Monday, April 30, 2007

GOOD INTENTIONS AND ALL THAT

I really only wanted to help the eco system of the world. Honest. So I made the trip to WalMart a few months ago and bought these energy saving, long lasting, good for the environment, superduper, fluorescent light bulbs to replace all my energy wasting, short life span, bad for the environment tungsten light bulbs.
After all, many web sites I visited said they were a great way to help and my maintenance man said they were really good and would last a long time. The guy in the hardware department said he had been using them for six months and none had burned out.
Very smugly I pointed out to the cashier what I was doing and suggested she should do the same.
Told all our visitors about them, too. Very proudly, I might add. Recommended they switch to these bulbs and help the world out.
So what? Well, the "so what" is why I'm hiding behind the leaves.
Our morning paper carried an article about these energy efficient bulbs. Seems they all have a "tiny" bit of mercury in them. That stuff is bad for our nervous systems. Really bad.
Albuquerque is going to try and prevent most of this stuff from getting into our solid waste fills. They've set it up so we just have to call our 311 number and tell the person there that we have one or two of these things that have outlived there usefulness. The city will send someone out to pick it, or them, up and take them to a recycler to be disposed of properly.
Thus, we can use these bulbs that last 10 times longer than fluorescents and use only a quarter of the electricity consumed by incandescent bulbs.
But I also remember that when I was a kid, my Christmas present chemistry set had a container of mercury in it. I really enjoyed playing with that stuff. I guess that the old mercury was cleaner than the new stuff.

2 comments:

Lin said...

My brother and I loved playing with mercury, too. It was so, uhm, 'mercurial' and fascinating. Then I hit high school chemistry and, although we were still permitted to play with it, the teacher said that anyone allowing it to stray into a lab counter crack would pollute the classroom and universe for the next 6 thousand years and that anyone guilty of doing so would be hung, drawn and quartered for the offense. Kind of took the fun out of it.

Catmoves said...

Roaring. I would have liked that teacher. He/she was an instructor, a bit more than a teacher. Sorry, I somehow missed answering this post. I plead a blonde moment.