Having visited a "state of the art" lamp recycling facility, I was dismayed at the use of the title for the facility.
They took old or unwanted fluorescent lamps, cut or broke off the ends, crushed the glass, swished it around in a large bath of water, separated the ferromagnetic parts from the glass and piled up the crushed glass so it could dry.
Because the powder coating does not separate easily from the glass, it can not be remelted. If it is, the result is a highly unstable type of glass due to the vastly different coefficients of expansion between the glass and the powder. So, it ends up in a land fill.
The metallic parts contain small amounts of mercury that refuse to wash off. But they will burn off when the metals are remelted. The insulators in the bases are incinerated in the process of re-melting the metals. I believe the raw metal ores produce less toxic gas than this process.
The water from the wash tank is hazardous waste until it is evaporated and the little bit of heavy metal (mercury) is disposed of because it is not cost effective to distill it from the sludge.
So perhaps it should be called reclamation rather than recycling? And, considering the other sources of mercury poisoning, is this really accomplishing anything?
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