Ryan, one of our alert podcast listeners, sent in a great question: where do you take light bulbs to recycle them? The answer, as with most things, is "it all depends!"

For incandescent light bulbs, there really isn't any hope: these things aren't recyclable at all (unless you want to use them in craft projects), and so they wind up as tons and tons of additional junk in our landfills. According to one source of "trash trivia", Americans buy over a billion - yeah, you heard that right, a BILLION - incandescent light bulbs. Every year. And guess where all those puppies wind up? In the landfill!

Fluorescent lights (compact fluorescents or fluorescent tubes), on the other hand, last a lot longer and can be recycled. This is particularly important because they contain small amounts of mercury. Mercury is a deadly poison that we want to keep safely in the bulb and OUT of the landfills where it can seep into the air and water! That is BAD!

It's great that we can recycle fluorescents, but get this: according to information from lightbulbrecycling.com, every year people throw around 600 MILLION fluorescent lamps containing about 30,000 pounds of mercury into the landfills. This is really, REALLY BAD, folks, and it's something that YOU can help do something about!

Okay, how do you get these things recycled? First, please listen to this and remember it well. Tell your friend, family, and pets, too: you MUST NOT put fluorescent lamps of any kind into your regular recycling bins! Don't do that! Mercury, mercury, mercury!

What you need to do first is check your local waste management service: if you plug in "waste management" and your county and state name into your favorite search engine, you should be able to pin it down easily enough. See if they recycle fluorescent bulbs, then follow their instructions.

If they don't, do a search for "fluorescent lamp recycling" and your county and state and see if anything near you pops up. You can also check Yahoo's directory - there are about a dozen businesses listed in there that specialize in recycling fluorescents and other items that have mercury. And then there's the lightbulbrecycling.com and similar services on the web.

Don't wimp out on me here, guys! Doing everything I just told you to do will take about a minute or so - let's not do any whining, okay? It's worth at least that much to keep some poor kid from getting autism, isn't it? Oh, wait, you never heard about that one? Well, I'll have another podcast about our friend mercury and autism coming up, don't you worry.

But back to business: if you strike out and there aren't any local recyclers who handle fluorescent lamps, and you don't want to use the on-line services like lightbulbrecycling.com, you'll need to throw away your fluorescent bulbs - PROPERLY!

Go back to your waste management service page and see how to dispose of hazardous household waste, particularly items containing mercury. Most counties have a drop-off program, some may even have pick-up programs - it all depends on where you live.

In either case, I'd suggest you do this: get a small plastic bucket that has a tight- fitting lid. When a bulb burns out, put it in a small plastic freezer bag, then put it in the bucket. When the bucket is full or a year has gone by, take the whole schmeer to your local hazardous household waste facility, and you've done your good deed!

Now, I'm going to warn you here about something you'll likely see on your county's hazardous waste service page: it might say that if the fluorescent lamps are from a residential user (which ranges from single-family homes up to hotels and apartments), you can just dispose of them with your regular trash. PLEASE DON'T DO THAT!

The reason your waste management service might say this is because of a stupid loophole in what's called the Universal Waste Rule for hazardous waste that basically exempts residential users from having to properly dispose of this stuff. Let me ask you something: if something is hazardous, isn't it hazardous no matter who's trying to get rid of it and in any quantity? This is just plain stupid.

But I digress.

So, again, let me reiterate a couple things about our friend the fluorescent light bulb, be it a compact CFL bulb, a big fluorescent tube, or whatever:

• Because they contain small amounts of mercury (which is a deadly poison), fluorescent lights must NEVER be thrown into the regular recycling or trash. The mercury is totally safe in the bulb, but we want to KEEP it there.
• See if your county has a fluorescent recycling program, or check out some of the on- line businesses that do it. If there is a program you can use, rejoice and use it religiously!
• If there's no practical way to recycle your fluorescent bulbs, take them to your local hazardous waste disposal center. Even if it's a bit of a drive, just save up bulbs for a year in your special bulb bucket and then make the pilgrimmage - it's worth your time and effort to keep that nasty mercury out of our water and food!

So, get out there and do the right thing with those fluorescent bulbs!

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