Recycle the bulb

India consumes a few hundred million energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamps every year and the volumes are growing. This is welcome news not just for the lighting industry, which places the number of pieces manufactured in 2010 at around 304 million, but also for climate change mitigation efforts. Yet this also presents a waste management challenge. The problem with fluorescent lamps is that they contain small amounts of mercury. Unfortunately, India has not evolved a good system to recover this hazardous heavy metal from end-of-life lamps. Moreover, the trend is towards dosing CFLs made in India with levels of mercury that exceed the international norm, apparently to improve their performance. A recent study by Toxics Link, a non-governmental organisation, indicates that mercury levels in domestic CFLs may even be four to six times the norm in developed countries. 

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