Since the new WEE regulations came in force, there has been a massive increase in the number of companies set up specially for the recycling of old discharge lamps and tubes which until a couple of years ago would have been just thrown to landfill. Now it is illegal in the EU to throw away lamps in normal waste, hence all lamps (and indeed most electronic equipment) now have a standardised 'no bin' symbol.

Here is an example of a company which deals with old lamps and removes the mercury. They place collection bins at customer sites where lamps can be placed and then taken away.

There is one of these bins at a council trash tip near me and it's where all my non-collectible dead lamps go!

Not sure what happens elsewhere in the world though...

Here on the West Coast of Canada,Municipalities have hazardous waste depots, where people can take their old HID or fluorescent lamps as well as ballasts,pesticides,old paint etc.

Here they are dumped in the street by unscupulous people for the street sweepers to pick up. I take my old lamps and place them in a wheely bin. I break the end pip on the lamps ( I have a small metal tool for that purpose) and break the glass to fit in the bin, whilst the lamp is in a sleeve. No recycling exists in this country for lamps, just landfill. Will be a problem in a few years with all those Chr@p cfls putting tons of mercury in landfill, you would think that Kortbroek ( nickname for minister of environmental affairs) would have remembered the lesson of Thor Chemicals and mercury poisoning.

Here they are dumped in the street by unscupulous people for the street sweepers to pick up. I take my old lamps and place them in a wheely bin. I break the end pip on the lamps ( I have a small metal tool for that purpose) and break the glass to fit in the bin, whilst the lamp is in a sleeve. No recycling exists in this country for lamps, just landfill. Will be a problem in a few years with all those Chr@p cfls putting tons of mercury in landfill, you would think that Kortbroek ( nickname for minister of environmental affairs) would have remembered the lesson of Thor Chemicals and mercury poisoning.

Yeah, this is something that really should stop, because I already have mercury poisoning from my old job! Why dump literal tons of mercury into the landfill anyway! This is one of my pet peeves too, not recycling things that have hazardous materials in them!

True, but remember what happens to all those lamps, computers and ships that go for recycling. In India they are cut up by peasants, without any protection except a cloth scrap to hold the hot metal, dozens are killed each month. The Mattel toys, with the extra lead content? The ground so pulluted with lead, arsenic and mercury in China and India that nothing can live in it, even the weeds are dead. There is a cost to pay for everything.

True, but remember what happens to all those lamps, computers and ships that go for recycling. In India they are cut up by peasants, without any protection except a cloth scrap to hold the hot metal, dozens are killed each month. The Mattel toys, with the extra lead content? The ground so pulluted with lead, arsenic and mercury in China and India that nothing can live in it, even the weeds are dead. There is a cost to pay for everything.

You serious? If it's true, thats horrible!

It is. I read an article on National Geographic magazine. Home Depot has some sealed dumpster that take in Haz-mat like lamps and ballasts. I asked if they had some old lamp that is worth collecting but they said they can't give them since its haz-mat and against the policy. They couldn't do anything about it even the manager. I even explained that collecting as a hobby is a different way of recycling that doesn't use electricity.

Good to hear that Home Depot is recycling lamps. I once returned a defective fluorescent and the clerk at the Customer Service Desk just dumped it in the trash right there & then. I also returned another defective lamp and found it later on the store's shelf again, just as I suspected. Worst of all is when I bought a lamp at Lowe's only to find out someone had put a dead lamp (of another brand) in the package and returned it, and Lowe's put it back on the shelf to re-sell.

My county offers free & easy lamp recycling about 5 minutes from my house, so I often collect other people's lamps to recycle when I go there (some of my neighbors STILL try to put their 4' and 8' tubes in their trash cans). But Seattle's hazardous materials collection actually charges customers to recycle CFL's which bothers me, so people will be putting them in the trash for sure...unlike 4' tubes, they are easy to hide in the trash.

Here in Quebec many cities have their own recycling centre called the Eco-Centre. Some are only open from May 1st to Nov. 30, but most of them are open the whole year. Whatever the name, a recycling centre is a place to visit!

The new Eurpoean regulations have been interpreted in too heavy handed a way by some authorities and companies in Britain, in the typical British fashion of blowing European regulations out of proportion. It is becoming a bit of a pain for collectors, because sometimes when we approach street lighting authorities or contractors and ask for lanterns they turn us away, stating that the regulations mean that every single lantern must be accounted for as being sent off to a recycling company to be stripped down and recycled/scrapped. With these authorities/contractors, they don't use logic, because reusing lanterns is more environmentally friendly than recycling, which requires energy for processing. The three R's state Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and they should be done in that order, with recycling the last resort. Sadly, in Britain recycling is all too often seen as the first resort, not only with old street lighting, but with other things such as supermarket packaging. In the past few years I've noticed products on the shelf become ever more wrapped up in packaging, rather than less wrapped up. Government policy is too narrowly focused on the recycling aspect, and they are seemingly ignoring the 'reduce' aspect. This applies to street lighting too, and it's not uncommon to see five year old lanterns or columns in the scrap pile, or to see brand new lanterns and columns installed in a street as replacement for crash damaged columns, even though the street is in the programme for full relighting which sees these brand new replacements ripped out sometimes within weeks of being installed.

Recycling is good, but we should be thinking more about reducing waste and reusing items more than we presently are in Britain. I've only seen Britain get more wasteful in recent years, and the government is very hypocritical in telling everybody to do their bit for the environment but do completely the opposite when it comes to street lighting, where in some places you end up seeing energy consumption treble with relighting schemes, or four times as many lighting columns replacing existing lighting columns, even where the roads were well lit before. It's getting to the stage where sunglasses are needed at night.