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Re: Mercury in Vermont
Posted By: John Anderson In Response To: Re: Mercury in Vermont (SVP Neon Equipment)
Date: Friday, 9 February 2007, at 5:52 p.m.
> Unfortunately it probably is. You can thank
> the pro-LED clan and people like Al Gore for
> things like this. Ignorance is bliss!I don't think it's Al Gore - his issue is climate change. The Vermont law has nothing to do with energy efficiency or carbon emissons, it's about unrecycled Hg thrown into landfills.
A big difference between fluorescent lamps and "neon" is that (at least here in Texas) nearly all commercially-serviced tubes get recycled. And I mean COMPLETELY recycled. The spent tubes are picked up by the same person who services the sign, put in a box, and the tubes sent off by-the-carton. Automated machines whack off the end caps, recycling the aluminum, scrape out the phosphor, crush the glass, and distill off the Hg at nearly 100% recovery. It's efficient, fast, and cheap.
You can do this to a neon tube as well, but since each one is different it's a little more complicated. The neon industry might fight off regulation for a while, but in the end there will be few products manufactured using Hg that are allowed to be disposed of without requiring them to be recycled. That club of products is already very small, and shinking quickly. Folks can argue all they want about metallic Hg vs. organic, the relatively tiny slice of the Hg-pie the neon industry contributes compared to power-plant emissions, etc. All TRUE, very valid points - but they are dwarfed and will fall on deaf ears in the global wave of Hg reduction efforts. Our industry's only long-term solution is simply to support recycling. Neon offers serveral advantages over standard fluorescent lamps with regards to this:
1. The tube is more likely to be serviced by a professional technician than a fluorescent lamp (which is often a homeowner who bought their light at Home Depot).
2. Cold cathode fluorescent tubes (aka "neon") last significantly longer than fluorescent lamps, and required disposal occurs more infrequently.
A mercury-containing neon tube is easily recycled by crushing and distilling off the Hg for purification and use again. It's actually much simpler and cheaper than the recycling processes for some other metals like lead and cadnium. We just need access to these services like the flourescent lamp folks have. I currently use the 5-gallon Hg "buckets" - that for around 100 bucks recycle up to a several lbs. It's really a make-shift solution for neon tubes, and there is considerable room for improvement and convenience.
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