The Department of Environmental Protection is partnering with 43 counties, townships, environmental groups and small businesses statewide to set up compact fluorescent collection programs.

More than 110 containers were purchased from Pennsylvania firms AERC Recycling, based in Allentown, and Hellertown and Northampton County-based, Bethlehem Apparatus Company.

Both companies shipped the receptacles directly to the participants for use in conjunction with Earth Day and other hazardous household waste collection events.

The AERC containers will hold 100-150 bulbs, and the Bethlehem Apparatus containers will hold slightly less than 100.

Once the containers are filled, participants will ship the receptacles back to AERC or Bethlehem Apparatus for the physical recycling.

DEP invited counties, municipal governments, environmental groups and other organizations to host CFL recycling containers in publicly accessible buildings. To recycle a bulb, a consumer simply needs to hand it over to a trained employee, who slides it into the container.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs can save up to 75 percent of the energy used by traditional light bulbs, said Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen A. McGinty, but a lack of options on where to recycle the bulbs may make some consumers reluctant to adopt the increasingly popular technology.

“If all of the households in Pennsylvania changed just one incandescent light bulb to an ENERGY STAR-qualified CFL, consumers could save $25.5 million annually on household electric bills and prevent nearly 382 millions pounds of greenhouse gas emissions each year,” said Secretary McGinty. “That is the power of energy efficiency, and we need to encourage people to take advantage of that power by adopting these safe and readily available technologies as soon as possible.”

For more information on handling CFL bulbs safely, visit the Energy Star FAQ on fluorescent light bulbs.

NewsClip: Mahanoy Program to Recycle Light Bulbs

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4/11/2008