Misleading consumers about a
product’s eco-friendliness is something
we have vowed to expose whenever it
invades our carbon footprint.
• • • • • • • • • • • •
the dilemma: Did compact
fluorescent lightbulb (CFL)
manufacturers purposely downplay the
bulbs’ mercury content?
the facts: CFLs use two-thirds less
energy than standard incandescent bulbs
and last up to 10 times longer (the
average is five years). If every American
replaced just one incandescent bulb with
a CFL, it would save enough energy to
light more than 2. 5 million homes for a
year and prevent emissions equivalent to
that of nearly 800,000 cars. However,
CFLs contain mercury, a neurotoxin.
While the mercury poses no problem
unless the bulb is broken, a recent
Stanford University study posits that just
5 milligrams of mercury — the amount
found in a single bulb — can
contaminate 6,000 gallons of drinking
water. CFLs that get tossed into the
landfill will inevitably lead to mercury
seeping into groundwater and waste
streams.
our conclusion: The energy saved
by using CFLs may outweigh the
negatives if the bulbs are properly
disposed of. It’s up to consumers to
bring spent CFLs to a household
hazardous waste facility, to retailers such
as The Home Depot and Ikea that offer
CFL recycling, or to a mail-in CFL
recycling service such as
ThinkGreenFromHome.com. Information
on cleaning up and disposing of broken
CFLs is available in the Environmental
Protection Agency’s guide (
epa.gov/
mercury/spills/ index.htm). Meanwhile,
consumers can look forward to the
anticipated 2010 introduction of General
Electric’s high-efficiency incandescent
bulbs, which promise all the benefits of
CFLs — minus the mercury.
