Stupid Laws
by Lee H Goldberg

Even after working with him for more than a decade, my colleague, Paul, is always surprising me with one thing or another. Last week I was doing research for a story about the environmental issues involved with compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) technology when he beat me to the punch with his editorial. He also went a bit further and pointed out the less-than-rational legislation that's driving their adoption before those problems can be addressed. While I might disagree with Paul about whether or not CFLs are quite the toxic threat that he feels they are, I think his analysis of the legislation that will virtually ban incandescent bulbs in Canada by 2012 is spot-on. More importantly, it's another example of well-intended environmental laws creating as many problems as they seek to solve.

Don't get me wrong:- I'm a big advocate of CFLs (about 80% of the lights in my house are CFLs) because of the huge amounts of energy they save; but they really do represent a significant mercury hazard if they are allowed to enter our landfills and incinerators at the end of their lives. That's why any law that requires the use of CFLs must also provide the means to recycle them, or the legislation will probably do nearly as much harm as it seeks to prevent.

Without some sort of statewide or national program to make CFL disposal easy for the average consumer, the millions of CFLs reaching the end of their life each day are silently releasing their toxic 5 mg payload of mercury as they enter the waste stream.

To date, none of the pending regulations requiring CFL use that I've seen includes any provision for dealing with the recovery and recycling of the products they promote. This is reminiscent of the pain the industry suffered when well-meaning European Union politicians banned lead in most electronics products a few years ago, without looking closely at the problem they were trying to solve. While their goal to remove toxic metals from landfills was a good one, it could have been accomplished more effectively by ramping up a continent-wide electronics recycling program that kept the lead, cadmium, copper, tin, plastic, and other potentially valuable materials in the supply chain and out of the landfill. Instead, the EU RoHS laws burdened the electronics industry with spending the billions of dollars it took to develop new soldering materials and re-tool their assembly lines while the world's landfills continue to bulge with dead electronics.

The good news is that there are already cost-effective programs in place that recycle the millions of larger fluorescent tubes used in stores, offices, and industry. The bad news is that they're not available to the average consumer. Most states offer some rudimentary CFL take-back programs that individual householders can use (see the EPA web site), but the actual collection events are held infrequently, are not well-publicized, and are often located in out-of-the way places only the most public-spirited eco-conscious citizen would take the time to find. Some big box hardware stores like Lowes and Home Depot are rumored to take dead CFLs back for recycling, but I can't seem to find one that does. It's been such a pain to find a take-back program near where I live that there's a large bucket of dead CFLs in my basement, waiting for the day I can recycle them safely.

To make things easier, a national take-back initiative might include things like requiring stores that sell CFLs to have collection centers, or requiring municipalities and waste collection companies to provide special containers for CFL pick-up. We should probably also consider market-based incentives such as a $0.25 deposit on CFLs to help encourage their collection and return.

I'd also suggest that any legislation our leaders craft is done with the understanding that we should probably look upon CFLs as a bridging technology to be used until high-brightness LEDs (HBLEDs) and other solid-state lighting products become practical and cost-effective enough to hit the mainstream. While CFLs will be invaluable in cutting our energy consumption in the short term, it would be crazy to establish laws and construction codes that mandate the use of mercury-laden fluorescent products when equally-efficient and far more environmentally-friendly alternatives are on course toward becoming available.

There's no time this week to challenge Paul about the casual statement he made about the extra energy and materials required to make a hybrid outweighing the resources it saves, but his remark echoes a rather poorly-conducted study I've seen that uses some truly creative statistics to prove a 10 mpg GM Hummer H2 is more environmentally-friendly than a 40+ mpg Toyota Prius. I've also heard similar rumors that claim solar panels consume more energy in their manufacture than they ever produce.

My initial research indicates that both of these assertions are simply urban legends with no basis in fact...but it will take some more digging to get the real facts and figures and to make sure my granola-munching environmentalist sentiments don't cloud the analysis. It will take another month or two to collect and analyze enough information to give you as clear a story on these other two controversies as I can.

In the meanwhile, I'm torn between anticipation and dread of Paul beating me to the punch again with another one of his insightful and challenging articles on green tech.

Comments? Questions? Suggestions for market-based alternatives for environmental legislation? Write me at lhg at en-genius.net or, better yet, post your comments on our new on-page blog.

Editor's Note:

If you want to dig a little deeper into the CFL controversy, here are a couple of useful links for you:

The Society for Environmental Journalists compiled a great summary of the issues surrounding CFLs and mercury. It also provides a bunch of great links to other sources for you to check out. You can find the summary here.

One way to reduce the mercury emissions of CFLs is to make sure the ones you buy actually work for their full 8000 - 10,000 hour rated life. As anyone who's bought low-cost CFLs from big-box discount stores can attest, some brands don't even come close to delivering their rated life and, in many cases, have infant mortality rates in the neighborhood of 20%. The One Billion Bulbs web site provides reviews of various CFL manufacturers that will help you find CFLs that actually deliver their rated life and have the light quality you want.