Concern for the Environment is great, but what are we doing to the World?

Al Dente, July 28, 2007

Don’t get me wrong. I love the environment. I work in it when I can. I love the fresh air, I drink fresh water from my well, and I eat food that I have grown or raised myself. When I go shopping, I look for environmentally safer materials. I like to think that every little bit I do to help out will be multiplied millions of times by all the others who do the same.

I recycle all glass, metal, and plastics that are taken by the local recycling company. And you would be surprised at how much cardboard my family collects on a daily basis. We don’t have curbside recycling here, so we go out of our way to store the material and make trips to the recycling center once or twice a month.

I have investigated buying an electric car or perhaps one of the Brazilian imports that can run on 100 percent ethanol or gasoline, or anything in between. Perhaps a hybrid would work well for us, since we no longer have to take the entire soccer team places, and usually there are only two of us in a vehicle for any trip into town.

I buy compact fluorescent lights (CFL) whenever I can as they do save me from replacing bulbs as often, and I believe that they do indeed use less electricity than incandescent bulbs. Sure, in some locations I use a mixture of incandescent bulbs and CFLs. In a few reading lights, I use only incandescent because Mrs. Dente does not care for the quality of light the CFLs produce. Being a guy, I don’t seem to be anywhere near as particular.

Good ideas all. However, I think that perhaps they have gone bad . . .

Those CFLs that I like contain mercury. As far as I know, there is no way around having the mercury in the bulb as it is important to the ionization of the gas in the tube that produces the light. Although I don’t sweat the load over a little mercury, I do get concerned when I think about all the CFLs that will end up in the landfill.

Our landfill has a household hazardous waste facility that will take residents’ hazardous waste for free. Sounds good so far. But a business has to pay 25 cents per linear foot for disposal of CFLs because they are not allowed to dump the bulbs into the landfill. I would think that they would have built the landfill to handle most wastes, and have it permitted to do so, but apparently that isn’t the case for mercury-containing wastes. Well, I know what should be done, but will I really take those bulbs in for proper disposal? Heck no. I’ll end up throwing them into the normal trash for the truck to haul off. Into the landfill it goes. I won’t want to hold onto just one bulb to take to the facility in a month or two when I get over to that part of town. How many more will be like me? Too many, I think.

I’ve been reading a little about the manufacturing of fluorescent tubes and CFLs. I was hard pressed to find a company in the U.S. that made these bulbs. Almost all of the work is done in China or India. Our environmental laws have made it difficult to perform the work here, so we just ship the work out to countries that don’t pay close attention to harm done to the environment by their manufacturing processes. In our quest to save the environment by reducing energy use, are we helping make a time bomb in those other countries that will cost mankind dearly in the future?

Along with CFL manufacturing, I understand that we no longer make stainless steel in the U.S. (chromium is a hazard), and we no longer tan much leather here because of the acids involved being . . . too hazardous to handle.

Please tell me. Am I am wrong? There is only one environment. I would feel better about doing my part to save it, if I were convinced the steps being taken in the U.S. to protect the environment are not just shifting the problems to another part of the world.