Sure, we have recycling centers.
It's hardly economical to burn up $3.00 worth of gas to carry a defunct light bulb to the collection point.
Just thinking out-loud here:
Assume the following:
- 120 million households in the US
- Each disposes of 5 CFLs per year
- Each CFL contains 5mg of mercury
That works out (120,000,000 x 5 x 0.005) = 3 million grams of mercury
If this 3 million grams of mercury were distributed uniformly over the country, that works out to about 3/4 of a gram per square mile, not even worth considering.
If, however, these 3 million grams of mercury were concentrated - in landfills for example - one could simply avoid those areas.
We COULD establish a used CFL repository - call it "CfL Object Containment Area," or "CLOCA Mountain" for short.
Or we could redirect all defunct CFLs to a recycling center.
The current price of mercury is $600/36Kg ($0.02/g), or about $0.00001 per CFL. If some entity recovered ALL the mercury in the above hypothetical, its revenue would be... fifty thousand dollars per year (120,000,000 households x 5bulb/house x .005g/bulb x 1Kg/1000g x $600/36kg = $50.000)
A significant sum indeed.