Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Are Low Energy Light Bulbs a Danger to our Environment?
Looking to buy a few new lightbulbs earlier, and trying to choose between low-energy (CFL) and LED, I found out something interesting about CFL bulbs. I read that they contain mercury and so should be recycled rather than added to the general waste.
In terms of quantifying the risk, things seem uncertain. Many leads online suggest that whilst the mercury in the bulbs is minimal, the cumulative effect of many bulbs leeching mercury into the environment does pose a long-term risk.
I haven't yet been able to track down any official UK source that offers an opinion on the issue. There were a rash of news stories about the issue 8 to 10 years ago. This one from the BBC quoted the Environment Agency. Another from the Telegraph covered the issue in 2010.
The web also offered up a Belgian government web page (in English) which seems concerned about the issue and an EU one which rather downplayed it.
I have to admit that all this had rather passed me by, and I suspect that I'm not the only one.
If you are concerned, it seems that there are a couple of courses of action open to you. Firstly, you can switch to LED bulbs which are more expensive but longer lasting (25 years!). Alternatively (or additionally) you can ensure that your CFLs are properly recycled.
Looking for local information about recycling hasn't turned up much. Haringey Council offer a pretty uninformative web page which:
- Offers the Wood Green recycling centre
- Suggests in-store recycling (supposedly to be provided under the WEE directive)
- Suggests the Recolight website, but at the time of writing provided no link to it. (Recolight was set up by the industry which supplies the lights).
The recycling centre seems a little far away for small everyday things. So I checked to see if Sainsbury's have any facility and couldn't see anything. I then tweeted them and they didn't seem to know. The exchange ended with a holding answer.
Locally, the Recolight website offers the Haringey Recycling Centre, but shows it at the Hornsey High Street address it left several years ago (which didn't inspire confidence). They also list Medlock on Green Lanes as a commercial recycling point.
So, I rang Medlock to ask if it would be okay for me as a local to drop some CFL bulbs into their recycling point. The response was what I've come to expect of Medlock. It was an immediate and positive and friendly yes. The chap I spoke with, Stuart, said it would be fine as long as I'm not bringing in barrow-loads of them. "We're always happy to help our neighbours", he said. He mentioned that the recycling point is in the car park (accessed via Effingham Road). In the very unlikely event that anyone asks, he said, just say Stuart said it was okay.
So thanks to Medlock, there is a local CFL recycling option to use, if you want it. If you do use Medlock, also consider combining it with a visit to the store to buy that new light fitting, light switch, lamp shade etc.
As to Sainsbury's and Haringey Council - buck your ideas up!
Tags for Forum Posts: recycling
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by michaelw on
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There was a CFL recycling bin among the Sainsbury's bins last time I looked. There was also a bin for small Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) - it needs to fit through the chute hole. Note that all WEEE should be recycled not disposed of - the problem is that this is supposed to be done at the civic amenity site, which is not straightforward.....
LED lights are probably the best bet these days for new lights though.
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My concern is that with only one recycling centre in Haringey (plus limited bulky waste collection) I would guess that the collection rate for WEEE in in Haringey is not very high - how many people are going to travel there to get rid of a kettle, computer or TV? I bet most of them are stuffed in the residual bin (and quite a few end up fly tipped).
I don't know what the Wood Green recycling centre on Western Road is like, but certainly the previous one was not very cycling-friendly.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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I called the Haringey web page uninformative because it gives none of the information about the need to recycle CFL bulbs that I dug out this morning - and of which I was unaware until that point.
I think people tend to get their information about recycling from their councils. So councils should at least give a full picture of the situation. Haringey covers it in 48 words and offers no warning of the possible danger to the environment.
It also omits working links. It provides a link to a defunct DEFRA web page and a malfunctioning link to the Recolight site.
You may be satisfied with that. I think it's completely inadequate.
There's nothing wrong with taking bulbs up to the recycling centre. But, as others have reported on HoL, there are increasingly queues to use it. If everyone were to take their bulbs there, I'm not sure it could cope. Working with Recolight, Hackney Council set up five CFL light recycling drop-off points around the borough. This seems much more sensible and, I imagine, is a low or no cost solution. According to Recolight's map, Haringey has just one recycling point - the one for commercial use at Medlock's.
I can imagine myself dropping bulbs off at the relatively local Medlocks, but not trotting up to Wood Green every time I need to recycle a light bulb - and we're not as far from it as people in other parts of the borough.
My default position is not to criticise the Council, but on this I think they have been found wanting. Let's see better information about the possible dangers of not recycling CFL bulbs properly and let's have readily accessible signposts to a more dispersed network of recycling points, be they provided by the Council or private businesses under their WEE commitments.
(However, it may be that, in Haringey all retailers have Joined a Distributor Takeback Scheme, at using the Wood Green site. If that's the case, it just compounds the problem and limits the dispersal of recycling points.).
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1. Have you tried clicking on the first Recolight link? it doesn't link. Though, checking again just now, I notice that they link to Recolight again further down the page, in the in-store collection page, and that link does work. That's a shame because the non-functioning link in the Where to dispose of energy saving lightbulbs, section is the much more important link.
2. The DEFRA link is indeed explicitly labeled as archived once you reach it. Firstly, it would help if its status was indicated on the Haringey page. (Also does Haringey even know it's archived? Do they know it was archived over 5 years ago and is now hosted by the National Archives?) More importantly, whether they know it or not, why are they linking to an archived page? That immediately suggested to me that the information might be considered out of date by the Government. Is it? Is it not? We don't know. Why facilitate such uncertainty. (I've just looked for an up-to-date government page on this again and all I can find is a mention of the bulbs on a page where waste is classified - and they're classified as hazardous.)
3. Re the 48 words, what I wrote was, " So councils should at least give a full picture of the situation. Haringey covers it in 48 words and offers no warning of the possible danger to the environment." The coverage that the Haringey web page gives the situation is the following:
Energy saving lightbulbs (also called CFLs - compact fluorescent lamps) are increasingly common, as they use considerably less energy than standard lightbulbs and also last for a lot longer.
Energy saving lightbulbs do not pose a danger to the public, but do need to be disposed of sensibly.
As it stands, it certainly wouldn't alert me to the possible dangers I learned of yesterday.
4. Yes, I always try to give helpful feedback to Haringey when I spot something wrong and did so yesterday. They're normally very quick to respond and make suitable changes. So far, I've not heard back form them.
I also dropped a note to Recolight to alert then to their years-out-of-date address for the Haringey Recycling Centre.
5. Your search results are probably personalised. If you're not signed in, the search engine can probably at least identify your location from your IP address. So you're served results based on however much of your profile they can get at. If you search for recycling when you're in Haringey, search engines will probably prioritise the Haringey Council website - precisely what I said; councils are the first port of call for information on recycling. Hence their responsibility. But, just because a search engine chooses to send you there, doesn't mean the information on a page is the best available. They've chosen an authoritative site.
Try your search again using Tor, or some other cloaking device.
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I'm not sure if we're looking at the same page either. The one I'm referring to is the one I linked to in the original article. Below is a screenshot fo the part that mentions the DEFRA website.
As to my point 1, your issue with this is maybe the same issue, but I assure you that the first Recolight link doesn't work.
With regards to Haringey featuring on the first page of any fully anonymised web search for "disposing of energy saving lightbulbs", I doubt that it would, but you'd have to speak to a search expert about exactly how you're searching and the results that are returned.
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You're not going mad re the DEFRA link. I was obviously mistaken. Apologies. I was clearly responding to your concerns in too much haste,
Nonetheless, as I made clear that's not the main issue. I wrote "More importantly, whether they know it or not, why are they linking to an archived page?" It's not sound practice on a web page of this sort to link to a web page archived more than five years ago that is now managed by the country's archive service.
Moreover, the main point I made about the Haringey web page in my original post was that it's uninformative. This still holds.
As to the Recolight link, like the other links in that section, it's supposed to take the user to a subsection, but it doesn't. I'm sure the web team can fix it. (As to your sideswipe, is it I who quibbles? The link doesn't work. We apparently agree on that. Perhaps it should just have been left at that.)
I agree about the tediousness of these points, but I was doing you the respect of responding to the issues you raised. I assume you raised them because you thought they were important. I'll be very happy to move on now, unless you fancy engaging with the meat of what I wrote in my original post.
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Indeed, as I noted in my original piece, they're supposed to last for 25 years.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Reduce your electric with leds by 80+ %
Yes CFL lamps contain mercury.
Where I work we have paid a one off charge of £25 for a box 6ft long :) Company, who we also buy new lamps from, pick up for free and give an empty replacement.
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Permalink Reply by Andrew Stillman on
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this is very interesting and very useful thanks. i didn't know that these bulbs were a danger at all. i'm not far from medlock so i will try using their recycling point. i have no intention of going up to wood green to recycle bulbs.
please let us know if you hear back from sainsbury.
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Finally heard back from Sainsbury's today:
Hi there,
We offered customers a service whereby they could return low energy light bulbs to all of our stores with recycling (c.400) for over 6 years.
This was very well publicised, including in the stores in question and through the media, such as the article in The Telegraph. Despite this, we received an average of less than one bulb per store per week.
After 4 years, the collection boxes were in a very poor state of repair due to weathering and in many cases, vandalism, which in its own right produces a significant risk to our customers and colleagues due to the contents. So we made a decision to remove the offer and instead focus on the core packaging materials of cardboard, plastic, cans and glass, plus clothing and books where participation is much higher. This decision was made back in 2016.
Since the start of the WEEE regulations we have been members of the DTS which meets our legal obligations as a retailer. As a business have provided over £3m to help councils to develop the services that they provide and help to establish best practice by providing funding for trials. More information on the DTS can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/electricalwaste-producer-supplier-responsibiliti....
We are also members of a producer compliance scheme for WEEE which means that we are paying for the recycling of light bulbs that are collected at council household waste centres – this is required as under the regulations we are also a ‘producer’.
We think that this is a better use of money than to provide containers that were more often vandalised than used.
I'll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.
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