Hurrah for Home Depot. Today the chain of home improvement stores launched an in-store CFL recyling program in the U.S. -- increasing the number of places you can bring a spent CFL and its worrisome smidge of mercury by 1,973 locations.
The chain's Canada stores started accepting the bulbs in late 2007, so that probably means that a majority of the residents of North America are now no further than 10 miles from a safe place to drop off their expired CFLs.
"Ron Jarvis, Home Depot's senior vice president for enviornmental innovation...estimated that 75 percent of the nation's homes [in the U.S.] are within 10 miles of a Home Depot," reports today's edition of The New York Times.
What happens to the bulbs? According to Home Depot's press release,
...customers can simply bring in any expired, unbroken CFL bulbs, and give them to the store associate behind the returns desk. The bulbs will then be managed responsibly by an environmental management company who will coordinate CFL packaging, transportation and recycling to maximize safety and ensure environmental compliance.
And in the Dept. of Credit Where Credit Is Due, here's a bit more from that same release:
In addition to the CFL recycling program, The Home Depot has also launched an in store energy conservation program to switch Light Fixture Showrooms in U.S. stores from incandescent bulbs to CFLs by Fall 2008 and save $16 million annually in energy costs. The CFL recycling program is an extension of The Home Depot's Eco Options program. Eco Options, launched in April 2007, is a classification that allows customers to easily identify products that have less of an impact on the environment."
Compact fluorescent light bulbs are no-brainer alternatives to incandescent bulbs -- they use a fraction of the energy to produce the same amount of light, burn cool, last for years, and are increasingly easier to find in designs that offer the same kind of clean attractive light as the Edison bulbs.
But the potential exists for their increased popularity -- with many places even moving to ban the 125-year-old incandescent bulb entirely to conserve energy -- to add up to a toxic waste problem in landfills nationwide that are not designed to contain heavy metals.
A bit of review: when mercury enters the soil and water, it can be transformed bacteriologically into methylmercury, a highly toxic organic compound that can remain -- or bioaccumulate -- in animal tissue when consumed (notably in fish, in terms of foods humans eat).
Methylmercury, which is typically called simply mercury in health advisories, news reports, and such, also biomagnifies up the food chain, which means that it becomes more highly concentrated in the flesh of animals that eat other animals carrying methylmercury. Methylmercury exposure can hurt the nervous system, impair kidney function, damage the brain, and more.
Scary! So good on ya, Home Depot.
Update 25 June: Of course, the best way to cut mercury exposure and poisoning in most of the U.S. would be, first, to better filter and capture the pollution from coal-fired power plants. And then, to phase them out as fast as possible in favor of clean energy.
Proper recycling of CFL bulbs is a good thing, but it's just a baby step in dealing with the systemic problem of mercury pollution in the environment and mercury poisoning of humans and animals.
Image: "display window of a lightening store in the downtown section of damascus, syria," April 2007. flickr/Paul Keller.
The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (Process Self-reliance Series)
