talked to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). An 
> EPA spokesperson said that the agency had been urging stores that sell 
> the bulbs to help recycle them, but that so far the biggest sellers of 
> the bulbs haven't stepped up to the play. The one company that does 
> recycle its CFLs is Ikea. (Wal-Mart was mentioned specifically; but 
> they had not, at that time, responded to Shogren.)
>
> --------------------------------------
>
> In the meantime General Electric has been developing a high-efficiency 
> incandescent bulb that is expected to be as efficient as the CFLs but 
> without the complex electronics in the base to generate the very high 
> voltages the CFL needs, the mercury or the phosphors that can pollute. 
> That are expected to be on the market by 2010.
>
> 
>http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/ge/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&n
>e wsId=20070223005120&newsLang=en&ndmConfigId=1001109&vnsId=681
>
> Or
>
> http://tinyurl.com/3cgl2z
>
> Even here in "green Oregon" people are instructed to throw their 
> mercury-laden bulbs into their trash bins for pickup in some areas(1) 
> although Waste Management does ask the people treat the bulbs as 
> hazardous waste and take them to a recycling center(2)
>
> (1) 
> http://www.zerowaste.org/publications/CFL/CFL_case_studies.htm#exec_su
> mmary
>
> (2) http://www.wmnorthwest.com/guidelines/orfluorescentbulbs.htm
>
> As Kermit often said, "It's not easy being green..." It's equally 
> important that all too often we don't know how to be green because we 
> get the wrong information from the media.
>
> Ron D'Eau Claire
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> GroveNet mailing list
> GroveNet at rdrop.com http://www.rdrop.com/mailman/listinfo/grovenet

-- 
----------------------------------------
Just happy to be here, but speaking 
only for myself!
Meredith Bliss --- www.rdrop.com/~mbliss
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