Asklemmy

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

My local Lowe's has a bin to drop them in near the exit after checkout.

The home Depot has a drop bin near the entrance.

And sometimes they don't. You gotta check ahead, unless you're going there anyway

It's a safe and legal thrill!

bloop