Disposing of your Compact Fluorescent light bulbs

Compact fluorescent bulbs contain small amounts of mercury. The mercury poses no threat while in the bulb, but if you break one be careful not to inhale the mercury - immediately use a wet rag to clean it up and put all of the pieces, and the rag, into a plastic bag.

Although household CFL bulbs may legally be disposed of with regular trash (in the US), they are categorized as household hazardous waste. As long as the waste is sent to a modern municipal landfill, the hazard to the environment is limited. However, CFL's should not be sent to an incinerator, which would disperse the mercury into the atmosphere.

Check to see where in your area you can dispose of CFL’s:
http://www.earth911.org

The best solution is to save spent CFL's for a community household hazardous waste collection, which would then send the bulbs to facilities capable of treating, recovering or recycling them. For more information on CFL disposal or recycling, you can contact your local municipality.

Although CFL's have these handling and disposal issues, the large energy savings of CFL bulbs compared to incandescent is of greater overall environmental benefit.*

"We see the future, and the future looks bright"

* www.eartheasy.com