Make:

Do they take them back when they burn out?

It is good to replace incandescent lights with more efficient CFL, but the CFL contain mercury, which is not exactly good for the environment. Especially when they get landfilled.

I hear about how marvelous this energy efficient bulbs are at saving energy, but I can't find anywhere to recycle/dispose of them properly.

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tms10000:

Your city should have some kind of hazardous waste disposal site :)

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Lies, lies, and more lies...

1) CF lamps don't last nearly as long as the manufacturers claim. I have tested this by marking the bases of CFLs with the date on the day I install them.

2) CF lamps don't put out nearly as much light as the manufacturers claim, which means the efficiency calculations are no good.

3) The higher cost of the lamps is justified by the supposed long life and high efficiency, neither of which are real. My experience is that "5 year" lamps last about a year.

My wife hates the light spectrum (and I've tried them all) from CF lamps. She also hates the fact that many of them are slow to achieve full brightness. Disposing of them is a PITA because of the mercury content.

Free CF lamps might be worth the price, but just barely.

MR

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1 million fluorescent light bulbs?

...to any one who visits their stores today?

Holy cow, what am I going to do with a million bulbs???

;)

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Seems to me that touted life expectancy is waay overstated...more like six months.. Too bad they aren't DATED so as to hold them to it. They are cheap to run tho. It would also be nice if they would run with a motion switch on 'em-they DON'T-just strobe. And burn out in hours. Well, maybe they'll work some of the numerous bugs out of 'em. Or get the LED thing going.

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Agreed with the MR
rehorstmark@netscape.net
They did not last as long as they claimed, a five year bulb last a three years. Have three of them on my hands. Don't want to dispose them in the garbage because of the mercury in them. Don't know what to do with them. Thank you for your time. Paul.

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Here's a short critique of the bogus argument that there will be a reduction in toxic mercury into the environment with CFL's due to the energy reduction from coal plants:
(1) The EPA figures are incorrect for several reasons. The basic one is that they assume 100% of electricity in the US is from coal plants. Not true. 50% of electricity does not come from coal plants in the US and coal plants are now mandated to reduce their mercury emissions by between 70% and 90% in the next several years.
(2) Places like California produce little energy from coal plants, so CFL energy reductions will not cut much mercury there.
(3) The 5mg of mercury generally claimed for CFL's is largely a goal and not the current reality which can be 300% to 600% higher, depending on the manufacturer. The EPA assumes just 4mg.
(4) CFL's are made in China with energy from mostly very dirty coal plants that emit much more mercury than US coal plants.
(5) CFL's made in China spill as much mercury into the environment as goes into the CFL's.
(6) CFL's are delivered here on ships using bunker oil, the worst mercury producer of the fuel oils. Incandescent bulbs are still almost all made in the US.
(7) There is no recycling program in place or planned that could handle the number of CFL's proposed. And after many years, even the industrial recycling programs only handle 25% of the mercury from fluorescent lights.
(8) It is likely that if any major recycling program is set up, the CFL's will be shipped back to China for reprocessing.
Thus, a massive CFL program will put a massive amount of toxic mercury into the environment and very likely into our kid's bodies. And the EPA says that a sixth of them already have too much mercury in them. Given the danger, it might be wise to believe the EPA in this case.

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