www.lightrecyclewa.org<\/a> to find a collection site near you.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n“Fluorescent lights are long-lasting and energy efficient, but they contain small amounts of toxic mercury, which needs to be recycled or properly disposed of,” said Laurie Davies, manager of Ecology’s Waste 2 Resources program. “With the launch of LightRecycle Washington, we’re making it easier to comply with the law and protect the environment.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Since 2010, it has been illegal in Washington to dispose of mercury-containing lights in the regular garbage. This new program, funded by a 25-cent environmental handling charge on each new mercury-containing light sold at retail, makes it simple to recycle old lights.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
EcoLights Northwest, located in Seattle, is the recycling company that will process the lights collected by LightRecycle Washington. After mercury-containing lights are collected, EcoLights breaks them down and then recyclable components, including mercury, are refined and reused.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“We started recycling lights back in 1996,” said Craig Lorch, co-owner of EcoLights, “but until now, many residents and small businesses have had a difficult time finding a convenient and inexpensive way to recycle fluorescent lights. This program will make it easy to recycle mercury-containing lights anywhere in Washington state.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
LightRecycle Washington is run by the nonprofit PCA Product Stewardship Inc., working with retailers, lighting manufacturers, municipal waste facilities and Ecology.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington residents can now recycle fluorescent lights and other mercury-containing lights for free at 130 sites throughout the state, with more being added in the months ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-17890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17890"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17890"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}