How to dispose of compact flourescent bulbs in Virginia

A friend recently asked me what she should do with her burned out fluorescent lighting, the ones that are full of mercury. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has four suggestions on their website.

The first suggestion is a blow off to other departments:
Check directly with your local waste management agency on the recycling options and disposal guidelines in your community: Local government recycling contacts

The second suggestion is a blow off to different other departments:
If your community has a household hazardous waste drop-off center or offers household hazardous waste collection events, check to see if CFLs are accepted. Please contact your local government for more information on these events: Hazardous household waste contacts

The third suggestion is a referral to private companies that charge anywhere from $8 to $60 for CFL recycling:
You can purchase boxes online or in retail stores and mail your used CFLs to be recycled: Mail-in programs for CFLs

At the end, a practical suggestion:
If recycling is not an option where you live, simply place the CFL bulb in a plastic bag and seal it before putting it in your trash. However, you should not dispose of CFLs or any mercury-containing device in your trash if it is destined for a waste incinerator as this increases the risk of mercury emissions to the environment.

In case that none of the above work for you, the VDEQ states that people can "save dead compact fluorescent light bulbs and wait for recycling opportunities to expand."

One thing that the VDEQ does not mention is that you can recycle your CFLs for free at your local Home Depot. All you have to do is take in your bulbs and give them to the returns desk. Easy. No-Cost. Local. Why isn't this on the VDEQ site?

I decided to email the DEQ Citizen Board of Waste Management to find out. I've asked the chairman to consider my request of adding a link to the Home Depot program to the DEQ website. Read the full email here. I am not sure if this board is the proper channel, or if this board has any input for DEQ website content. But their mission includes "Promoting the recycling and reuse of waste material," so it seemed a good place to start.

UPDATE 09.02.2008
I got the following response to my email:

Thank you for your inquiry. The CFL issue is becoming less problematic as the manufacturers and retailers are looking to provide convenient recycling options of the material, and many local governments are adding CFLs to their HouseHold Hazardous Waste collection events/programs.

Yes, we are aware that IKEA and Home Depot are taking the CFLs at no charge, and will be promoting that in our outreach programs. We expect to update our management information in the near future.

Virginia has no state program set up to cover the costs of recycling CFLs.

Thanks for the suggestions.

G. Stephen "Steve" Coe
Office of Pollution Prevention (P2)
Division of Environmental Enhancement
Department of Environmental Quality

Is it just me, or does this sound like another blow off? And if they know about not only one free CFL recycling program but TWO, why haven't they added this information to the website? The bullshit boggles the mind. I wrote him back, asked him to forward my email up the feeding chain. I can't imagine it is that difficult to get two links added to a webpage.

UPDATE 09.03.2008
Steve came through with the following email:

I appreciate your comments. I have recommended to the various web masters (each media has its own web process) about adding information on the IKEA and Home Depot programs, and have added this information to the Recycling home page (http://www.deq.virginia.gov/recycle/homepage.html) under What’s New. I expect that the information you provided will be added to those other pages within the next 5-10 days depending on the staff’s schedules.

G. Stephen "Steve" Coe
Office of Pollution Prevention (P2)
Division of Environmental Enhancement
Department of Environmental Quality

Steve- if you are reading this- YOU ROCK!

Not sure what type of lighting to use now that CFLs are known to be dangerous?
read my post on green lighting choices

Earthship kids' play area

The sand pit is a ring of tires from the local shop. The balance beam is a ripped out floor joist from a construction error.

The thing about living in the country...

The garden. The garden I planted at the right time with the right plants and the right irrigation and all that jazz. The bugs really like it, too. A lot. Very few things are surviving the affection off the bugs: the garlic, the onions, the horseradish. The rest is pretty much eaten up completely or not thriving. The bugs I can't really do anything about- I am not willing to use chemicals so the solution is better varieties of plants. The not thriving I can do something about, but I have no idea what. First step is to get my soil tested at the cooperative extension.

The chicks. Which vanished overnight without even a trace feather. All six of them. The neighbor spotted and killed a fox at his coop, but we'll never really know what happened to our chicks. Gabriel was devastated. Then we lost one chicken a night for three nights in a row, despite closing them up in their coop. There were feathers for them, I guess because they were big enough to put up a fight. We're down to two hens and the rooster. One of the hens is broody, so who knows? Maybe she'll hatch some chicks for us. I'm not holding my breath. I've not mentioned this to Gabriel. He hasn't wanted to come with me to feed the chickens since the chicks went missing. All that guarding them from the cats, from the cold, from the bigger chickens. All that energy he put in, gone, *poof* just like that.

And then there are the hicks. The ones down the road with the Confederate Shrine on their front yard. The ones across the street who informed us, when we first moved in, that "We don't want to be friendly with you people." The ones further up the road who have NO TRESPASSING signs and chain on their driveway. The ones in town who rev the engines of their souped up gas-guzzling trucks and shoot eat-shit-and-die looks at brown faces. The ones who pull the Wall-Mart Yank-and-Spank on their screaming two year olds. The ones who look at me blankly at best, and suspiciously at worst, when my Jewish heritage comes into the conversation. The farmer next door who keeps mowing on our side of the property line, right before he sprays chemicals all over his land. Chemicals that don't stay on "his" side of the line, but drift all over my house instead.

And last on my (current) list of Thing I Didn't Know About Living in the Country is: the driving. A lot of it. Driving to friends because none of the kids' peers live in the neighborhood. Driving to classes. To co-op. To the grocery. To Chinese. To everywhere. I don't usually appreciate the news spin of CNN, but this article on the New American Dream, Walking Urbanism, really caught my attention. Added to this is the newly acquired knowledge that we live within 100 miles of an active nuclear power plant.

I am feeling, suddenly and without warning, that I don't want to be here anymore. Is this feeling real? Or am I bored and fabricating a thing to focus on? Is there anywhere that is really any better than this?

My eco-footprint according to EcoFoot.Org

Tina tagged me with a curious quiz created by EcoFoot.Org. The quiz informed me that it would take 3.2 planets to support the human race if everyone lived like I do. This troubled me. I was hoping for at least a one, if not a less than one. So, like any good scientist, I started messing with the criteria to see what would happen.

I morphed from a four person milk-egg-meat eating household, living in a 2,000 sf green design home with running water, a car, and 10 hours of airplane flight per year to a one person vegan household, living in an apartment with no running water, no car, and zero hours of airplane flight per year. My new footprint: 2.3 planets.

Hmmmmmm.

I played with all of the options and could not get a score of "1 planet" no matter what I did with the variables. I can't tell if this is a glitch in the program or operator error: maybe after one hour of futzing with this I still didn't pick the right combo of variables for a sustainable score. Perhaps it is the secret true message of the test. My guess is that if I could adjust for the total population of the earth that the score would change. In other words, with almost seven billion human beings on the planet, there is no shade of green that is green enough. But if there were, say, only 3 million of us, we could use running water and electricity in good health.

Sometimes I think that our standards of living (running water, antibiotics, electricity, etc.) are simply incompatible with our resources. If we want to live in mud huts and die in childbirth, we've got it made. But if we want to live sophisticated, healthy lives, the planet dies. Is there a middle path here? Anywhere? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

State of the Planet Conference, Columbia University

So we use a lot of coal.
And we drive big cars.
But the US sure does like to talk about environmental policy.

These discrepancies were painfully highlighted at the State of the Planet conference at Columbia University. In the wrap up debates last night, Vinod Khosla argued that the United States will be a leader in green technology because it is profitable to do so. Khosla is a venture capitalist, aka A Rich Man We Should Listen To.

Basically, America has refused to be a part of the international green movement, expressing this by not signing the Kyoto Protocol. And now, we claim the lead in green technology and energy. How? By using our Super Power: the free market.

While I am unsettled by the fact that U.S. environmental policy will be fiscally driven, I am thrilled to see venture capitalists mobilizing around green energy. Bring on the green!

Intangible cost of electric heat

My eyes have been dry lately. Really dry. I've upgraded to the "gel" eye drops- plain saline was just not moist enough for me anymore. I considered going to the doctor, thinking that I am having some kind of tear duct malfunction. Then I remembered that we've been running the electric heat a lot. This is due in great part to the fact that we were a wee bit late in ordering our fire wood. It has not had enough time to dry out, and starting a fire takes some doing. By next winter we'll be able to light it with a match, but for now there is newspaper involved.

When we run our wood stove, we always keep a full pot of water on top. It simmers. We put cloves in it. I've tried setting out water to combat the forced air heat, but its just not the same as the scented steam that pours off our wood stove pot. The forced air is also not as warm as the wood stove, even though the thermometer says otherwise. There is some intangible quality to wood stove heat, some toastiness, that cannot be measured by conventional methods.

Despite the fact that we are living under 1,000 kWh a month while using our electric heat, I am paying with dry mucus membranes. As DS puts it, "My nose has been really crusty lately." Until next year, my eyes and dry skin will rely on drops and lotion.

Renu CitizenRE research I did

I volunteered at a local homeschooling conference last year. Volunteers got bags. The nice, big, canvas ones. Bliss with two handles. In my bag was information from various vendors, one of which was Renu CitizenRE . It looked like a scam, but a very interesting one. Glossy green paper. Suspicious. But still, so very green. I saved it in my Go-Through-Me-Someday pile. About a week later I threw it away. Then I saw an advertisement right here at my own site for Renu CitizenRE.

I was smiling from ear to ear for several hours after reading their information. I could lease a solar array for what the energy was going to cost me anyway. I already know where I want my panels. This was revolutionary- I had never heard of anything like it. It was cooperative, enlightened, a real answer. Can we pick out china and curtains now? Then I tried explaining it to my Dad. I could not answer one very important question: how does Renu CitizenRE make a profit?

My research indicates that Renu CitizenRE has no real assets, no manufacturing facility, and not a single actual system installed. They do not have employees, just "Ecopreneurs" who currently are not making any sales commissions. Regional sales directors have recently left the company, citing frustration over delays and lack of concrete information (not to mention no pay). Delay announcements have begun, currently claiming a 2009 date for their first installation.

It is not a revolutionary concept. Leasing a solar array is a well established power distribution model in the commercial sector in states like CA and WA. To participate in CitizenRE's program, you or your business need to be in a state that has:

1. Net metering in place.
2. Annual average kWh cost of 7 cents or higher.
3. The required amount of sunlight.

My husband suggested that they may actually be a marketing firm, just checking the national interest on solar array leasing. CitizenRE is a great idea, but to date is it only an idea.

UPDATE 12/1/2007
I was contacted by Bonnie , a Southern, CA Greenie and CitizenRE Ecopreneur. During a phone call with Bonnie, she informed me that CitizenRE does indeed have a base of operations selected, but that they are not releasing this information at this time. The state in question is not ready to go public yet. According to Bonnie, CitizenRE wishes to save all announcements for one large press release, at which time they will disclose their location, start date, and other details. The secrecy is due to the wishes of individuals and companies who are financing CitizenRE.

Bonnie did not have the answers to my questions, but was herself confident that CitizenRE did have the answers, even though they were not sharing them at this time. Bonnie also made the point that the more people sign up, the more confidence CitizenRE financing interests have. She also wanted to share with me some links that cast CitizenRE in a more positive light. My communication with Bonnie has not changed my take on CitizenRE, but has opened my eyes to the possibility that signing up could not hurt. I found the following my conversation with Bonnie to be positive, but lacking concrete information about a start date, manufacturing facility, sub-contract with existing manufacturing facility, or state location for operations.

Green lighting choices

Incandescent bulbs are bad. We all know that. Many of us have switched to fluorescents, which are now also bad. So what's a Greenie to do?

Get rid of the lights
By far the easiest thing to do is nothing. Eliminating a light source, and rely on sunshine. No bulbs to replace, or recycle. No fixture to clean. Nothing to buy. Nothing to maintain. Doesn't that sound so easy?

Go with LED lights
Right now, the best choice (aside from letting go of an industrialized world view that includes using electricity when the sun don't shine) is LED lighting . Granted, it is a plastic product made of virgin material. But also energy efficient, even more so than fluorescents, they last indefinitely, and they do not contain any poisonous heavy metals.

LED lighting is (currently) one of the greenest lighting choices. We've hung a 13' line of LED holiday lights in our closet. They were $3 and provide direct, clear, bright light to our closet. LEDs emit blue tinted light. For around $70 you can purchase an LED bulb that fits into a regular 60W bulb socket. Pricey, but it will last until it is physically broken.