Recyling batteries and cfl's

I got this in March, it takes me that long to get things posted, heck my last post was about something I did at Christmas time, hehe.

I come home from work one day and there is a flyer thing hanging on my door knob. As I was walking up the stairs I was thinking great more Domino's or some other pizza joint, or some stupid warning letter from management.

Real quickly must rant on this, I had to have a maintenance guy come and NOT fix my lock the other day, that's a whole different issue. On our personal patio, not shared with anyone else or in view unless you are on it, we have 2 decorative milk carton type boxes that we put our recyclables in and when they are near full we then take those down to the curbside bins when they aren't full. So when he comes to NOT fix my lock he says I need to take the stuff out it can't be on the patio. I say yeah they are full I can't, he looks at me and says yeah take them out. Again I say I CAN'T. He just looks at me like I am speaking a foreign language and says they need to be emptied, again I say I can't empty them the bins are full there is no where to put them. He pauses looking at me for a few minutes doing nothing and I just stare back waiting for the synapses in his brain to finally start working and he finally says oh you mean the dumpster. At that point I just roll my eyes and turn and walk farther into the apartment waiting for him to NOT fix my lock. I'm not sure if he ever really got it but I was so tempted to go and toss the recycles onto the street. I'm just waiting for management to tell me I can't leave the recycles on my patio. They tell me so many things that are so out of left field I can't even mount a defense against it and try and educate them.

Ok back to what I actually had on my door. A flyer for recycling batteries and clf light bulbs. It included a bit of info and had a little pocket on the back side with a sealable bag for you to drop off or send in batteries to be recycled. It had info on recycling bulbs and a web address to where you can properly do that. I was presently surprised. I know management had nothing to do with it because I have seen them put blown tube fluorescent bulbs in the recycle bins. Here are a few pics of the flyer and bag:

This was before the tighter regulations were imposed on batteries being sent in the mail. Read about that HERE. I haven't read anything more on it and not sure what is going on with it. I think it may have stopped my husbands work from recycling batteries because they had a bin at his work and he says they don't have it anymore and I would assume it was because of this regulation, but that is just a complete guess. He works in an area known as business park and there is a company there, E-World Recycler, that is an e-recycler and they have drop off events quite often. Of course I have not participated in any of them, I just have a corner of the apartment stacked with boxes full of old cfl's, batteries, old computer parts, old cd's, old floppy disks, you name it I probably have it in they boxes, teehee, I'm such a hoarder. I really should get off my ass and take the stuff in, it is so close to where we live I can just put all the stuff in my car and if they don't take some of the things I have I can just take it back home and do more research on what to do with it or perhaps they can point me in the right direction.

Quick useless facts about me, I can't spell maintenance correctly for the life of me, I have to correct it with spell checker every time. I also write me instead of my A LOT, I read my post before posting it and I had to change me to my a few times, as I was reading it I was thinking, what am I a pirate! Haha. That is me booty there hands off, argh! I entertain me self so much.

Phone Books and general recycling issues

Oh great look what landed on my doorstop and on the doorstop of all my neighbors!

Not only is it a phone book, it's two phone books in a plastic bag! Ugh there is nothing redeemable about this at all. I have even signed up at YellowPageGoesGreen.org to take myself off the distribution list but of course they still deliver them because they could care less. Especially since I live in an apartment complex, the person that gets paid to deliver them isn't going to try and figure out which apartment may or may not want them. The problem starts way before that though the company isn't going to take the time to make a list in the first place or even bother to listen to an organization that wants to stop unsolicited books. They are just going to keep giving them.

If everyone who doesn't actually want the phone book was to come home and find them and then promptly put them in the recycle bin the bins would be overflowing by days end just with phone books. There are three large bins curbside next to the dumpster and they are always over flowing. We have our own boxes on our patio to put our stuff in because you never know when you are going to be able to actually get stuff in the curbside bins. Most people take their recycles out and if the bins are full they just trash the stuff. The bins are usually pretty much all recyclable stuff but every once in a while you will find bags of trash in the recycle bins. I guess some people are just too lazy to try and figure out what goes where.

It is not so bad here, the first apartment I lived in was horrible. The dumpster and recycle bins were right next to each other and the dumpster was wide open, no lid on it, you could just toss your bag into the open dumpster. For some reason people would still put their trash bags in the COVERED recycle bins. I don't understand that at all, you can just toss your trash in the open dumpster or take the time to open the lid of a dirty recycle bin and put trash in it, how does that make any sense. I am so baffled by the things people do.

Here there isn't that much trash in the recycle bin all that often but the items that people put in the recycle bins are quite often not recyclable. Like a kids plastic toy ride on bike, yes it is plastic but not recyclable plastic, hey at least they are trying. What bugs me the most is what the employees of the complex put in there and do with the recycle bins. When the bins are overflowing and the lids don't close all the way quite often a maintenance guy will go over take out stuff until it does close and put that stuff in the trash. He won't even see if one of the other bins has room or pick out the stuff that isn't actually recyclable first he just takes it all right over to the dumpster. When a kitchen light blows, the long fluorescent tube lights, the maintenance guys put them in the recycle bin. That makes even less sense than the plastic kids bike. I get so angry at what I see in the recycle bins that I have stopped taking our stuff out and make my husband do it and tell him not to tell me what he saw. That doesn't keep me blissfully unaware because the dumpster and recycle bins are right below our apartment so if I look out our bedroom window I can see them and our parking spot is right in front of that area so every time I get into my car and I back out I see the bins spewing with non recyclables.

We have single stream recycling so all items go in the same bins. A few years ago it use to be one bin for plastic and aluminum, one for paper, and one for glass. When they switched to single stream single households got new large blue cans the same size as the large grey trash cans, previously they had three small different colored boxes one for each type. Apartments and condos at the time had three large different colored bins one for each type of recyclable. They didn't replace those with blue bins for apartments and condos until the ones they had needed replacing due to wear and tear. The trash area we use has two blue bins and one red, red was for glass. People don't understand that and still put everything in the blue, including glass, but very few put anything, even glass, in the red so there are basically only two bins being used regularly. I understand the confusion but it really shouldn't be that hard to figure out and why do they pay attention to only glass in that one but continue to fill the others with non recyclables and even straight trash sometimes.

Got Electronic Waste?

For the locals, from EDCO's site:

Got Electronic Waste?

EDCO now accepts qualified e-waste devices, such as computer monitors and TVs, at the EDCO Recycling Buyback Center, located at 224 S. Las Posas Road in San Marcos (map). Qualified electronic devices are accepted from the public and from State Certified Collectors at no charge. Non-qualified items such as computer drives, keyboards, printers, and other related computer parts are accepted for a small fee.

Residential customers may also call EDCO to collect unwanted electronic devices for a nominal cost through the company's bulky item collection service.

TechnoTrash, some tips

As you may or may not be aware it is illegal in some areas and bad for the environment in general to dispose of any electornic waste in the regular trash pick up.

As you are probably also aware it is almost more difficult to figure out where to properly dispose of electronic items.

Here are some option for tech recycling.

GreenDisk seems to be a pretty cool service and fairly easy.

Also check out your local Office Depot for tech recycling, they have three different size boxes and all the stuff you can fit in one is recycled for the price of the box.

The Big Green Box is much like what Office Depot offers but they seem to specialize in batterties and small handheld devices.

ACT recycles videocassettes and computer disks through an org that provides jobs to disabled people.

At The Rechargable Battery Recycling Corporation you can enter your zip code and get a list of close places to recycle your batteries.

I am sure there are plenty of other resources, usually when you buy a new electornic gadget you are given an option to recyle what it is replacing. I know T-Mobile provides me with a free recycling envelope for my old phone when i get a new one and Dell supplies me with a free recylcling envelope for my old printer cartridges when I get a new one.

CFL’s and Mercury and Proper CFL disposal

CFLs and Mercury

CFLs do contain a small amount of mercury, so they cannot be thrown out in the trash. However, the mercury in CFLs represents a much less significant environmental hazard than incandescent bulbs because CFLs require much less electricity, and more than half of our nation's electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants—the largest U.S. source of mercury emissions.

In scientific words, the average coal-fired power plant emits only 3.2 milligrams of mercury for each CFL running six hours per day for five years, but emits nearly 15 milligrams of mercury for an incandescent bulb running the same amount of time, according to The Union of Concerned Scientists research. The difference far exceeds the approximately five milligrams present inside a CFL. Properly disposing of CFLs ensures the mercury in them remains contained.

Proper CFL disposal

What do you do with cfl's that you no longer can use since you are not suppose to put them in the regular garbage, Home Depot now has drop offs for proper disposal of CFL bulbs. Info about Home Depot's in store bulb recycling.

Now its easy to do the right thing. So if you have not switched do it, the upfront cost may be more than incandescent bulbs but the money you will save on not having to replace them and lower energy bills will quickly offset the cost. If you are worried about the whole mercury thing, it seems to be overreacted by a lot.

If the twisty light thing is what is stopping you then get yourself to a big hardware store, I frequent Lowe's but Home Depot has the same products. They have CFL's in all shapes and sizes now. Even some in color. I have even seen teardrop CFL's for use in chandeliers.

If you have used a CFL or two and were turned off by the difference in type of light that they give off, try switching to a lower watt, basically a 26 watt CFL is about equal to a 100 watt incandescent. Some people complain about the type of light, some feel its too "blue". There are many new CFL's that say softer light or things like that on them so the transition from incandescents will be easier on you eyes.

Batteries

Green Living Tips has a great article on Disposable vs. rechargeable batteries. Included in the article are recycling tips too. Great article check it out.