Got about a dozen of the old style 4 ft long, inch and a half diameter, T-12, 40 watt fluorescent tubes that I don't need and am looking to get rid of. Some new, some used, all work fine.
Neighbors don't want them- nor do the local charity donation centers or my trash pickup company.
Ideas?
There are places that take them. Check with your local recycle company, industrial electric suppliers and the like. There may be some state resource center you can call.
Looks like Battery Plus stores will take them too
Local school, library, factory, store, office that still uses them?
Amazon has recycle kits.
Walmart recycles them. Just place in a shopping cart and leave in the parking lot cart corral.
Take them to a county haz mat place or call around to the HOA site managers. Some of them are still clinging to T12 fixtures (Par 38s too) Most industrial places have switched over to a 21st century style.
Lowes took mine.
Your Trash Pickup service can't tell you where?
I tried an experiment, wrapped one in clear mailing tape and broke it with a hammer, figuring I'd put the glass pieces in the trash.
You have to hit them surprisingly hard, and when they pop the glass ignores the tape and you spend the next half hour picking it out of the grass.
Home Depot takes back CFLs but didn't want the tubes even though they sell them but Lowes took the rest of them.
Thx, I called my local one and they do too!
for $45!!
My Walmart is out of carts so I'll drop them off at the store near your house instead ;-)
My wife has been taking stuff to Staples. She even gave them an old mixer.
Nothing on their website and it's at least a half hour to 45 minutes on hold if you call them.
They started out as a Mom and Pop operation and things were fine for years but they've been acquired several times. Currently owned by some Canadian mega waste disposal company. The phone wait times increased with each acquisition!
Are they new? Put them up on Craigslist for free and/or Ebay for $1 for local pickup. If they are used, hard to imagine there are states today that don't have an info website that will direct you to disposal.
Sometimes you need to drill into several web pages to find it ... Our municipality contracts curbside houshold garbage & recycling to Bluewater Recycling - but they do not do hazardous waste - so ... we have specified days to bring our household haz-waste to a neighbouring town's collection site.
Back in the '70s we subcontracted several projects involving fluorescents, including the 4' tubes and 2' grow lights. When your dealing in thousands of tubes you get about 5% that won't light. They'd get thrown in the dumpster and not gently. Very few ever broke and that was if they hit the edge of the dumpster on the way down.
The tubes came in cardboard boxes, stacked together with no spacers. Inevitably boxes would get dropped unloading them from the truck or moving them around the shop and I don't remember any breaking.
I never knew they and Walmart did that.
Yeah, no problem, they just throw them in the woods out back. :)
I guess that's better than the sword fighting way.
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