cross-posted from: https://lemmy.crimedad.work/post/45354
cross-posted from: https://pixelfed.crimedad.work/p/crimedad/645809278769635471
These just go out with the other recycling, right?
this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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Those weird bulbs are called compact fluorescent lamps or CFLs. They are energy-efficient light bulbs that contain a small amount of mercury, which is toxic to humans and the environment. they should never be thrown away in the household trash.
Your local dump or transfer station will (usually) have an attendant who knows how they deal with them.
Is it worse for the environment than driving 80 minutes round trip to the dump to ask about it?
Genuine question.
Perhaps I'm talking from the European perspective but over here every supermarket and convenience store has a battery and light bulb recycling box. Can't imagine it's much different in the US.
Iβve got bad news for youβ¦
Sometimes your place of work might have electronics recycling bins or something, but for the most part youβre expected to go to a special eco centre to recycle large electronics and batteries and stuff like this. Often you even have to pay a fee for them to take these items, which seems incredibly stupid to me because it just encourages everybody to throw them out with the normal trash.
You may find some stores in some places that will take this stuff, but as far as I know this is not commonplace in much of North America. There are also some services where you can pay a fee for somebody to collect an item. We did that for a swollen lithium cell recently.
Every single lowes or home depot has a recycling station for batteries and CFL bulbs at the entrance or near the customer service desk. I assume those stores are all over the country.
Thatβs very different than every grocery store, though. Might also be different in Canada.
My local grocery store takes batteries and light bulbs and a few other electronics/etc for recycling. May just be a local thing though
You are comparing tossing the lightbulb into household waste to pretty much the worst way of properly disposing the lightbulb.
So your question is a false dilemma, because there's a third option: Collect these things until you have enough that it's better for the environment to drive them to the next recycling spot than to toss them in the bin.
That's a great question, thank you! It made me dick (edit: standing by my mistake!) a (tiny) bit deeper. I took a different perspective and the tldr is: Do you want to kill specifics? I.e. local plants, animals, water poisoning, etc - then mercury is the winner!
If you're after killing via global temperature variation then the car is.... Well... Killing it.
But on a serious note: both are bad but depending on how your local trash is handled those small bulbs could actually have an impact, most likely via the water chain.
If those are the two options I had I would just store them like OP. But then again where I live most shops take those back to recycle them properly.
Thanks again for the question, I had a fun few minutes!
I hope that second sentence was a typoβ¦
Why? If I want to learn the impact I try to understand the intention I would need - it's (intended to be) written from that point of view.
Now if I don't want it I know what not to do - plus the implications.
I think you meant dig, not dick. That's probably what they were referring to.
Probably. Then again, you could just call ahead? Or look at the website?
Gotcha. I guess these will just live in the box with my old batteries forever.
I got rid of hundreds of pounds of old batteries at my community electronics recycling event this year. See if your community has one.
How did you accumulate hundreds of pounds of batteries? That's a crazy amount! 100 pounds is equivalent to almost 2000 AA batteries.
Your Home Depot probably has a bin for them.
Dunno how it is elsewhere but we can bring electronics, batteries and light bulbs to the hardware store for disposal