4-29-07 TANSTAAFL - pt3
Now that the story (about the woman in Ellsworth, Maine who accidentally broke a compact fluorescent lightbulb and ended up with a $2000 hazardous waste cleanup bill) has gained momentum in the blogosphere, I'm getting a bit more perspective on these bulbs.
But the cat is now out of the bag. We can easily deduce that if you accidentally break one of these CFL's, the thing that you should NOT do is call up the regional or state run department of environmental protection for an evaluation of the hazard, nor should you engage a hazardous waste removal firm to do the cleanup. Instead, you should get onto the internet and find the recommended disposal instructions and do the cleanup yourself.
We can call this the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on how to dispose of these "environmentally friendly" lightbulbs.
If you accidentally break one, DON'T ASK any official agencies or authorities about how you should dispose of it, and DON'T TELL anybody about it. That's the only way you'll "save" any money.
I just did a rough calculation starting with the 5 milligrams of mercury contained in a typical CFL, and looked at how much this mercury would add up to for a billion bulbs, since this is the goal of the One Billion Bulbs Campaign.
Just in case I've got it wrong, I'll walk through my calculations here. Five milligrams is five thousandths of a gram. That's .005 times one billion, which will come out to five billion thousandths, or five million grams (divide by 1000). Since one gram is equal to .0022 pounds, I then multiply five million times .0022, and get 11,000 pounds. Divide that by 2000 (one ton) and we end up with 55 tons of mercury for one billion bulbs.
Now, I'm no expert on what this means in terms of cost, but 55 tons of mercury is what we're talking about here. It will have to someday be either recycled or disposed of, once all of the one billion bulbs have reached the end of their usable life. No matter how long the bulbs last, they don't last forever. Consequently, the ultimate end product of the One Billion Bulbs Campaign is very definitely going to be this 55 tons of mercury, along with any of the other hazardous wastes that will result (such as the radioactive materials that nobody seems to be willing to mention so far).
Personally, I don't think this a big deal because incandescent lightbulbs certainly aren't biodegrable. They're as much of a disposal problem as just about any other product that uses electricity. So the benefits of the CFL's over incandescents is enough to keep me using them. But the hype about how much you save in cost is a bunch of crap. The simple fact is that I no longer have to keep a pile of lightbulbs on hand, and I no longer have to keep replacing lightbulbs. Maybe they cost less to run, but my electric bill just keeps going up, and it isn't because I'm using more electricity.
There is just basically no such thing as a "cost savings" with these things. What I DO get by using them, however, is less bulb-changing. I really don't care how much they cost because not having to always be changing burnt out lightbulbs is just about the greatest thing since sliced bread, in my eyes. When they burn out, they'll go in the trash, just like any other broken or worn out item that uses electricity.
What's the problem?
Well, I just can't seem to shake the thought of how that 55 tons of mercury will, ultimately (somewhere down the road) be handled. I mean, if one broken bulb costs $2000 to clean up "properly" then that adds up to two trillion dollars in future cleanup costs for a billion bulbs, doesn't it?
The trick here, I guess, is to keep on believing that you only have one life to live, and just not give a damn about future generations, eh?
But the cat is now out of the bag. We can easily deduce that if you accidentally break one of these CFL's, the thing that you should NOT do is call up the regional or state run department of environmental protection for an evaluation of the hazard, nor should you engage a hazardous waste removal firm to do the cleanup. Instead, you should get onto the internet and find the recommended disposal instructions and do the cleanup yourself.
We can call this the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on how to dispose of these "environmentally friendly" lightbulbs.
If you accidentally break one, DON'T ASK any official agencies or authorities about how you should dispose of it, and DON'T TELL anybody about it. That's the only way you'll "save" any money.
I just did a rough calculation starting with the 5 milligrams of mercury contained in a typical CFL, and looked at how much this mercury would add up to for a billion bulbs, since this is the goal of the One Billion Bulbs Campaign.
Just in case I've got it wrong, I'll walk through my calculations here. Five milligrams is five thousandths of a gram. That's .005 times one billion, which will come out to five billion thousandths, or five million grams (divide by 1000). Since one gram is equal to .0022 pounds, I then multiply five million times .0022, and get 11,000 pounds. Divide that by 2000 (one ton) and we end up with 55 tons of mercury for one billion bulbs.
Now, I'm no expert on what this means in terms of cost, but 55 tons of mercury is what we're talking about here. It will have to someday be either recycled or disposed of, once all of the one billion bulbs have reached the end of their usable life. No matter how long the bulbs last, they don't last forever. Consequently, the ultimate end product of the One Billion Bulbs Campaign is very definitely going to be this 55 tons of mercury, along with any of the other hazardous wastes that will result (such as the radioactive materials that nobody seems to be willing to mention so far).
Personally, I don't think this a big deal because incandescent lightbulbs certainly aren't biodegrable. They're as much of a disposal problem as just about any other product that uses electricity. So the benefits of the CFL's over incandescents is enough to keep me using them. But the hype about how much you save in cost is a bunch of crap. The simple fact is that I no longer have to keep a pile of lightbulbs on hand, and I no longer have to keep replacing lightbulbs. Maybe they cost less to run, but my electric bill just keeps going up, and it isn't because I'm using more electricity.
There is just basically no such thing as a "cost savings" with these things. What I DO get by using them, however, is less bulb-changing. I really don't care how much they cost because not having to always be changing burnt out lightbulbs is just about the greatest thing since sliced bread, in my eyes. When they burn out, they'll go in the trash, just like any other broken or worn out item that uses electricity.
What's the problem?
Well, I just can't seem to shake the thought of how that 55 tons of mercury will, ultimately (somewhere down the road) be handled. I mean, if one broken bulb costs $2000 to clean up "properly" then that adds up to two trillion dollars in future cleanup costs for a billion bulbs, doesn't it?
The trick here, I guess, is to keep on believing that you only have one life to live, and just not give a damn about future generations, eh?
posted by Jeff Barnard at 8:15 AM
1 Comments:
Sounds great to me
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