CFL disposal: It's not easy being green

By GORDY HOLT
P-I REPORTER

Local utilities want you to use energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights. They're even subsidizing the cost, to make them more affordable.

But getting their help on the disposal end hasn't been so easy. That's because the tubes are a hazardous waste item infused with mercury, and it's illegal to dump them in the regular trash when they're spent.

Until now, Seattle City Light and Bellevue-based Puget Sound Energy haven't been stepping up to the plate to help you easily dispose of old CFLs without charge. But that's starting to change.

On Friday, PSE launched a new user-friendly disposal plan that encourages all fluorescent-light users to drop off spent tubes -- free -- at selected utility offices.

Cal Shirley, PSE vice president for energy-efficiency services, said drop-off locations range from the utility's main office, 10885 N.E. Fourth St. in Bellevue, to PSE offices in Bellingham, Tacoma, Olympia, Port Townsend, Burlington and Ellensburg.

PSE offers this service to all CFL users across the region, regardless of jurisdiction or utility provider.

However, yet to be heard from are City Light and King County, whose officials continue to dither over how to accomplish equally friendly disposal programs.

A take-back plan they announced in November is free, but only if you carry the spent tubes to a city or county transfer station that handles hazardous waste. Otherwise, a network of 12 retail stores will take them from you -- for a fee of up to $1 per tube.

What if you don't comply with toxic waste disposal and just dump them?

"We prefer to change behavior through education and then move to penalties if necessary," said Lauren Cole, program manager for King County's Waste Division.

Commercial dumpers are easiest to spot when trying to slip a fast one past transfer-station overseers. But the law does not differentiate between commercial and residential dumpers.

She said a first violation could be greeted by a $100 fine, a second would cost $500, with subsequent penalties double the rate of the previous penalty.

The scramble to install these super-efficient (but toxic) lights is so far-reaching that Congress ended its 2007 session by passing an energy bill encouraging their use. At the same time, it proposed a phase-out of the cheaper-but-inefficient Edison incandescent light.

The wrinkle to all of this, of course, is the disposal issue.

In fluorescent lights -- whether the old-style tube or the new curlicue CFLs, mercury vapor is the catalyst that the spark of electricity ignites. In turn, the vapor's ignition causes the fluorescent coating inside the tubes and curlicues to glow, bringing light to dark places.

But mercury is a neurotoxin harmful to the growth of living things, particularly developing fetuses and children.

And although adults of a certain age might remember breaking open the family's weather thermometer to play with little jiggly balls of the stuff, that is no longer recommended.

PSE's Shirley said his company will "make sure that the mercury is recycled."

Recycling not only keeps it out of the environment, he said, but limits the amount of freshly mined mercury introduced into new fluorescent lights.

After City Light's transfer station or fee-based take-back program was outlined in the P-I on Nov. 9 (goto.seattlepi.com/339026), some readers hit the fan.

Fumed online respondent shri420, "The drive to the South Seattle Transfer Station, or the process of telephoning and waiting to get an appointment at the North Seattle (Hazardous Waste Disposal Site), and the gasoline (and time) spent in taking the bulbs to those locations appear to not count in the thinking of the Vice Presidents in Charge of dangerous light bulbs."

Wrote bigCon, "Oh, I just throw them along the road on the way to the store."

Anne Ducey also got an earful. As City Light's residential marketing coordinator, she is among the take-back program's strongest advocates, and after thinking about the raking she received following the P-I story, she sat down with her staff to reason again.

"We can't be a 'green town' unless we make it easy for people" to buy and discard CFLs, she said. "Why have to make that special trip and then have to pay for it?"

Ducey and her staff came up with what they figured was a better solution. By adding 50 cents more to City Light's take-back subsidy, they could make that take-back program free to customers and participating stores.

In discussing the idea with Jane Bartell Barber, chief financial officer of Bartell Drugs, Ducey said she found a potential collaborator.

Bartell merchandise buyer Howie Cohen said the idea makes sense to the locally owned drugstore chain, and he is hopeful a free take-back program at Bartell's can be worked out.

However, Ducey and her colleagues hadn't considered what King County's Solid Waste Division might say. What she heard was not encouraging, she said.

Asked about that, King County's Cole said in an e-mail to the P-I that CFL manufacturers, their retailers and consumers should bear the cost of disposal and recycling until someone designs a bulb that is "easier to disassemble, contains less toxic materials and (is) more recyclable."

In a subsequent phone interview, she said "City Light is welcome to do whatever they want to do," but that King County will stick to the present program.

Bartell's Cohen said his company tried a 50-cents-per-light take-back that included a coupon worth "more than 50 cents" in exchange, "but they just didn't flock to the program," he said. "So our feeling is now that this just won't work unless it is free."

Cohen said Bartell Drugs is committed to helping work out any financial kinks.

"With 56 neighborhood locations," he said, "that would be just terrific for our customers."