Anybody who believes in switching to fluorescent lightbulbs, please answer me this?

Question

One of the "ingredients" (i guess you could call them) in a fluorescent lightbulb is Mercury. Doesn't that also harm our environment when not disposed properly? I doubt the typical person (who tries to stay "green") disposes of these lightbulbs the right way, being that the majority of the time it costs time & money to dispose of and they probably dont even realize that they are supposed to. Im not anti-green or anything and not trying to be a snob, but doesnt this kind of defeat the purpose?

Answer 1

even if there is mercury in fluorescent lamp its very little and i belive that it cant harm nature as much as other kind of lamps

by the way mount of enery that saved during using fluorescent lamps is very huge.

just think about if you use other kind of laps in order to prevent that little mount of mercury, in that case you should burn more coals or pollute environment more.

So its worth to use fluorescent lamps ;)

Answer 2

Very little we do has no negative aspects to it.  

It is just a case of weighing up the positives and negatives and choosing the least harmful.

Its like the difference between disposable nappies and washable ones.  It seems counter-intuitive but apparently it is less harmful to the environment to use disposables because of the amount of energy used in washing the towelling ones.

Answer 3

The true reasoning of switching to florescent bulbs is to save energy and lower ones electric bill.

I could care less about the enviorment, I just want to save money.

Answer 4

Hundreds of times that amount of mercury would be introduced to the atmosphere by burning excess coal to run normal lightbulbs for the same length of time.

Answer 5

no, the amount of mercury in modern fluro bulbs is very small (i beleve it is about 1mg) in large amounts it can harm the environment but the energy savings are well worth it.

Answer 6

The common household battery is a bigger threat!  I have a box in the garage where I put all my items that need to be taken to the hazardous disposal facility.  I load up my brothers box, my parents box, my sisters box, my friends boxes and mine every spring and take them for proper disposal.

Answer 7

Most folks don't actually research the proper way to use them, and just plug them willy-nilly into every socket they can find.  Unless they're going to be in fairly warm spots where the lights will stay on for longer periods it's useless, or even worse, to use them instead of regular bulbs.

There is actually mercury in regular bulbs too, but the amounts in either is not a giant issue.   There's much worse sources of mercury around than light bulbs.

Answer 8

The thing that makes a switch to the compact flourescent bulbs really dumb, especially if it a bunch of idiotic politicians DICTATING to us what kind of lightbulbs to use in our houses, is this:  Compact flourescents are an obsolete technology, and they DO have mercury in them.  Most of the ones from China, which is where the lead coated toys and fatal food comes from, have much more than 1mg of mercury in them, some have as much as 20 mg of mercury.  Even if the amount of mercury is small, you multiply that by the millions of bulbs which will be scattered around the world, you are talking about a substantial amount of mercury floating around out there.  In addition, there are other more efficient sources of light, one of which are LEDs.  LEDs are four to eight times more efficient than compace flourescents, much cheaper to produce, and unless they are made in China, they will last for decades. In addition, the only potentially hazardous elements in them are some of the junction doping elements, and those are minute (even microscopic) amounts which are encapsulated in the core of the individual LEDs.  

I am not anti-green myself, but I AM anti-stupid which is why I dont like a lot of these idiotic "solutions" which are being proposed, like the "green" SUV, recycling building demolition materials (it makes more sense to simply recycle the entire BUILDING as a BUILDING, since most new construction sucks anyway).  Forget sticking only with compact flourescents, and look at ALL the alternatives.

Answer 9

it is small amount, you know. so they harm environment LESS than lightbulbs do.

Answer 10

Then change to LED bulbs, they last longer and use 1/5 the energy of CFLs.

Answer 11

I don't give a flip about the Mercury, or the recycling, I do however care about saving money.  That is the ONLY reason i changed them out, and in 6 or 7 years when they burn out, I will dispose of them in the trash can.

Answer 12

The amount of mercury / bulb is small. Their life span is large compared to incandescent bulbs so you recycle less overall material. Their energy savings is huge (typically about 75%) ove conventional lights.

There has been a waste stream in place for years for Mercury vapor bulbs. I recycle mine at the local utility, and they put them in with their old streetlight bulbs for reclaimation.

Answer 13

a standard fluorescent light works for many thousands of hours, and contains 1 mg of heavy metals.

a 1.5 volt battery works for a few hours at best and is nearly all made of heavy metals.

change to fluorescent.