Starting in July, the U.S. Department of Energy has new regulations to upgrade old, inefficient, mercury-laden fluorescent light bulbs. About 500 million of the lights, called T12, need to be replaced. The change will save $10 billion a year in energy costs nationwide.
There are at least two kinds of lamps that are more energy efficient than the 80-year-old T12 tubes – T8, developed in the 1980s, and T5, which were produced in the mid-1990s. According to Katrin Mehler, president of the Miami-based company LUXADD, a leading lighting solution provider, upgrading to the T5 light is the best – though not necessarily the easiest – choice.
“The T5 has the best lumen maintenance, and it has an extremely low mercury content. It doesn’t evaporate like in the old tubes,” Mehler says. “But it is shorter in size, and that’s a big problem because it requires a different fixture and changing a fixture is very expensive.”
Mehler says one alternative to having to rip out a fixture and put in a new one is a new T5 fluorescent lighting adapter, recently introduced by LUXADD. The company’s Express T5 Retrofit Kit Series is designed to retrofit old T12 light fixtures to the T5 fixtures without the significant costs of parts and labor to replace the entire fixture. The T5 saves up to 73 percent on lighting energy costs and reduces a company’s carbon footprint by up to 60 percent. And because the T5 tubes don’t produce the same amount of heat as the old T12 bulbs, businesses will also save about 15 percent on air conditioning costs, Mehler says.
Retrofitting fluorescents has brought happy side effects. “Most of the time (the buildings) have been overlit to begin with, so we can go from four T12 to two T5 and nobody’s going to know,” she says. “It’s a little less lumen, but it’s still enough light.”
She says one client, from a CPA company, also noticed a noted difference in temperature after changing to the T5 lamps.
“He could never close the door of his office because the T12s were getting so hot and the air conditioning couldn’t go against it, and ever since he’s had T5s, he can close the door,” she says.
Mehler pointed out that some people are opting to switch to the T8 light because it doesn’t require a new fixture, as it has the same pins and length as the T12.
“But it’s still 30-year-old technology; it’s not a new technology at all,” she says. “What you really want to do if you retrofit and spend (big) money, you want to go all the way. You don’t want to get stuck halfway and go only to T8. You want to go to T5.”
Mehler says T5 tubes are also much better for the eyes than another type of energy-efficient light – LED.
“LED still has the bluish effect, like the ‘Twilight Zone’ … and T5 has a beautiful light,” she says.
Mehler says that with the savings in lighting and cooling costs, the Express T5 Retrofit Kit Series pays for itself within one year. Companies can add to their savings by installing things such as occupancy sensors, which detect motion in a room and turn on and off accordingly, as well as dimmers, which vary the brightness of a light.
“There are a lot of possibilities for consumers and companies to save on energy,” she says.
Category: Lamp Recycling
Green lighting: Ways to cut costs and save energy
New federal label for household light bulbs packages could help consumers warm up to CFL, LED bulbs | cleveland.com
It used to be that picking up a two-pack or four-pack of light bulbs was a no-brainer.
As if by instinct, most consumers knew what wattage bulb to buy. A 40-watt bulb might go in a closet, a 75-watt could be used in a reading lamp, and a bright 100-watt might go above a workbench. But most often, consumers bought a 60-watt bulb — pretty bright but not blinding, and not so hot that it ruined the fixture.
Much of that buying decision, though, was based on experience and marketing, including information on the package. It was all about how much power a bulb used.
“We have been conditioned to buy on watts,” said Peter Soares, director of consumer marketing for Philips Lighting.Not for long. Because of new technologies, the industry wants consumers to choose light bulbs by lumens, which measure brightness, not by watts. This will be done with fancy new packaging and a sober, federally mandated label.
Read More via New federal label for household light bulbs packages could help consumers warm up to CFL, LED bulbs | cleveland.com.
NLR’s New Technology Still First & Best in the States
NLR’s new lamp recycling technology was first in the nation and continues to be the largest unit in the states. It can process up to 5,000 lamps per hours and can accept waste from multiple access points.
BulbAmerica Presents the Latest News on the Safety of Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs
Brooklyn, NY (PRWEB) March 06, 2012
BulbAmerica, a leading wholesale retailer of quality lighting fixtures and light bulbs in the United States is an environmentally conscious company that believes in offering all their customers reliable and trustworthy information regarding various lighting products. A recent study conducted by Peter Braun in Berlin’s Alab Laboratory revealed that the compact and environmentally-friendly CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps) that are going to replace the age old incandescent light bulbs contain carcinogenic substances.
Some of these toxic and cancer causing substances include phenol, naphthalene, and styrene. Scientists in Germany are strongly advising people to use these bulbs sparingly and only in areas that have good ventilation as these bulbs are now known to generate electrical smog that is extremely harmful. A professor of biology at Haifa University in Israel, Abraham Haim found that the likelihood of women getting breast cancer increased due to the light emitted by Compact Fluorescent Bulbs. This light disrupts the production of the hormone melatonin in the body.
Says a lighting expert at BulbAmerica, “These CFL’s are marketed as safe products but can potentially damage the liver, brain, kidneys, and the CNS only if the light bulbs are broken, cracked, or not disposed off properly.” CFLs are also known to produce radiation that is also associated with a number of health defects including, but not limited to dizziness, headaches, weakness, sleep abnormalities, fatigue, and migraine headaches. With the government’s decision to go ahead with banning the sale of 100 watt traditional incandescent light bulbs with the 75-watt version of toxic CFLs by January 1, 2012, people might be forced to use these compact fluorescents.
via BulbAmerica Presents the Latest News on the Safety of Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs.
Canada Delays Phase Out of Incandescent Light Bulbs for 2 Years | AltEnergyMag Press Release
All developed markets worldwide are committed to implementing energy efficiency standards for light bulbs, and this includes the US, the EU, Australia and Canada. The energy efficiency standard for light bulbs was introduced in 2007 with the stated aim of improving incandescent bulbs or replacing them with more efficient technologies, notably with compact fluorescent and LED bulbs. The underlying aim of energy saving is to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions by the enforcement of low energy requirements.
Numerous concerns have been voiced with regard to energy-saving compact fluorescent lamps (CFL), mainly due to their potential risks to health, their actual performance and issues involved in their disposal due to their mercury content. Research conducted by the Canadian government indicated that CFLs pose no health risks from ultraviolet radiation or electromagnetic emission, but noted that more time is needed to communicate these facts to consumers effectively.
Reasons given for delaying the implementation in Canada by two years are that the amendment to the regulations will provide more time to communicate research findings to the public as well as more time to install CFL disposal programs. The main messages to the Canadian public are that no one technology will have to be used, alternatives will become available and the use of CFLs poses no health risks.
However, the delay will put Canada one or two years behind the US schedule for incandescent bulb phase-out as well as pushing any projected energy and cost savings further into the future.
via Canada Delays Phase Out of Incandescent Light Bulbs for 2 Years | AltEnergyMag Press Release.
International Lamp Recycling News-Busted lamps pose toxic risk
WHEN busted fluorescent lamps are improperly disposed of, mercury — a potent neurotoxin — is released into the environment, endangering the health of both workers in garbages sites as well as the general public.
Environmental health groups aired this warning after conducting a “photo documentation” to find out how spent lamps are disposed of by “small quantity waste generators,” or entities that accumulate less than 100 busted lamps a year.
With the help of “Basura Patrollers” from the Diocese of Caloocan Ecology Ministry, EcoWaste Coalition, Global Alliance for IncineratorAlternatives and Mother Earth Foundation, photos from garbage bins and heaps were taken at random in January, 2012
The photos were taken in pavements and sidewalks in the cities of Caloocan, Las Piñas, Makati, Mandaluyong, Manila, Navotas, Parañaque, Pasay, San Juan and Quezon.
Some of the photos can be viewed at http://ecowastecoalition.blogspot.com/
The investigation confirmed the unsafe practice of simply leaving or throwing mercury-containing lamp waste in the streets as if these were merely candy wrappers.
Busted lamps were dumped along with typical trash, or were left by the roadside, which were then picked up by garbage collectors, sometimes crushed in compactor trucks and then hauled to municipal waste landfills for final disposal.
This is very disturbing since these spent bulbs are no ordinary discards. Reckless disposal can lead to lamp breakage and the discharge of its mercury content in vapor form.
Citing information from a government-published “Primer on Mercury-Containing Lamp Waste Management,” the groups said that tubular fluorescent lamps can contain 3 to 50 mg. of mercury, while compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) can contain 1 to 25 mg. of mercury.
The health impacts of mercury release and contamination, according to the primer, can include brain damage, memory loss, learning disabilities, behavioral problems, loss of sensation and vision, tremors, heart disease, kidney failure, liver injury and damage to the reproductive system.
Waste workers, particularly the paleros (garbage collectors) and the informal recyclers, are at risk of direct exposure to mercury vapors from broken lamps.
Mercury vapor data at Pier 18 showed an average reading of over 117 micrograms per cubic meter (mcg/m3) with the highest reading at more than 502 mcg/m3.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has set a “permissible exposure limit” for mercury vapor at 0.1 milligram per cubic meter (or 100 mcg/m3), warning that “a worker’s exposure to mercury vapor shall at no time exceed this ceiling level.”
To reduce and eliminate occupational and community mercury exposures, national and local authorities should enforce a system for the environmentally-sound management of busted lamps, including a practical system for safe collection, storage and recycling, the groups said.
The environmental groups said authorities should fast track the adoption of a product-take-back-system that will make manufacturers responsible for the management of their end-of-life fluorescent lamps.
The groups emphasized the need to educate the waste workers and the public about the hazards of mercury in the waste stream and the need for precaution to prevent toxic exposure through ingestion, inhalation and eye/skin contact.
Written by : via Busted lamps pose toxic risk | Opinion.
Full Circle, Part 4: NLR – The Green Apple
For whatever reason, the light bulb will not go off in the collective conscience of most American businesses when it comes to complying with the Universal Waste Rule.
Even though the rule has been a part of a federal regulation of the Environment Protection Agency since 1990, Raymond Graczyk said that only about 30 percent of private businesses properly handle the removal of universal waste such as mercury-containing light bulbs, batteries and ballasts – even though the numerous toxic effects of mercury poisoning has been well documented for years and years. Those effects include damage to the brain, kidney and lungs.
“What happens with mercury is that it accumulates in the environment, so when you’re getting hundreds and hundreds and millions of lamps being thrown out a year that mercury is released to the environment and then it finds its way back into the food chain, especially in fish,” said Graczyk, who is the co-founder and president of NLR, a company based north of Hartford, Conn., that specializes in lamp and universal recycling services for mainly commercial businesses. “[Awareness] is increasing some but it’s not as rapidly as it should be. It’s hard to say and necessarily come up with a reason why… Whether people aren’t properly informed. Whether they don’t care. I don’t know. Maybe they don’t realize how really available and easy it is to recycle.”
raczyk was working in the electric wholesale business before helping start NLR as a response to the EPA’s new regulations and the relative lack of a facility needed to process mercury-containing light bulbs in the Northeast. “There wasn’t any viable solution at that point in time,” he said.
NLR began with lamps — according to the company’s website it has recycled more than 300 million linear feet of lamp waste — and then quickly expanded to electronics and battery recycling and similar services. The company has more than a thousand customers in New York City alone, Graczyk said. He added that the company has clients all over the Northeast, stretching from Maine to Maryland.
“What we do at our company is keep a lot of mercury out of the environment,” said Graczyk, who also serves as the president of the Association of Lighting and Mercury Recyclers, which has an “Education and Resources” page on its website.
Here’s how it works: A large blue and yellow machine (see above) crushes the lamps and removes calcium phosphate powder that contains the mercury from the glass. The metal and glass is then separated. The phosphate powder then is sent off for a process called retorting where the mercury is reclaimed through the powder. In the case of lamp recycling and all other similar processes, the raw materials, such as aluminum from a lamp or nickel from a battery, is smelted to later be made into a variety of products.
At the moment, the main involvement NLR at the residential level is only through partnerships that have been arranged with municipal transfer stations throughout the area. That could change, though, as more Americans begin using compact florescent lights in their homes with the federal ban of traditional 100-watt bulbs. Furthermore, manufacturers will stop producing 75-watt bulbs on Jan. 1, 2012, but will be allowed to make 60- and 40-watt bulbs until 2014.
“I’m sure as the use of compact fluorescents becomes more prevalent than we definitely will be more involved on the residential side,” Gracyzk said. “When you throw out florescent bulbs, they don’t even make it to the landfill. They’ll start releasing into the environment from the dumpster because they get broken right away.”
Does your company use services such as the ones provided by NLR? What are your thoughts on the spread of mercury into the environment in regards to light bulbs? We’d love to hear from you on the topic.
Global News-India: Glowing mercury, growing panic
Ashpreet Sethi, New Delhi, Jan 31,2012,DHNS:
Environmentalists say mercury in tube-lights and other fluorescent bulbs produced in India is exceeding the safe limit and there is no regulatory body to check the same.The mercury content in Compact Fluorescent Lamps CFLs has risen to six times more than the internationally recommended average content.Most of the CFLs are thrown into a water body and broken into pieces which releases the mercury in the air.
“This can lead to health hazards such as kidney failure and paralysis and harm the ecological balance as well. We need to push for standards as there is no regulated disposal mechanism for households and industries, which is polluting the air and surrounding water bodies. Moreover, India does not have a standardised labelling pattern,” said Rajeev Betne, senior programme co-ordinator with Toxics Link, Delhi.
Experts suggest that the government should act immediately as the growing CFL market has already replaced more than 80 per cent of the yellow bulbs or incandescent lamps (ICL) market in India.
Also, India imports almost 35 per cent of CFLs from China and Malaysia every year to meet the over growing domestic demand.
Research result
A study done by Toxic Links in September 2011, had highlighted that CFLs manufactured in India of about 22 miligram when the international standards suggest 1.5 miligram per bulb.
The study was conducted on a sample of 22 fluorescent bulbs from four different brands. A huge variation was observed in the content of mercury in the same range of bulbs within the same brand.
“This indicates that there is no control or limitation on the machine instilling mercury in these bulbs,” added Betne.
Moreover, many of fluorescent bulbs do not last longer than one year because of high mercury levels.
Future threats
According to estimates, 400 million CFL units will be operational beginning 2012 which can cause more harm to the environment if the mercury content remains unregulated. However, experts are hopeful that a regulation will be soon in place.
“The Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) is in the process of finalising the standards for checking the mercury levels in CFLs. The standards will bring down the mercury level to 5 miligram per bulb,” said Sunil Pandey, an environmentalist with the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Delhi.
Brands such as Philips and GE should be preferred over locally produced CLFs till regulations are gazetted on paper as brands limit the mercury content to a great extent, he added.
Companies Should Upgrade to More Energy Efficient Lighting Before the July 2012 DOE Phase- Out of T12 Lamps
Atlanta, GA — (SBWIRE) — 01/19/2012 — There has never been a better time to upgrade your lighting system to reduce energy and maintenance costs. Department of Energy regulations will eliminate future manufacturing of most T12 fluorescent lamps after July 2012. This follows the previous July 2010 regulation that virtually eliminated T12 fluorescent magnetic ballasts from the lighting market. The DOE has targeted the T12 ballasts and lamps to remove this less efficient lighting technology from the market.
If your facilities use T12 fluorescent lamps you need to be prepared and your time is running out! After July 2012 it will be difficult to find replacement T12 lamps. Also expect the limited supply of these lamps will increase the costs to these replacement lamps. Value Energy Solutions, one of the largest lighting installation and lighting retrofit companies in the nation, can help you upgrade your lighting system with more energy efficient lighting and substantially reduce your energy costs.
To stay ahead of these changes you can replace your entire T 12 lighting system with new T8 or T5 fixtures and lamps. This will provide annual energy savings of up to 50% versus the T12 lamps- but it will require some upfront spending. One of the important services Value Energy Solutions provides is information on available utility and government rebate programs that can help greatly reduce the cost of upgrading to a more energy efficient lighting system.
Another option is to replace individual T12 fixtures with T8 or T5 fixtures as they fail. This approach has many disadvantages. It is more difficult to manage lamp replacement when there is a mix of T12 and other lamps. In addition, you will not realize full advantage of energy savings from continuing to use inefficient lamps. Also this option leads to uneven lighting which may be distracting to your employees.
Thumbs Up for Lamp Recycling!
Fluorescent lamp recycling for a business of any size has its positives that far outweigh not recycling and just going on with business as usual. There are positives that can be quantified, ones that can be physically seen and still others that have long reaching effects.
- Can be implemented quickly and easily. This often can be done through a national pre-paid program that can be set-up online in minutes or through a bulk pick-up service.
- Through tracking and reporting a business can have a total of all their recycling efforts across one or multiple sites. This will allow them to be able to craft a more effective lamp recycling program by being able to pin-point which program (bulk or mail back) is right for them.
- The bottom line. As with most things there is a charge for lamp recycling, but the cost is less than fines that can be assessed for improper management. Would a company rather pay $49 for a pre-paid recycling program that eliminates their liability or would they rather pay hundreds of dollars in fines for the same material that wasn’t recycled?
- By collecting and correctly storing used lamps a business can reduce their liability for breakage, environmental breach, and possible employee injury
- Lamp recycling can garner credits toward LEED certification
- Recycling is both environmentally and corporate responsible. Recycling lamps keeps mercury out of our landfill and in turn out of the water and food sources that can directly impact our health
- A lamp program can help a business increase their green image as well as convey a message of environmental stewardship to their employees and customers. Businesses can set up a company-wide recycling drive for all their employees or use their total lamp recycling numbers to quantify how much mercury was kept out of the environment. Real “Green Press” is green gold in today’s PR world.
- Simply-Its the law and the right thing to do.
