These just go out with the other recycling, right?
pixelfed.crimedad.work
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?
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.
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.
Your Home Depot probably has a bin for 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.
I’ve got bad news for you…
Sometimes your place of work might have electronics recycling bins or something, but for the most part you’re 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.
That’s 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
Not sure if you are willing to share your state but I live in Minnesota and we can get rid of them for free here. My county has a free spot where we can drop off old paint and other chemicals and CFL bulbs for free. Also there is another six spots listed on their website where I can drop CFL bulbs. With the exception of one place it's all free. The one place I'm not sure if they charge a fee as I've never been there and they aren't open right now. But on a guess I'd say they are also free.
Again I'm curious which state you live in.
My apartment complex has a battery recycling center at least. Best Buy near me had a bunch of bins for various electronics so at least some areas in the US have convenient places for it.
Now do they actually recycle them vs toss them in the dump? No clue lol
I’m originally from Canada. This might be something that’s gotten better, at least for batteries and CFLs, but I think large electronics like TVs are still supposed to be taken to the eco centre with a fee. I could just be misinformed though.
In the US TV sets can be dropped off for free at best buy
Oh, cool. I don’t shop at Best Buy or Home Depot or Lowes because they’re all out of the way and I don’t drive, so I don’t really know about these stores. That’s good to know, though.
I love that we have those helpful conversation here on Lemmy!
Yeah! I still wish we had these returns at grocery stores. I’m sure some do it, but I don’t think the ones near me do :(.
Honest question : why would anyone need or want to drop off electronics, paint, light bulbs, or batteries at a grocery store? Why not drop it off at an appropriate type place? Example the hardware store will take light bulbs.
Oh, plenty of grocery stores sell these things, so it would be nice to be able to return them at the same place. This matters especially for people who don’t drive because the dedicated place may be difficult to get to by transit, but it also might just be out of the way for most people which means they’re kind of encouraged to be lazy and just throw it out in the regular trash.
Can't say I have ever had to pay to dispose of CFLs. Bestbuy takes them as does all of the electronic recyclers around me.
Yeah, this was mentioned in another part of the thread. I wasn’t really aware that BestBuy had electronics recycling because I don’t drive so I kind of stick to smaller shops in my area, and I don’t really go to big box stores like that very often if at all. Where I live is super walkable, but I don’t think I’ve seen recycling for electronics in the nearby stores. I might need to look harder when I’m there again, though.
You can usually call or check out a website rather than driving. Most people save them up, then take them all at once or take them when they are going there anyway with other stuff to dispose of.
Also be really careful if one breaks (get everyone out of the room and air it out first).
https://www.epa.gov/mercury/cleaning-broken-cfl
Yes. This is directly bad for your immediate environment. But also, most of the big hardware places like Home Depot accept them.
Best Buy accepts electronics recycling too.
Is it really 80 minutes to the nearest recycling center that's terrible where do you live?
In Europe you would be hard pushed for it to be 10 minutes.
Well round trip so about 40 minutes if it’s rush hour traffic. But that’s to the dump. The closest recycling center is close, but it’s just a bunch of unmanned bins.
The US is a lot bigger and more spread out than most Europeans seen to imagine
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 typo…
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.
Dicking deeper means something entirely different from digging deeper.
You typed “dick deeper” I think you meant “dig deeper” 😂
Oh. Ohhhhh. I'll leave that in there for others to laugh at!
And thanks for pointing it out I completely missed your point!
I love leaving mistakes for others to laugh at.
You can also google your location, lots of places have the information online on a website or app. I think OP is from NJ so
https://ucnj.org/recycling/fluorescent-bulb-recycling/
https://www.nj.gov/dep/dshw/recycling/fluorescent_bulbs.htm
There's barely any recycling infrastructure where I live so to the landfill it'll go...
No. They contain mercury and electronics and are typically not recyclable. They may be recyclable, but probably not curbside, and are considered hazardous waste. See https://www.epa.gov/mercury/recycling-and-disposal-cfls-and-other-bulbs-contain-mercury
Not in my area, I have to take them to Lowes or Home Depot.
I didn't know that Lowe's and Home Depot accept these for disposal. Useful info.
My local Lowe's has a bin to drop them in near the exit after checkout.
The home Depot has a drop bin near the entrance.
It’s worth pointing out the same is true for batteries. Home Depot and Lowe’s will typically accept those and old cellphones, etc.
I recycle old dollar bills
And sometimes they don't. You gotta check ahead, unless you're going there anyway
And Staples takes electronics for recycling
Second this.
CF bulbs have some mercury in them and need to be disposed of properly. DO NOT put these in the trash!
I took mine to the collection box in the customer service / returns area at home despot.
ETA: I think I am now rid of all the compact florescent bulbs in my house. LEDs are now cheap enough that I'll get rid of good CFs for the energy savings.
Only problem I have had with LED lights is they stop working after maybe 6 months whereas the CF bulbs would go for years. I have CF bulbs in fixtures that have been working since before I got my first LED installed. What has your experience been? What brand of bulb are you using? I am willing to pay more for a bulb that will last.
We bit the bullet and bought a bunch of Philips hue bulbs about 4 years ago. None of them have failed out of about 18 of them. The only things that have failed are both of the hue motion sensors we bought to automate lights turning on.
Happy to answer your questions.
Most of my LEDs were purchased at Costco for dirt cheap prices. Like $1 USD for a 4 pack. They occasionally have special deals where the utility company subsidizes the price so they are ungodly cheap. I've mostly stopped looking for bulbs because I have a houseful now. Costco also reduces your risk with their easy returns.
The brand is Feit electric which seems to be a common bulb brand around here. Nothing special as far as I can tell.
And I cannot recall an LED bulb failing. My CFs were also not generally failing. You might call an electrician to see what they might suggest. I suppose there are power supply situations that are unfriendly to LEDs.
The last LEDs I bought are Feit electric Item 1715918. These are 100 watt replacement LEDs with a switch on them to choose the color (temperature) of light between soft white (2700K), bright white (3000K), cool white (4000K), daylight (5000K) and cool daylight (6500K). Seems like a great idea to let you choose your color. I prefer daylight over the harsher whites.
cobra89 mentions Philips brand and I have heard they sell some of the best bulbs. I don't think I have any but I may eventually get some for specific applications.
Tangential, but here's an interesting video about dim-able LEDs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbvVnOxb1AI
You might have fixtures that overheat the bulbs. LEDs run cool compared to other bulbs but they are very sensitive to heat (that's why the old ones had fins on them). If your fixture is enclosed, LEDs in there will have a much shorter life span.
One common fixture in these parts are those silly domes with the screw in the middle, they regularly killed bulbs at my old place. I even had one come out that had discoloration from the heat.
CFLs and incandescents didn't like those fixtures or heat either, but I don't know as much about how their life span was impacted.
My wife and I affectionally refer to those as boob lights.
Some cities are now using a service from ReCollect that let you figure out how to dispose of most materials, you could look on your smartphone if there's literally an app for it.
It even comes with your waste/commpost/recycling collection schedule, reminders, etc.
That kind of hazardous material such as CFL lightbulb will likely require special handling, so for that kind of stuff I keep a box for those items I can easily dispose of, that I'll bring to my local ecocenter when it's full.
Every home has the miscellaneous hazmat box.
Some Home Depot and Lowes locations take these for recycling if you live in the US. Ask about it at the customer service counter.
Granted this and another post here has me wondering how sincerely they are made but anyway you can't take anything for granted nowadays as different recycling providers will take different things and some stop taking things so you need to check their website like once a year. for example here is mine https://cdn.wasteconnections.com/cms/groot-west/Groot%20Recycling%20Guidelines.pdf
😬 Thank you for the education, kind internet friend. 😬
Same. Until today I had no idea OP had two light bulbs he was trying to dispose of. You learn something new every day
throw em in the ocean
I was just thinking that since I also have an old car battery to get rid of. I'll make a beach trip out of it!
It's a safe and legal thrill!
bloop
It's a safe and legal thrill!
Shout out to CrimeDad running all his own infrastructure top to bottom!
🙏
Yeah just go ahead and put them in the metal / glass / plastic recycling, they will figure it out on that end with all the others that get thrown in there.
They contain mercury and are hazardous waste, not recycling. If, or rather when, they break they will contaminate everything around them and are a healthy hazard. So, no, definitely not curbside recycling.
There should be drop off points in many big box stores for this kind of stuff.
Oh no they'll contaminate some glass and plastic that have been thrown away!
"Oh no, they'll contaminate a lot of goods that were prepared for recycling and endanger the health of the people involved in that process chain."
When corrected, most people don't double down on their own, accidental, misinformation. The fact that you chose to be defensive and sarcastic instead, speaks a lot about the kind of person who dumps mercury in the recycling bin with the expectation that others will clean it up.
"When corrected" is doing a lot of work there
Makes sense to me. They aren't really just trusting everyone to have already sorted their recycling perfectly, right?