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Comment by FredFS456 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about you, but I had long switched to CFL's before LED bulbs came around. CFLs are definitely not as efficient as LEDs, but at least they're still a fraction of the power that incandescent bulbs use.

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Modern fluorescent lamps are surprisingly efficient and the electric ballasts seem to be more reliable than any LED bulb I've seen so far. The tubes do fade eventually, but the tube itself only costs 1-2 Euros and the environmental impact is pretty low of these where the mercury cycle is closed.

>environmental impact is pretty low of these where the mercury cycle is closed //

Which countries have widespread recycle facilities for CFLs? In UK I'm almost certain they all just go in to landfill (in this country or another).

In the US you can drop off burned out CFLs in recycling bins at Home Depot and Lowes.

However yes, most people don't know about that and just landfill them.

>"we asked to more than 1,000 people at the end of 2009. Then, 68% surveyed threw their last energy saving light bulb in the bin." (Which? [0]) //

Bit out of date but indicative of the UK situation I imagine.

The best I could do for the USA situation was that [1] shows about 1.5M recycled CFLs in 2010, vs [2] shows about 300M sold in 2009, 0.5% recycle rate ...

[0] https://conversation.which.co.uk/home-energy/do-you-recycle-... [1] https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2011/04/despite-mer... [2] https://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2011/12/cfls_compact...

The problem here is that no one knows where to recycle them. There's only a few locations in the US that recycle them and they don't accept consumer drop offs. Local recycling centers and waste centers generally don't accept them separately and just tell you to put them in the main trash. I had 15 years of bulbs stashed in a box in the garage because I didn't want to dump mercury in the landfill even though they told me that was perfectly fine, which I knew was wrong. Eventually an acquaintance told me that they had seen small tube collection boxes near the customer service desk at Home Depot. This is not advertised and is not known to the recycling centers. So the experts just tell people to landfill them when asked. If people knew where to take them it would be more than 0.5% doing it. It wouldn't be 100%, but maybe 50%.

Not as true when you include replacement costs for expensive shoddy bulbs, and mercury toxicity.

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