4 ms·

>As for disposal, I crush the bulbs in a paper bag and then huff the mercury fumes for recreation. Seriously though, how do you dispose of them? Save the mercu

by grok22 6y ago

>As for disposal, I crush the bulbs in a paper bag and then huff the mercury fumes for recreation. Seriously though, how do you dispose of them? Save the mercury forever? Is there even a noticeable amount of mercury in them?

xyzzyz 6y ago
If your municipality uses a properly maintained landfill, you can just throw them into trash, after sealing them in a regular plastic bag. Such a trivial amount of mercury will not be significant in the big picture of a landfill. For what it's worth, you can also just trash regular alkaline batteries, there's nothing wrong with that either.
jandrese 6y ago
According to my county you can just throw CFLs right in the trash. The amount of mercury in them is so small that it basically isn't worth worrying about. I don't live in California however, so your trash service may have different rules. Of the CFLs I installed over the years I've had mixed results. Some are 15 years old and still going strong. Others I have had to replace more than once, although usually with LEDs now. The LEDs have mixed results too, with them being far more susceptible to heat failure in enclosed fixtures. Annoyingly they're usually built around a number of LED elements wired in series, so if any one element goes bad the whole bulb goes dim or fails entirely. I know people used to complain a lot about CFLs being flickery and having bad color balance, but I only ever had one pair of bulbs (from a two pack) that were really bad in that regard. The pack I bought from WalMart for reasons that are lost to time. They were truly atrocious, one was orangey and the other more blue, and if you looked out the side of your eye you could see the flicker. They also died within a year thankfully, even though both were in well ventilated fixtures. My final point is that I've had much worse luck with CFLs mounted upside down (with the base pointing up). Except for the Wal*Mart specials and one enclosed outdoor fixture I think all of the ones I have installed right side up are still working.
- pitay 6y ago
  My experience with CFLs was that they were bad, blue and flickery when they came out. They also made a very annoying buzzing sound. They got a lot better over the years though, and became quite acceptable.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    FWIW I don't remember much buzz from even the few bad ones I tried, but the early ones were notorious for taking a long time to come to full brightness. You would flip the switch on and it would pop on at like 25% of its rated brightness and then slowly creep up to full brightness after a minute or two.
blackguardx 6y ago
Yes if you break one, you can sometimes see a little ball of mercury inside. It is about the size of a BB.
abawany 6y ago
Home Depot and etc. tend to have bins to dispose of them. The following site allows searches for disposal locations in your area: https://search.earth911.com/ https://search.earth911.com/ , referred from https://www.epa.gov/cfl/recycling-and-disposal-cfls-and-other-bulbs-contain-mercury https://www.epa.gov/cfl/recycling-and-disposal-cfls-and-othe... .

by grok22 6y ago

xyzzyz 6y ago

If your municipality uses a properly maintained landfill, you can just throw them into trash, after sealing them in a regular plastic bag. Such a trivial amount of mercury will not be significant in the big picture of a landfill. For what it's worth, you can also just trash regular alkaline batteries, there's nothing wrong with that either.

jandrese 6y ago

According to my county you can just throw CFLs right in the trash. The amount of mercury in them is so small that it basically isn't worth worrying about. I don't live in California however, so your trash service may have different rules. Of the CFLs I installed over the years I've had mixed results. Some are 15 years old and still going strong. Others I have had to replace more than once, although usually with LEDs now. The LEDs have mixed results too, with them being far more susceptible to heat failure in enclosed fixtures. Annoyingly they're usually built around a number of LED elements wired in series, so if any one element goes bad the whole bulb goes dim or fails entirely. I know people used to complain a lot about CFLs being flickery and having bad color balance, but I only ever had one pair of bulbs (from a two pack) that were really bad in that regard. The pack I bought from WalMart for reasons that are lost to time. They were truly atrocious, one was orangey and the other more blue, and if you looked out the side of your eye you could see the flicker. They also died within a year thankfully, even though both were in well ventilated fixtures. My final point is that I've had much worse luck with CFLs mounted upside down (with the base pointing up). Except for the Wal*Mart specials and one enclosed outdoor fixture I think all of the ones I have installed right side up are still working.

pitay 6y ago
My experience with CFLs was that they were bad, blue and flickery when they came out. They also made a very annoying buzzing sound. They got a lot better over the years though, and became quite acceptable.
- jandrese 6y ago
  FWIW I don't remember much buzz from even the few bad ones I tried, but the early ones were notorious for taking a long time to come to full brightness. You would flip the switch on and it would pop on at like 25% of its rated brightness and then slowly creep up to full brightness after a minute or two.

blackguardx 6y ago

Yes if you break one, you can sometimes see a little ball of mercury inside. It is about the size of a BB.

abawany 6y ago

Home Depot and etc. tend to have bins to dispose of them. The following site allows searches for disposal locations in your area: https://search.earth911.com/ https://search.earth911.com/ , referred from https://www.epa.gov/cfl/recycling-and-disposal-cfls-and-other-bulbs-contain-mercury https://www.epa.gov/cfl/recycling-and-disposal-cfls-and-othe... .