This week is Earth Week…..are you celebrating?

In keeping with the theme of this week I will post a piece on the environment…….when I started this blog about 7 years ago I wrote a piece about the new light bulbs that were all the rage…..the CFLs…..you know those compact little screwy looking bulbs that they are trying to get the whole world to switch in an attempt to protect the environment…..the post I wrote pointed out that these bulbs have mercury in them and I was concerned that the disposal of these into local landfills would eventually make our groundwater toxic, once the mercury leached into the soil……..I had a comment from a reader that pointed out that Home depot was providing people a collection center for later disposal……I thanked them for pointing that out but I was then concerned on just how many people would take the time to use such a service or would they be lazy and throw them away in their family trash which in turn would go to the landfill and eventually the mercury would make it into the drinking water…….I was called an alarmist many times and I guess I may have been the alarmist that people thought…….

But then I saw an article about a happening in Canada that played into my alarmist nature…….

A large home improvement retailer has decided to quietly pull the plug on its compact fluorescent light-bulb-recycling program nationwide, upsetting an environmental non-profit that has handed out hundreds of thousands of the energy-efficient bulbs in Canada.

Home Depot started selling CFL bulbs, which contain a small amount of mercury, about six years ago. And around the same time they also started collecting the burned-out bulbs — until last week.

An email from a Home Depot spokeswoman said “changes to the enforcement of compliance requirements in a number of provinces” made the company decide to leave the job to other recycling programs in Canada.

In addition to cancelling the CFL bulb recycling program nationwide, Home Depot has also cancelled its paint recycling programs in Ontario and Quebec.

How will this effect the US?  Will Home Depot here in the lower part of North America follow suit?  What are the alternatives in recycling for these potentially dangerous bulbs?