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Home Depot Offers Free Recycling for Burnt-Out CFL
What are some of my pet peeves? They are as follows: People who urinate on the toilet seats and don’t clean up after themselves, CFLs recycling, people who do not call you back, and plastic pots recycling. Okay, 2 green pet peeves and 2 annoying pet peeves. Well, one pet peeve might be going by the wayside, since Home Depot announced at the end of June that they will be taking back expired and UNBROKEN CFLs. Thanks to Beth of Fake Plastic Fish, who alerted me to an article on Tiny Choices, I now need to find another pet peeve to rant about. Like, I don’t have enough to do, Beth?
According to Home Depot’s press release, all of their stores will be offering free CFL recycling. Although Ikea offers free CFL recycling, driving to one of their stores may not be convenient.
So, how did this become a pet peeve of mine? A year ago I attended LightFair NYC where the newest advances in both LED and fluorescent technologies were featured. During the exhibit, I had a chance to speak at length with a representative of SLI Lighting who opened my eyes to the fact that CFLs were being pushed but no one was taking any responsibility to recycle the expired light bulbs.
Where were all those expired CFLs going to go? In the trash, and then to your neighborhood landfill, wherever that might be. Eventually all the mercury in the light bulbs would leach into our ground water. Not a pretty picture.
This discussion prompted me to write an article questioning whether where we as a society were moving too fast to embrace the CFL movement without looking at the consequences of disposal of light bulbs with mercury in our landfills. If I recall correctly wasn’t both Home Depot and Wal-Mart pushing the sales of these CFLs? Shouldn’t they be responsible to take them back?
I was so miffed that I decide to do something about it. I called (a couple of times) all the vice presidents of sustainability at Lowes, Home Depot and Wal-Mart. Of course, no one called me back except the VP at Lowes. So kudos to Home Depot for stepping forward and being the first giant to take back CFLs.
I wondered what Wal-Mart’s response will be regarding Home Depot’s decision. Now, when you drop off your CFL, you are more apt to buy a new one from who else? HOME DEPOT! So, hopefully for the love of profits, both Lowes and Wal-Mart will follow suit. They would be crazy not to. Now, you have no excuse to recycle your CFL.
By the way, I sent an email to Wal-Mart’s sustainable PR director to get an answer whether Wal-Mart will be following Home Depot’s recycling efforts. I will keep you posted.
So do you have a pet peeve eco or not?
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on July 5th, 2008 at 4:53 am
I hate that I can’t return my plastic plant pots, too! Why won’t nurseries take them back and reuse them? Let me know if you hear of any updates on that one.
Beth
Beth Terry’s last blog post..Fear of unpunctuated silence, or emptiness sucks.
on July 5th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Some areas in the country take them back when a company uses them to make recycled lumber. In NJ, a county actually collects them and a company picks them up and ships them to China to be reused in some way. (Yes, China) Nurseries won’t take them back stating that they may have bacteria in them so they can’t reuse them. I would gladly wash and dry them so that they would take them back. Should we start a petition for these growers to take back their pots? Anna
on August 2nd, 2008 at 4:47 am
[...] http://ihop.za.net/?p=122 - bookmarked by 2 members originally found by jodevl on July 16, 2008 Home Depot Offers Free Recycling for Burnt-Out CFL http://www.green-talk.com/2008.....t-out-cfl/ - [...]