How do I dispose of this bulb?

[Fred Finisterre]

It's one of these:

know how do I dispose of it safely/greenly?

Thanks,

Fred.

[Adrian C]

To do it greenly you simply pay a tax.

[Andrew Gabriel]

You could ask your council if they have any special facilities. If it was a personal purchase, and not a business purchase, you can send it back to the supplier for them to dispose of it free of charge (although I don't think they have to pay the return P&P costs).

However, at the moment, in the UK pretty much all domestic fluorescent lamp waste just goes in regular landfill, and most schemes that involve trying to deal with returning one lamp for green disposal will generate more polution than the lamp contains, such as driving to some recycling facility. These lamps have a disposal tax on them for paying for safe disposal, but there don't seem to be any schemes in place yet for collecting them from domestic waste.

Before the lamp died, did you find it worked well. How long did it last? What sort of fitting and position was it run in?

[PeterC]

My local tip - sorry, recycling centre - has a wheelie bin for CFLs.

(It also has a bin for dead cells - bit worrying if it gets a load of not-too-dead NiCads in it!).

[OG]

Short answer - local tip should have places to take them for safe disposal. If you're near an IKEA, they also take them back for disposal.

Longer answer - it's a disgrace. The intention of the regulators behind WEEE was that retailers and manufacturers would take responsibility for the safe disposal of waste electrical goods, and as I understand it, most European countries have systems whereby old electrical equipment can be left with the retailer when you buy replacements.

In the UK on the other hand, because we have such a supine 'business friendly' establishment, the regulations were framed to allow retailers to buy their way out of their responsibilities and contribute to an 'industry wide' scheme that raised money, gave it to local authorities and said "OK, you get rid of the problem for us".

The outcome is that your local authority pays whatever it costs for getting rid of WEEE, your Council Tax increases to meet any shortfall in cost, and the retailers and manufacturers absolve themselves of responsibility.

[Bruce]

I'm curious too - this looks interesting.

[Alan]

In message , Fred Finisterre wrote

Just throw it into landfill like everyone else does.

[Derek Geldard]

Are you sure it's really dead ?

"Dynamo" Hansen's CFL's last 20 years +

It's a Chinese Yellow, maybe it's just pining for it's homeland, the place of it's birth on the banks of the Yangtze Kiang.

;-)

Derek

[dmc]

I was quite surprised the other day to discover PCWorld will also take any WEEE items - even stuff not purchased from them.

See

particular, "PC World are offering free in store take back so you are able to take your items to our stores. You need not have purchased the equipment in one of our stores"

Only restriction seems to be "We reserve the right to refuse products that are not presented in a clean and safe manner".

I wonder how many fridges they get :)

Darren

[terry]

This recycling business seems to definitely be 'A work in progress'! Here ANY fluorescent tube or CFL is NOT SUPPOSED to be put into garbage pickup! They are all (now) classed as 'Hazardous waste'. However like anything also, one or two 'hidden' CFLs in the regular garbage pickup go gaily on their way to end up in the dump (tip) and be buried. (Along with regular light bulbs and everything else including much bigger items!) Particularly since there seems to be no procedure set up by the local recycling depots to accept them! However one or two 48 inch fluorescent tubes put out in the garbage pickup were left by side of the road; don't know if that's how one got 'accidentally on purpose' broken, but have our suspicions. Based on a couple of complaints about the occasional actions of one garbage collection contractor!

[John Rumm]

The UK interpretation of the regulations is so complex as to be a consultants dream of a gravy train. The upshot is that many business have simply ignored them as they can't see any workable way of implementing them, plenty can't even work out if they even apply to them in the first place.

There are a number of companies that have packaged a service for compliance, but these are rather expensive at the moment.

I would guess Jo public prefers it that way. They like paying low prices for their electronic stuff and seem to mind less the indirect costs that add up as a result of this. If you require that the retailers or manufacturers[1] shoulder the cost of handling it, then you can expect the costs to be passed directly onto the customer.

[1] Obviously manufacturers of EE are far harder to tax since they are not usually in the country of consumption these days.

[John Rumm]

We now have three wheelie bins; one green for food / garden / compostible waste that is emptied each week, the original grey one that is not designated recyclables, and a purple lidded version for "rubbish"

- these are emptied each week in alternation. Instructions explicitly say that all bulbs, and batts are to be thrown in the rubbish one and not the recyclables. (Not sure how you are supposed to dispose of a long tube though). Dog crap is apparently also rubbish and not compost. So there is no consistency either.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I have 4 schemes to contend with -- mine, and 3 other family households all in different council areas whose rubbish I put out from time to time. They've all got completely different rules about what can go in what bin, when they collect if it's a bank holiday, etc.

There's some rule that requires councils to prevent batteries going into landfill, which none seem to have complied with. Ours was going to distribute post-paid envelopes to put used batteries in so you post them back to the council, but that never took off (I wouldn't be surprised if the Royal Mail didn't like the idea of pillar boxes full of leaking batteries).

I notice some of the large customers I deal with in the City have battery collection bins at work intended for their staff to bring in all their dead batteries from home. I don't know who organises that, but that's probably one of the cheapest ways to collect them.

[The Medway Handyman]

OMG!

"Move away from the bulb". "Now".

This is hazardous waste and could destroy the planets ecosystem. You could be fined £5000 for incorrect disposal.

Shame on you for ever buying it in the first place.

[ARWadsworth]

Barnsley "four bins" council have

grey - rubbish green - garden waste and cardboard (1)(2) blue - paper (3) brown - glass and cans

(1) the cardboard must not be thick cardboard (2) the cardboard must not have come into contact with food (3) no telephone directories

The grey bin goes out on alternate weeks to the other three bins.

The wheelie bin police do come around every now and again and have a look inside the bins but never the grey bin.

The council did offer free composting bins at one point but as I believe that composting nearly killed my Mum I am not a big fan of it.

Adam

[Graham.]

I have dissected some recently. The Philips 11W ones were completely dead, but the tubes themselves showed no discolouration at the ends, so I took a look at the ballasts The reservoir capacitors have gone high ESR, and are bulging at the top.

[<me9]

We get given small labelled plastic bags (about A5 size) in which to put small batteries in. This is then put in the recyclables box for kerbside sorting once a fortnight. It seems to work well.

[Andrew Gabriel]

on working, albeit with reduced light output and more difficulty starting. My guess is that something else was the cause of death, such as failure of the switching transistor. Normally, CFL's die when the emission coating on the tube electrodes has all sputtered off (same with most fluorescent tubes), but CFL ballasts can fail if the lamp is operating in an unusually hot environment, such as a pooly ventilated light fitting.

[OG]

As well as collecting fluorescent bulbs, IKEA also have a bin for batteries.

[Adam Aglionby]

Ask your local council if they have invested in one of these:

a local supermarket is having one fitted, perhaps not....

Adam