Missing the Big Green Picture
It often seems that environmentalism lacks a big picture view, and spends too much time looking at micro issues instead of addressing the big concerns. This thought is prompted by the latest piece of enviro-recycling silliness in the form of fresh concerns over the recycling of low energy light bulbs.
Low energy bulbs contain small amounts of mercury, a substance easily recycled yet eagerly pounced upon by a wave of doubters who forecast an environmental catastrophe through incorrectly disposed bulbs.
The tale gets even more ridiculous as the Environment Agency have now published a set of guidelines detailing the correct emergency procedure should a light bulb accident occur:
- If a low-energy bulb is smashed, the room needs to be vacated for at least 15 minutes.
- A vacuum cleaner should not be used to clear up the debris, and care should be taken not to inhale the dust.
- Instead, rubber gloves should be used, and the broken bulb put into a sealed plastic bag - which should be taken to the local council for disposal.
Once upon a time, nuclear waste was handled with less caution.
Addressing the balance somewhat, a leading toxicologist has claimed that the miniscule amounts of mercury contained in a low energy bulb poses no greater risk than many of the substances that we come into contact with on a daily basis, suggesting that caution is only necessary should several bulbs be broken simultaneously within a confined and poorly ventilated space.
Back to my point about a big picture view - we have just been discussing one tiny problem in a sea of environmental and health issues prevalent in the world today. In comparison, millions of mobile phones will be thrown out each year, having an average lifespan of about 2.5 years and containing far greater quantities of toxic and previous materials. Hundreds of thousands of laptop computers will also be disposed of containing a similar mix of materials and having similar lifespans.
However, light bulbs containing a fraction of the chemicals and having a ten year lifespan have been headline news in some papers this weekend. Strange. Is there something here that we just don’t get, or does the world just have no sense of perspective when it comes to environmental issues?
What we really need is a proper discussion about the farcical process of recycling that many of us go through (see Why Recycling Rubbish is often Rubbish), which is massively inadequate in dealing with a mounting tide of electronic waste. Perhaps the Environment Agency can focus on this problem instead of writing warnings for emergency light bulb disposal?
The CFL issue is a volume thing, they are everywhere, they have a terrible new bulb failure rate.
Example: a hotel with 1,000 rooms, installs 5 bulbs per room, that is 5,000 bulbs that are going to get a 20% failure rate per month perpetually over a five year rotational life span(1,000 bulbs) these will be disposed of in the bin. That is 5,000mg of mercury, per month, per hotel, per city. I do not want that in my local landfill, do you?
Just like the costs savings add up so do the dangers of concentrations of mercury rising in landfills. Then leeching into the water table or running off to the ocean. Now the instructions here are extreme, but the cumlative danger of mercury is not, but this does address a point I have made before.
We have a terrible track record in the arena of unintended consequences, because we do not think things through or just do not understand the eco-system enough, we react with a knee-jerk “we have to act” attitude to environmental issues. Invasive species, animal population controls, species diversity initiatives, reef creation, the list goes on and on.
This is why we blame ourselves for the perceived climate crisis, and is also the same reason I am concerned about our solutions to this “greatest threat to humanity” issue.
I agree we need much better disposal policy on everthing, from recycling to energy recovery. The problem is we make stuff, but never think about how to un-make it. I also believe people are lazy or busy, so that recycling should be at the concentration points, after collection, just because many people just will never do it.