All Lights on CFLs!

For as long as they have been available, my dad has been pushing the compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs on my mom. Now that she is repainting the bathrooms and putting in new light fixtures all over, almost EVERY bulb in the house is the cool energy-efficient spiral kind. But this morning, as our friend Dick was installing the new lights, she couldn’t decide if indeed it was just too much light for the space. Then Dick then went on and on about how these bulbs aren’t actually good for the environment because of the mercury and the number that end up in landfills. I wanted to argue with him, but I just didn’t have the answers … all I knew was they saved energy. I mean 23 watts that give off 100 watts of light?! Amazing!

Turns out he was partially right. They do contain some mercury—less than 6 mg per bulb, compared to the 7mg in each cell phone battery and 500 mg in regular thermometers. But, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, CFLs actually help reduce atmospheric mercury pollution.

Because about 50 percent of the country’s power comes from coal-fired power plants, using CFLs actually prevents mercury from being released into the air by power plants. A power plant emits about 10 mg of mercury to produce the electricity needed to run an incandescent bulb, compared to only 2.4 mg of mercury to run a CFL for the same amount of time.

Also, if you break a bulb, you don’t need a HAZMAT suit or anything. In fact, you just open a window and use a damp, disposable paper towel to pick up the pieces. Then you put the paper towel with the broken pieces in a sealed plastic bag and bring it to a recycling center the same way you should for all your used-up bulbs. That’s the biggest thing, actually, that CFLs need to be properly recycled to really be eco-friendly. If you put them out with the trash, they will very likely break and release that mercury into the atmosphere. Instead, you can bring them to a dozen or so places that recycle them including Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Ikea and other places that may be listed on the packaging. You can also find a recycling center near you at lamprecycle.org and earth911.org.

As a last tid-bit, I will say this: don’t go out and toss perfectly good working regular bulbs to replace them with CFLs. Instead, wait until those bulbs burn out, properly dispose of them and replace them with CFLs. No need to make more trash in the move to be more eco-friendly!