I have about two dozen that have been piling up from three properties. How do you get rid of these things? (I'm in a rural area, so probably not many places to dispose).

In the factories I worked in, the electricians rigged up a 50 gallon barrel with a metal tube attached, with some kind of motor/propeller gizmo that pulverized the bulbs as they pushed them thru the metal tube. That's overkill for my needs. They probably crushed thousands per year. Thoughts?

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Mr. Lahey: A lot of people, don’t know how to drink. They drink against the grain of the liquor. And when you drink against the grain of the liquor? You lose.

Randy: What the @#$%& are you talking about?

Look to see if there is a drop-off site in your county’s landfill for hazardous materials.
My county has a couple places where fluorescent lights (containing mercury) can be dropped off.

Your county surely has a place.

They closed the local county landfill over 20 years ago. All our waste is shipped out of county, and I'm not sure where that's at.

We do have a once a year hazardous waste collection at the county road commission, but I missed it this year. It was right after Labor Day.

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Mr. Lahey: A lot of people, don’t know how to drink. They drink against the grain of the liquor. And when you drink against the grain of the liquor? You lose.

Randy: What the @#$%& are you talking about?

Wrap them up in layers of old newspaper, stick them in your trash can, and hit them with a hammer.

I've never done this before.

Do you have a 5-story Tower nearby?

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freeradical
Wrap them up in layers of old newspaper, stick them in your trash can, and hit them with a hammer.

I've never done this before.

Not necessarily bad advice. When I lived in Oregon they jumped on the bandwagon early about recycling and keeping hazardous waste out of their landfills. Years later I went back there on a camping trip and was talking to some teachers who lived there. They told me a story about how they watched a garbage truck pull up to the school one day and load both the trash and the recyclables into the same truck, so they asked the driver about it. He told them they didn't have room for the recyclables any more and were told to pick up everything and haul it to the dump. Did some research online afterwards and discovered that's pretty much the case for most places that continue to ask you to separate your trash from recyclables.

fwiw, I was trying to recycle some of these in a remote area of Montana. The only place that would take them was the electric utility. But it was a cooperative under local control. I am not sure i would have been successful with a giant utility company...

Recycling on a consumer level is becoming impossible to do cause of costs. Tons of articles on it.

My county uses a program they call "one big bin" for consumers -- everything goes in one bin and they sort. Im not sure how it works for people like us that use plastic trash bags for everything.

[onebigbin.com]

not sure where this recycling is all going now since China isnt taking it.

Oh -- they say no FL tubes in the can.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2020 04:19PM by jdc.

You could mail them anonymously to someone you don’t like.

I have never done this before.

Someone hasn’t watched The 40 Year Old Virgin yet.

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It is what it is.

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SDGuy
Do you have a 5-story Tower nearby?

When I was in 3rd grade, we used to find old fluorescent tubes in the trash at the high school next door. We would chuck them like a spear at the outer wall of the gym and cackle with glee. I knew nothing about mercury at the time. It was the 60's and my older step brothers were poor influences.

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“Live your life, love your life, don’t regret…live, learn and move forward positively.” – CR Johnson
Loving life in Lake Tahoe, CA

In my youth, I worked at a department store, and the maintenance guy would tell me to drop them down the freight elevator shaft.

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Home Depot used to accept them for free recycling, not sure if they still do that.

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Yoyodyne ArtWorks
Home Depot used to accept them for free recycling, not sure if they still do that.

Not the big ones any more, at least around here.

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Roswell, GA (Atlanta suburb)

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rgG

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Yoyodyne ArtWorks
Home Depot used to accept them for free recycling, not sure if they still do that.

Not the big ones any more, at least around here.

The one here still takes CFL's, but not the long tube lamps. For those the waste transfer station in town has a bin to put them in for recycling.

I agree, the county government as well as the school district might steer you in the right direction. If that doesn’t work, factories, shopping malls, arenas, etc. will change out all the bulbs at one time. They will hire a contractor to do the job and that contractor has to certify proper disposal through a certified company. You might call around to see if any business is planning to swap out bulbs and if you can pay them to take yours.

My brother designed and he and I built a bulb disposal machine. It separated out the mercury (into a carbon bed) from the glass and other easily disposable parts of the bulbs. It could handle eight foot fluorescent bulbs as well as the mercury vapor and halogen bulbs. It fit in a single axle box truck and he sold the machine, not including the new truck, for $500k. The company that bought it would service the electrical contractors that swapped out the bulbs.

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Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

Just a little off topic but interesting. How big oil misled the public into believing plastic would be recycled from NPR.

[www.npr.org]

Glad you asked this question because I have several fluorescent tubes taped together for disposal and wasn't sure what to do. Local schools take batteries; I'll have to see if they will take the tubes. Glad for that suggestion.

I took some to my local Menards a few years ago. I don't know if they still take them or not, but it'd be worth a try if they're local for you.

There is an impressive recycling setup at a local (MD, VA, DC) organic market store - [momsorganicmarket.com], not sure about 4' tubes specifically, but they take shoes, jeans, corks, batteries, and even that foil/mylar wrapping material.



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