even if you're armed with Rand McNally's latest, both hands, and a flashlight, you'll never find such a place as "away." Forget it. There ain't no such animal.
Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems every time we make a gain somewhere in our efforts to live greener lives, we lose ground elsewhere.
I'm seeing this again with the much-publicized mini-flourescent light bulbs. In case you haven't seen them, these are the ones that look like a glass corkscrew in the shape of a normal bulb. These are supposed to last longer, blow off less heat, use about a quarter of the energy compared to the old bulbs, cost less to use, and preserve our ozone layer for a few more days. That's the story line, anyway, and lately a lot of folks are buying into it. Perhaps these claims are true. I've used them, and there's a lot less heat and a lot more light; I'm not going to dispute the advantages there.
But this design is being taken so seriously that several states (California, New Jersey, Connecticut) introduced legislation to make them standard, getting rid of the old incandescent light bulbs. None of these attempts went very far, though.
It seems these new mini-tubes are the greatest thing going, until they burn out or break. Then, it's time to worry about the mercury in them. The bulbs contain an average of about five milligrams of mercury -- about the size of a ballpoint pen tip, and one drop can contaminate the fish in a 20-acre lake. Potent stuff.
There are plenty of warnings about these bulbs. Don't throw them in the trash; take them to a hazardous waste handler instead. And if you forget and throw one in the circular file, pray that it's not incinerated. Or anything else.
This came to my attention because of reported high mercury levels kicked out at Charleston County's Montenay facility, a waste-to-energy incinerator near the old Charleston Navy Base, This plant, which handles 500 tons, or 80 percent, of Charleston's solid waste, was called the state's fifth-worst generator of mercury pollution by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), ranking behind only a few coal-burning plants. The culprit? Batteries, and those damned light bulbs.
"The incineration process doesn't create the mercury," Montenay plant manager Lee Bazzle said. "If people didn't put their batteries in the trash, and other things that contain mercury, we wouldn't even be on DHEC's emissions list."
Chalk all that up to the physical laws that govern our ideas of progress, and these laws are every bit as inviolate as gravity. Nothing's free. There's always a trade-off somewhere. And, even if you're armed with Rand McNally's latest, both hands, and a flashlight, you'll never find such a place as "away." Forget it. There ain't no such animal.
The EPA has a list of warnings about how to use and dispose of these bulbs, and of course these warnings are couched in the usual governmental gobbledegook (only a government, as Edward Abbey once suggested, could put out a monograph listing protocols for disposing of human waste in permafrost while dismissing the obvious -- crap in the snow and let the sled dogs take care of it). If a bulb burns out, the EPA warns, open a window and wait 15 minutes before doing anything. And if you should drop one, consult same EPA recommendations for disposal. Sweeping the glass up with a broom doesn't cut it anymore, but the actions do stop short of having a HAZMAT team showing up in your living room wearing moon suits. So far, anyway.
By now, we should be used to some of the trade-offs, and we've seen a few more lately. Like, nothing's more environmentally friendly than a drink of cold water, but the bottles in which the water is sold are starting to bite us in the butt. Per normal, although nobody really paid attention until the plastic bottles were carrying water. No one seemed to worry when it was a soft drink.
I'll be watching to see what happens with these funny-looking light bulbs. Eventually, though, whoever handles some of this legislation may figure out some of the physical laws. It can happen. There's no such place as "away."
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