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?
this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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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...