So here I am, packing for a move from the Sambro loop to Bedford. Like many people, I have some old junk to get rid of, some of which is not the most environmentally friendly stuff either which is probably why I haven’t succeeded in getting rid of it yet.
Our garages use the long fluorescent tube light bulbs we all know and love to hate. I’ve been collecting up the dead bulbs to take for proper recycling “some day”.
Some Day has now arrived. I know that these bulbs contain mercury not a lot, but enough that it takes several acres, by some US State standards, to “safely” contain it in a landfill. And given that I’ve spent the past three years getting IV and other treatments for metal poisoning, I’m not too keen to throw this stuff out with the trash for it to get crushed up at the end of my driveway and then trailed through town being inhaled by the poor unsuspecting guy hanging off the back of the garbage truck.
After having no luck online, I gave the RRFB a call to ask what to do with these things. Their answer: wrap them in cardboard and put them at the curb as garbage. Almost horrified, and completely unsatisfied that this is really our official policy, I asked if there was anything else I could do, and I was directed to call HRM’s recycling hotline.
I gave the HRM hotline a call and waited a while for someone to pick up. Posing the same question to the woman who answered, I was told that the proper thing to do with these toxic tubes was to wrap them in cardboard, label them as “glass”, and put them at the curb as garbage.
“You’re serious. This is our official policy? These contain mercury,” I said. “Yeah, but not a lot” was the response. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that “not a lot” multiplied by the population of HRM equals “a lot”. This stuff doesn’t break down or go away.
With our society blindly driving headlong towards an all-fluorescent bulb future, HRM has frighteningly dropped the ball when it comes to dealing with the very real environmental and health consequences of disposing of these toxic products.
Get a clue, HRM. If products like these are available and even being pushed by your own marketing initiatives, you have a moral and, I would argue, a legal obligation to know how to handle the toxic aftermath.
I guess I’ll be packaging up these old dead bulbs and moving them with me to my new place until HRM gets their act together and starts receiving them at the hazardous materials drop-off for mercury recovery and recycling.
—Andrew G., Toxic Avenger
This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2009.
Wow. You were really steered wrong.
As you’re driving to Bedford, stop by the Bayers Lake recycling facility and leave the lights with them. They’ll do the right thing with them.
A lot of the big corporations in NS actually have more sense than the HRM, places like Home Depot and Staples have electronic and lightbulb and battery recycling boxes, they’d probably have an idea of what happens to them afterwards.
I wish there was an easier way to get rid of my old computers and batteries and stuff than lugging them all the way out to Bayers Lake. I wish they would have an annual collection day where you are allowed to put out stuff like that.
I will look into the Staples thing.
There’s a recycling place off Lady Hammond that takes electronics and old computers as well as your regular cans and bottles. I think it’s Tanner’s? It’s down the side street beside the rubber ducky car wash.
You can drop off your to-be-recycled electronics at any place listed at http://www.acestewardship.ca/consumers/dro…
Mole: There’s ones in Burnside, and some places take select tech recyclables, although Burnside pays you(4.50 a car battery, hey two coffees), some EnviroDepots charge to take them.
Thanks for the tips!
And the chances are they’ll end up at the landfill, like everything else.
Actually Bro Tim, fluorescent lamps dropped off at the HHW facility, retailer’s drop off points or through commercial disposal services eventually end up at one of several mercury reclamation facilities in North America. The take intact bulbs and bagged shredded lamps from lamp recyclers and separate the mercury from the glass and metal ends. Then the non-mercury waste gets recycled and the mercury is re-distilled before shipping back out to the lighting and other industries.
Don’t believe everything you hear about that voice— Sometimes retailers send those to a central location and ship them out to e-dumps in China. Which ones? We’ll never know because they don’t have to disclose where it goes. At least there’s more of a trail with the RRFB’s efforts. Also, that’s not to say that if the bulbs go to the landfill, they won’t be sorted appropriately (as unlikely that may be).