Thank you so much for your response to our concern regarding the compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL). Regarding their disposal, our concern mostly lies in the fact that there will be people (more than we’d like to think, I believe) who won’t be bothered taking the time to line up at the Hazardous Waste Depot with their bulb collection. They’ll simply dispose of these biohazardous bulbs as regular trash – or they’ll throw them into bins outside of stores, in bags along roadsides, etc. This is bad enough when it happens with regular garbage but when the waste is biohazardous, that’s a whole different story – and one that has us concerned.Even some Guelphites who have read that these bulbs are biohazardous and should be disposed of at the Hazardous Waste Depot may naively conclude: “Well, there can’t be enough mercury in there to cause a problem – otherwise they wouldn’t be selling these bulbs to the public. So I’m not going to make a special trip out to Wet-Dry, I’m just going to toss them where I can.” Take, for instance, residents who live in apartment buildings who don’t separate for recycling the way the rest of do. They have a (voluntary) bin for papers, one for glass and the rest of their garbage just goes into a big bin that’s collected once a week. Most of these tenants, especially seniors who no longer can drive or want to drive any more than necessary, will not make the effort to take these bulbs to the Hazardous Waste Depot. The bulbs will either end up thrown (and smashed) in the glass bin or the big “catch-all” bin that goes to landfill. Not good.
In a perfect world, everyone would do what they’re supposed to to preserve our personal and earthly environments. I know we agree that it is our personal responsibility to do whatever we can to keep toxins out of our air, water, earth, bodies. Unfortunately, as we can see by the state of the world right now, that is just not the case for many people for whom convenience wins out over personal responsibility virtually every time (especially if there’s little chance of being caught).
So we just can’t understand why it’s better to have more mercury in our air, land, and water via CF bulbs than it is to just stick with incandescent bulbs and work on educating people re the environmental benefits AND the money they’ll save (WIFM!) by turning off their lights as much as possible – and using dimmer switches. This especially applies to businesses (especially in large office buildings) that leave their lights on full throughout the night and large shopping centres/malls where you practically have to wear sunglasses not to get your retinas fried. Last summer during the heat waves, we noticed Zehrs and Zellers turned off every other light. Great idea! Why not promote that to every store, all year round? To us, that makes a whole lot more sense than promoting biohazardous bulbs in the hopes that people will use less energy. We say “hopes” because the following seems like a more likely scenario: people will conclude that since these CF bulbs last longer and are more energy efficient, they won’t have to worry so much about turning them off all the time. “Hell, honey, these things last forever – we can leave the darned things on all the time!” It’s like the person who buys a fuel-efficient car, then drives twice as much because it costs less to do so or the smoker who switches to “light” cigarettes then smokes twice as many to get the same nicotine fix.
Anyhow, nuff said. We also received responses to our e-mail from June and Kathleen so I’ll send them the above thoughts as well. And, regarding the pesticide ban, it’s funny… (and sort of related to the above), our neighbourhood seems to be spraying an extra load on their lawns this spring – even homes that never did before. I guess they want to kill every non-grass thing in sight before the ban comes in. We’re not surprised that you’re getting a lot of complaints as so many people seem to equate their self-worth with the monocultural state of their lawns. They’ll get over it. Of course you and Council are doing the right thing – the only thing that makes sense – banning these poisons from our City. Hey, we may also end up saving tax dollars on health care if people start getting out there to pluck out the dandelions manually. Darn good exercise. IR