A bright idea whose time has come.

There has been much discussion in the news lately about light bulbs, since Australia became the first country to take the step of banning the old, familiar incandescant light bulb. Other jurisdictions, including Ontario and some other provinces, are now talking about following suit. Tyler Hamilton had an excellent summary of the issue in his Toronto Star article just this past Monday, and there are many more.

There is, of course, something to the mercury argument. Critics of the proposed ban correctly point out that compact flourescent light bulbs (CFL’s) contain mercury which, if they end up in a landfill, break and release this mercury into the environment where it eventually gets into groundwater and, well, you can imagine. Proponents correctly point out that the total mercury released to the environment by powering the light from a coal fired power plant plus disposal of the bulbs is still less than that same coal plant powering an incandescent bulb for the same length of time. Take a look at this graph.



These arguments then degenerate into discussions about the promise of “clean coal” and the effectiveness of our municipal recycling programs. So in the end, doing the math to determine which light bulbs are least environmentally damaging is beyond the capability or desire of most of us.

It’s enough to give you a headache, when all you want to do is flip on the light and read your book.

As usual, I have a different solution in mind. It seems to me that this problem is a perfect example of the need for “Extended Producer Responsibility” (EPR) that the Green Party has promoted for a very long time. The idea is simply, if you manufacture and sell it, then you are responsible for it. No sending the product to dumps. No sending the product to municipal recycling systems, which are not set up for them. In other words, no economic externalities.

I envision a deposit-return system for light bulbs. For arguments sake, let’s say $0.50 per bulb. When the bulb dies, the consumer returns it to the manufacturer via the point of purchase and gets back $0.50 per bulb. Since this product contains toxic mercury, then you only get $0.25 back if it is broken and the mercury has escaped and the company pays $0.35 to the government. This $0.10 penalty would actually cost the company money and motivate them to provide the means for returned light bulbs to be intact.

With people and manufacturers motivated to keep the bulbs intact, we would quickly see the adoption of packaging that would be reused and returned. An added bonus that keeps packaging out of the dump as well.

In Ontario, of course, our provincial government will likely prefer to spend money on recycling programs, let the manufacturers off the hook, again, and we’ll be told to return our light bulbs to the beer store. – LOL