Save the environment -- recycle those fluorescent bulbs!
SEATTLE -- You care about the environment, so you use those energy-efficient compact florescent bulbs and you make sure to properly recycle them.
We know the bulbs contain a minute amount of mercury and must be handled as toxic waste. If you believe the Internet rumors, these bulbs are sent to China to pollute the landscape there -- not true!
They go to the Total Reclaim processing facility in South Seattle.
The place is filled from wall-to-wall with old fluorescent bulbs -- those long skinny tubes and the new compact spirals. They're brought here to get a new life through recycling.
Craig Lorch owns the company and says almost nothing here goes to the landfill -- it's all broken down and used again.
For the bulbs with ballast at the bottom, a worker wearing a respirator breaks the glass and pulls it away from the ballast. Then the glass goes into the breaking chamber. The mercury powder inside is trapped and reused.
Those ballasts go to the company's electrical equipment recycling plant.
"There's a teeny-tiny bit of mercury that might stay in the glass," said Craig Lorch. "So we want to make sure that doesn't get back into human contact so it goes off to become aggregate for making concrete."
Total Reclaim recycled about 3 million fluorescent bulbs last year. It expects to be well above that figure this year, thanks in part to retailers Ikea, McLendon Hardware and Bartell Drugs that take back the old CFL bulbs for free and pay to have them recycled.
Remember, fluorescent bulbs should not go to the landfill, whether the long kind of CFL or not.
Most compact fluorescent bulbs still go to the landfill -- instead of a recycling center. By one estimate, of 98 percent of the household bulbs that contain mercury, 98 percent still go to the landfill.
It's just easier to toss those little guys in the trash then to take them back to a collection center, but we've got to change our ways and keep these bulbs out of the landfill.
You can find where to recycle your bulbs via the Take It Back Network -- a list of businesses that accept old fluorescent bulbs. With some, it's free. Others charge a minimal fee.
We know the bulbs contain a minute amount of mercury and must be handled as toxic waste. If you believe the Internet rumors, these bulbs are sent to China to pollute the landscape there -- not true!
They go to the Total Reclaim processing facility in South Seattle.
The place is filled from wall-to-wall with old fluorescent bulbs -- those long skinny tubes and the new compact spirals. They're brought here to get a new life through recycling.
Craig Lorch owns the company and says almost nothing here goes to the landfill -- it's all broken down and used again.
For the bulbs with ballast at the bottom, a worker wearing a respirator breaks the glass and pulls it away from the ballast. Then the glass goes into the breaking chamber. The mercury powder inside is trapped and reused.
Those ballasts go to the company's electrical equipment recycling plant.
"There's a teeny-tiny bit of mercury that might stay in the glass," said Craig Lorch. "So we want to make sure that doesn't get back into human contact so it goes off to become aggregate for making concrete."
Total Reclaim recycled about 3 million fluorescent bulbs last year. It expects to be well above that figure this year, thanks in part to retailers Ikea, McLendon Hardware and Bartell Drugs that take back the old CFL bulbs for free and pay to have them recycled.
Remember, fluorescent bulbs should not go to the landfill, whether the long kind of CFL or not.
Most compact fluorescent bulbs still go to the landfill -- instead of a recycling center. By one estimate, of 98 percent of the household bulbs that contain mercury, 98 percent still go to the landfill.
It's just easier to toss those little guys in the trash then to take them back to a collection center, but we've got to change our ways and keep these bulbs out of the landfill.
You can find where to recycle your bulbs via the Take It Back Network -- a list of businesses that accept old fluorescent bulbs. With some, it's free. Others charge a minimal fee.