CFL Recycling at PlayNetwork

by Leanne Lavere

PlayGreen has been making large strides towards better recycling practices within PlayNetwork. One of the best ways to recycle at work or at home, and a great option for PlayNetwork employees is to use LED (light emitting diode) lighting. The LED bulb does not contain mercury like its much cheaper counterpart the CFL (compact fluorescent light) bulb. Mercury is toxic and tough to remove from the environment.

To give you a quick look at how LEDs work versus CFLs, take the 100 watt incandescent light bulb. An equivalent LED bulb will only use 10 of the 100 watts and could last up to 60,000 hours. That’s not only a non-toxic solution, but it also saves tons of energy!

Let’s be honest though…LEDs are extremely expensive (around $25 each), and usually are not as bright. I’m not sure about anyone else, but I can’t afford a $25 light bulb! CFLs are the next best alternative to a regular incandescent light bulb. They save up to 75% more energy and are just as bright. But what do we do with the old bulbs? They cannot be just thrown away because of the mercury content.

PlayGreen has replacement CFL bulbs on hand should anyone need a replacement for their desk lamps. We are not only providing a new light bulb for you, but we will also safely dispose of the CFL so it doesn’t end up in a landfill. 

Here’s a quick reminder where you can find the recycling boxes for those disposable CFL bulbs as well as electronics recycling and CD recycling:

CFL Recycling:

Where:

Building A: Recycling boxes located in Sara’s cubicle.

Building B: Recycling boxes located in the lunchroom.

Building D: Recycling boxes located across from the mail/printer room in the cubicle behind Kym’s cube.  

 

When: 

When the CFL boxes are full, we will wrap them up and ship them off to Puget Sound Energy. They are running a bulb drive and trying to collect 50,000 CFL Bulbs! As of this posting they have collected 14,250 bulbs from local businesses. Once you've dropped one off, please hook up with this link and let PSE know! We'd be happy to count them and track them before we ship them but because of possible broken bulbs in the box, it's not safe for us to do so. 

Electronics Recycling:

Where:

Building D: Recycling boxes located across from the mail/printer room in the cubicle behind Kym’s cube.  

When: 

Once there is a fair amount of stuff we’ll call in the recyclers for a pick up.  If you have a large amount shoot us an email and we’ll call in.

Why? 

Because it’s easy and way better (not to mention less toxic) than throwing your recyclables in the trash!