How do I dispose of this bulb?

[Steve Firth]

As is most "recycling". Cardboard seems to be recycled pretty thoroughly, so I've no objection to paper/cardboard recycling since it's fairly simple. Cans should also be recycled but I'm less sure that councils treat them appropriately. The market is flooded with cullet so "recycling" glass seems a complete waste of time. Firstly it's not much of an environmental hazard. All Flesh is Grass, All Sand is Glass. Secondly the major use for it nowadays seems to be as hardcore.

I had been fairly careful at work to use the bin marked for PET and drinks cans since there seemed to be a fair chance these would b recycled. Then I spotted the cleaner emptying both containers into the same waste skip.

[Frank Erskine]

I've just phoned my LA about disposal of CFLs (and indeed normal FL tubes). The guy there isn't aware of any special arrangements and advised my to simply put them in the normal wheelie-bin, even though I did point out to him that they do contain a bit of mercury.

[Huge]

My local (Bedford) "Tidy Tip" has a bin for CFLs. Needless to say, the numpties are putting GLS bulbs in it.

[D.M. Procida]

That's impossible, otherwise we could never belive anything true.

Since Plato, most people have been pretty satisfied with "justified true belief" as a definition of knowledge.

Daniele

[clumsy bastard]

in this context "belief" is as in "faith", in other words belief in that for which there is no hard evidence.

"Truth" in this context is probably nearer to factual knowledge backed by peer reviewed repeatable scientific experiment and observation.

I *think*, unfortunately two similar debates are running in two NGs :-)

[Andy Dingley]

Which at the scope you have to think about for council planning is actually a _good_ thing. It's better for them to have some "false positives" like this than to stop using it for everything. Afetr all, a GLS can be disposed of as a CFL, if a little less efficiently.

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 12:48:57 +0000 someone who may be Frank Erskine wrote this:-

They do and schemes are in place to deal with bulk quantities of them. In small quantities there is not much harm and the fact that perfection has not been achieved in disposing of them is not a reason to avoid using them.

In addition I have heard [1] that using tungsten lamps instead means that more mercury will be emitted from power stations to provide the extra electricity than the mercury the compact fluorescent lamp contains. I assume that this calculation was done using the average basket of generation types, those who bring up the mercury question tend not to have 100% green tariffs.

[1] To be fair I did hear it from a party politician representing the Labour Party, a Westminster Minister of some sort. So the usual cautions about believing what a representative of the Labour Party says apply.

[Andy Dingley]

If you aren't getting value for money from your Labour peers, take them off the payroll

me, is an Apparatchik the one between a Lord and a Duke?

[Zen83237]

fired power station than from a nuclear power station.

Kevin

[Andy Dingley]

That's because nuclear power stations don't have too much in the way of a "flue". Their waste goes out on railway wagons.

[Zen83237]

The point is people wont live near a nuclear power station in belief of the radiation leaks but nobody bats an eye lid about gas fired stations. And those people buying expensive flats after the Olympics wont realise it is a nuclear site either.

Kevin

[me here]

Chuck the bl**dy thing in the bin. It's probably worse trying to recycle thinngs that LAs aren't set-up to recycle in bulk (AKA flog to China or India) than doing what we've always done.

Unless and until small-volume stuff like this - and batteries and what have you - can be dealt with efficiently there's no benefit and probably a net net detriment to making a special trip to the tip to recycle them into the special receptacle that the dump-numpty chucks into the landfill skip at the end of the day anyway.

[Andy Champ]

Where it is stuck safely away in a store. Not spread through the atmosphere.

To all believers in fossil fuels I only want to say one thing:

REMEMBER ABERFAN.

Andy

[Bob Eager]

But to be fair, that's not a lot different from Chernobyl. Incompetence in both cases, with tragic effects in both cases.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed coal ash tips are quite radioactive too. As is Dartmooor etc.

The nuclear industry is required to constrain its emissions to less than

1% of background. If I have that right.

No coal station could meet those targets.

The real danger is spent fuel rods by and large, and the reactor vessels themselves when decommissioned.

They can be sources of radioactivity of a fairly pernicious sort for many years afterwards.

Fortunately the isotopes that can accumulate in animal/vegetable tissue are fairly short lived - tens of years only.

The longer term stuff is pretty unlikely to wander about..more than the ricks from which it originally comes.

A reactor is ater all only accelerating a natural process of radioactive decay that the world is doing anyway.

Might as well make use of it.

[dennis]

No it isn't.

[David Hansen]

On Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:45:35 +0000 someone who may be Andy Champ wrote this:-

Not in the UK. The railway wagons take the waste to Windscale, where it is dissolved in nitric acid. The resulting highly radioactive nitric acid is then pumped to some creaky storage tanks which have caused great concern for over a decade [1]. This nitric acid is slowly being turned into glass blocks. However, the intense radioactivity is not kind on the glass block making equipment. The first two glass block lines were supplemented by a third, but the last time I checked (six months or so ago) the three of them were still not working as fast as necessary to meet the target for getting rid of this crap.

[1] the equivalent tanks in the USA are in an even worse condition and the most leaky of them are being emptied slowly.

[Andy Dingley]

messagenews: [e-mail]...

For once Dennis, I'd have to agree with you. 8-)

[Andy Dingley]

Where's that?

[The Natural Philosopher]

messagenews: [e-mail]...

Oh, so what else is it doing then..