Almost seven years after an announcement made with much fanfare, incandescent bulbs will be phased out in Canada starting January 1.2014.
Starting in the new year 75 and 100 watt bulbs will be eliminated from store shelves, with 40 and 60 watt incandescents to follow at the end of the year.
The idea was that allegedly “inefficient” incandescents would be replaced with more energy efficient and long-lasting compact fluorescent bulbs or CFL’s. The government said the elimination of incandescent bulbs
The claim is that incandescents lose 90% of their energy as heat.
However in Canada where it’s cold or cool for the greater part of the year, the energy and heat is not “lost” if it is actually helping to warm the house.
The elimination of sales on incandescent bulbs was supposed to come into effect in 2012, but was delayed to allay consumer concerns about cost and flexibility. CFL’s can cost from one to ten dollars more each than incandescents.
CFL’s were also claimed to last longer, but many consumers have reported that is not the case.
Another major concern however is disposal of the CFLs which contain minute amounts of mercury, a powerful neurotoxin.
Health Canada suggests some strict measures should you break one in your house. These include opening windows and leaving the room for 15 minutes, and not using a vacuum to clean the broken bits.
The chemical is highly toxic. Minute amounts can seriously damage the nervous system. The mercury contained in just one medical thermometer for example, can contaminate five Olympic-size swimming pools to unsafe levels.
There are also no adequate plans for recycling of these bulbs.
When the announcement was made, the government encouraged consumers to return burned CFL’s to Home Depot (a major national hardware retail chain) and other retailers voluntarily offering their stores as collection sites. But earlier this year, Home Depot quietly ended its collection policy saying other agencies, municipalities and provinces, are better equipped to manage these programmes.
However a 2012 study for Environment Canada found that Canada’s mercury-waste facilities are either patchwork or non-existent, and that there are no national standards.
The report found 123 facilities that store or manage mercury waste in Canada, but also that there is no facility in Canada to extract pure mercury from waste for recycling. Waste from such flourescent bulbs is often sent to U.S.
At present researchers found that because there are few collection points, and few proper recycling facilities, most of the CFL’s end up in landfills where the mercury can leach into groundwater, and from there into public water supplies.
It should be noted that another type of incandescent, halogen bulg, are not currently affected by the phase-out of incandescent bulbs.
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