Home Depot CFL Recycling
By Jenn | July 1, 2008
Great Great Great News!! Home Depot stores will now be collecting used (and unbroken) Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs for recycling!
From the Home Depot press release (PDF): “At each The Home Depot store, customers can simply bring in any expired, unbroken CFL bulbs, and give them to the store associate behind the returns desk. The bulbs will then be managed responsibly by an environmental management company who will coordinate CFL packaging, transportation and recycling to maximize safety and ensure environmental compliance.”
So, we all know by now that CFLs save massive amounts of energy and are a no-brainer way to green your home and office. But the bulbs also contain small amounts of mercury, which means they’re too toxic to toss out with the trash (and into the landfill). Ikea has had a CFL recycling program for awhile now, but there are far fewer Ikeas than Home Depots– so this makes it much easier to be responsible about used CFL disposal.
Of course, it would be wasteful to drive to a Home Depot just to drop off one single bulb– so keep it in a safe spot until you’re heading there anyway, or until you’ve got a few bulbs collected to drop off together.
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[Image by Pauladamsmith via Creative Commons]
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i’ve been waiting for this moment. couldn’t figure out a damn place in nyc to get rid of used CFLs. so i could take it to the home depot (by subway ;-) in manhattan and return my used CFLs??
Hey Julia– yup, think so! If you get on over there to drop them of, let us know how it goes!
Beth over at Fake Plastic Fish told me about your post since CFL recycling has been a pet peeve of mine. I am so glad that Home Depot took this step. Let’s see what WalMart and Lowes do about this. By the way, I like your picture on your about page!
Hey Anna– Isn’t this CFL recycling great news? And, thanks, we like that picture too! Sometimes those tiny choices are really hard to see, but we’ll never stop looking for them… ;)
This is great - and hopefully other stores will follow this for even more options. I appreciate the post!
[…] taking back expired and UNBROKEN CFLs. Thanks to Beth of Fake Plastic Fish who alerted me to an article on Tiny Choices, I now need to find another pet peeve to rant about. Like, I don’t have enough to […]
Tried to return dead CFL’s at local Home Depot in West Dundee, IL and they knew NOTHING about this. Typical…