Zero Waste Alliance

  

Northwest Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) Recycling Project

  
   
 

 

  

Background

Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) have been widely promoted by electric utilities and energy efficiency groups because they produce the same amount of light as standard incandescent bulbs while using up to 75% less energy and lasting up to ten times as long. During the energy crisis of 2001, 6.8 million CFLs were sold in stores and another 1.3 million were given away by electric utilities in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

Watch the National Geographic video "This Bulb" starring Natalie Portman, Kyra Sedgwick, Chloe Sevigny.

CFLs help reduce the pollution associated with energy production, but because they also contain about 5 mg of mercury per bulb, they may introduce another environmental problem. Mercury is toxic and once released into the environment it can accumulate in living organisms and travel up the food chain where it reaches high concentrations in fish and other marine life. Proper recycling ensures the benefits of CFLs while properly managing the disadvantages.

A group of sponsors that includes Bonneville Power Administration, Clark Public Utility District, Eugene Water and Electric Board, Metro Regional Government, Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, PacifiCorp, and Portland General Electric, commissioned the Zero Waste Alliance (ZWA) to facilitate a multi-stakeholder group process to design a pilot project to recycle CFLs in Oregon and/or Washington.

The CFL Stakeholders Group met three times over a period of four months and designed a program that will provide households with a convenient way to recycle their burned out CFLs. A recycling program was already operating in Minnesota that let residents leave CFLs at any of hundreds of retail stores in the state. Another program in Indiana accepts tubes at selected Sears stores. The technology already exists to separate the glass, phosphor powder, mercury and other materials in CFLs for recycling, but there is not yet a convenient system for bulb collection in Oregon and the Northwest. This project will create a convenient way for CFL users to deposit their burned out CFLs for recycling and thereby help protect the environment.

UPDATE 1 - Further progress: Following the pilot project design, CFL recycling pilot programs were started in Lane County, Oregon, and the Puget Sound, Washington.  For a news article that summarizes these projects and gives the names of the people involved, click here.  For the final report of the successful Lane County project, click here.

It is expected that a permanent CFL recycling system will be put in place after the completion of the pilot projects, and that the program model will be replicable in other parts of the United States.

UPDATE 2 - Recycling: You can now drop off unbroken CFLs to Home Depot and Ikea for disposal. We thank them for this service. Links to details are in the Resources section below.

The expected benefits of this project include:

  • Convenient recycling method for household CFLs
  • Increased economic activity from the promotion and recycling of energy efficient products
  • A replicable model for other states or regions to use when implementing CFL recycling
  • The reduction of one of the sources of mercury to landfills
  • Improvement in the environment for human health and ecosystem protection

Details of the stakeholder meetings are below. 

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General Information

Project Description (pdf 32k)

Original Proposal (pdf 165k)

Project Sponsors

Charter (pdf 14k)

Project Principles (pdf 11k)

Phase I - Draft Report (pdf 409k)

Phase II - Draft Report (pdf 551)

Phase II - CFL Stakeholders Group (contacted) (pdf 25k)

Phase II - Transition Period Summary (pdf 9k)

Progress Update - Pacific Northwest Energy Conservation and Renewable Energy Newsletter article (pdf 88k)

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Phase II Meetings

Meeting One, October 29, 2002

Meeting Two, December 12, 2002

Meeting Three, February 25, 2002

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Project Sponsors

The CFL Recycling Project was made possible by the following Project Sponsors:

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Resources

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