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Probably the most popular environmental tip ever is…yep…you guessed it…change your lightbulbs. We should all be using Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs or CFLs to save energy and reduce our carbon emissions. We all know this by now right?
Well, perhaps a lesser known idea is that we should also be taking care to dispose of CFLs properly as they contain small amounts of mercury. They shouldn’t be tossed in the garbage. Well, I thought it might be difficult to find a place to take my used CFLs since I have heard so many bloggers say as much lately but frankly I found this to be untrue. I live in a pretty small town and if I have 4 resources here for CFL disposal than I would hazard a guess that it isn’t so hard to recycle these babies.
First, you should check with the retailer you bought them from to see if they will take them back. Home Depot and Wal-Mart love to sell them and claim “greeness” but they are not so quick to take them back. Ikea though, is one retailer that will take them off your hands. If I still lived in Arizona this would be an option but alas I have no Ikea in central Ohio (crying).
Next you should call the private or public (whichever it may be) recycling service that you use and ask them about recycling CFLs and while you are at it recommend that they do start this practice if they don’t currently offer it. I use a private recycling service and had no luck here either.
My next step was to check with Earth911. I LOVE this site! I typed in Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs and my zip code and found 4 places I could drop off CFLs for disposal and interestingly one was a Goodwill and one was a Salvation Army…so if they are offering this in my small town you might be in luck too.
A last option you could use is a commercial service like lightbulbrecycling.com but their prices are pretty hefty so use this as a last resort or spend a little more moola on LED lightbulbs and forget the CFL hassle.
Kristi said,
September 28, 2007 at 11:12 am:
Thanks for the link, Tiffany! I didn’t know that recycling them was an option. Trying to find out where to take them was a headache. Thanks to you I’ve found a place that’s not too far away. There’s lots of other interesting stuff on that site as well. I’m looking forward to digging into it.