Disposing of Fluorescent Tubes FAQ

It's the phosphor powder on the inside of the tube that is the problem.

Personally, I just smash them up into little bits and flush 'em down the toilet.

(Only joking before anyone starts)

sponix

|My council have always taken tubes before but they are classed as |hazardous waste and can't go in landfill so I will have to burn petrol, |putting CO2 into the atmosphere taking one 4ft tube to the council dump |to be diposed of. There again I could put the tube back in the bin and |hit it on the side with a hammer.

Health and safety gone mad.

Wrap/twist them in several layers of newspaper to stop the glass flying everywhere. Tap them with a hammer. Put everything in a cereal packet

|Just wondered what is so hazardous about a tube that it can't go into |landfill.

Umpteen years ago some fluorescent tube contained beryllium

Is it not the mercury content ?

The place where I buy my tubes in Leamington Spa has a skip at the back for old ones. So the fuel I burn in fetching a new one also serves to dispose of the old one.

where else is it going to go?

taxing them would make most sense, then people are still free to use what they want. Perhaps 50p per filament bulb.

the reality is dead linears and CFLs can all be run happily on the right type of gear. It works by passing the power into the tube capacitively through the glass wall. Condition of the electrodes is then irrelevant.

Old halophosphate tubes output decreases over the life of the tube, but the modern triphosphors are much better in this respect.

NT

Damn! now I need a new tube after accidently hitting it with a broom pole.

Get real and smash the darn thing and shovel remains in a cardboard box then put it in the bin.

-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite

that was my undertstanding. The phosphors are relatively harmless.

No doubt there will be issues with CFLs in due course...

So where is the mercury, if it's not in the phosphor powder?

sponix

It's in vapour form AIUI ? isn't it 'solidified' mercury that cause the ends of the tube to go black eventually ?

Usually lying around in the tube. You can actually pour he odd blob of mercury out of a broken tube.

Fluorescents are mercury vapour lamps. The plasma discharge is primarily through mercury vapour, which then generates a complex spectrum of lines, some in the visible spectrum, but a lot in the UV spectrum.

The job of the *phosphor coated tube* is to take those UV emissions and re-emit them as visible light.

The two processes are completely distinct and separate. As are the chemicals involved.

I believe that to get the mercury there, a small blob of mercury is placed in the tube, its taken down to a very low pressure, and the mercury 'boils' off and fills the tube as vapour.

Wasn't it also in the heatsink compound we used to use ..?

All the best ..

T i m

|

So once the tube is broken then the mercury vapour presumably disperses.

sponix

Given the number of old household tubes going to landfill, the volume of mecury as a total of the of the landfill volume must be in the same order as the background mecury content. So the energy inefficient filament bulb is not quite the villain that all the greens make it ou to be.

Kevin

No, it condenses into liquid mercury.

A fairly toxic, but not totally hazardous element.

he trouble is that the green movement has relied on sloppy thinking for years.

Full pollution analysis probably makes nuclear power amongst the greenest thing there is...

the amount of energy in recycling stuff probably makes most of it counter productive.

Once it escapes and reacts with air is it any different to the phosphorus in garden fertiliser?

Easier to put in the carton new one came in, seal the ends with duck tape, then just drop it. It then folds up nicely to fit the bin.