Lamps4U, a company in Dubai, are offering to safely dispose of CFL light bulbs, which contain a small amount of mercury. While the lights are safe to use, if broken they can release the toxic metal into the environment.
Currently in Dubai, CFL light bulbs are being thrown away with regular waste as there are no proper facilities for disposing of the light bulbs.
By the end of this year, the traditional filament lights will no longer be available to buy in the country. Among the efficient technologies that will be allowed instead are halogen light bulbs, LED light bulbs and CFL light bulbs.
Chief Executive Officer of Lamps4U, Mahesh Patel, has been working on solutions for large waste generators as well as for consumers. For establishments that use a lot of light bulbs, Lamps4U is offering machines that can crush the lights, extracting the mercury in them and separating the glass, plastics and metal waste. Two of these have already been bought. Boxes specially designed for the collection of old light bulbs is hoped to be picked up by public places such as shopping malls. Aluminium bags have been designed for consumers to use to throw away their CFL light bulbs. With the project still quite new it is hard to predict how many light bulbs will be collected. Currently, Lamps4U is storing the old light bulbs in a Dubai warehouse but soon it will begin reprocessing them in a machine with a capacity of up to eight million light bulbs per shift per year.
Mashish Patel said about the project:
I started to think about supplier and manufacturer responsibility and I decided to give a cradle-to-cradle solution. I am not promoting it as a safe disposal program. This is proven technology, everything is available in Dubai today. The ultimate goal is that we collect all the [CFL light bulbs] so no mercury will escape into the environment.
Lightbulbs Direct offer a free Recycle your old light bulbs scheme which allows our customers buying new electrical equipment the opportunity to recycle their old items free of charge.
