The lighter side of waste

There is increasing pressure for anyone involved in the disposal of gas discharge lamps to move away from landfill to more environmentally responsible methods of disposal. Recent legislation, and more coming into force next year, means that recycling will become the only option available. For any contractors involved in replacing lamps or refurbishment of lighting installations these developments are very significant.

Gas discharge lamps such as fluorescent, sodium, metal halide and mercury vapour light sources have been targeted because they contain small quantities of dangerous substances such as mercury. And, while each lamp only contains a small amount of mercury, vast numbers are used and disposed of in the UK every year – resulting in a significant environmental threat.

The fact that they are used in such large quantities in commercial and industrial buildings also makes it more viable to recycle the other components in the light sources. There are three pieces of legislation that will drive this forward.

In July 2004 the Government introduced the Landfill Directive, which reduced the total number of hazardous landfill sites in the UK from 250 to ten, and only a couple of these are licensed to deal with mercury-containing waste. For lamps and tubes in particular, this has resulted in a tripling of the cost of sending waste to landfill.

More recently, on 16 July 2005, we saw the introduction of the Hazardous Waste Regulations in England and Wales. The regulations are based on the European Hazardous Waste Catalogue. Under the new regulations, lamps and tubes are classified as hazardous waste and attract a consignment fee when any transfer of waste lamps is made. This has clear cost implications for anyone disposing of such waste.

In addition, any site producing over 200 kg of any type of hazardous waste per annum will have to register with the Environment Agency as a hazardous waste producer and obtain a site registration code. As a guide to what this actually means, around 500 fluorescent tubes constitute about 200 kg.

However, it’s important to remember this threshold covers all types of hazardous waste. The same regulations also classified cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors and lead acid batteries as hazardous waste, and it only takes 15 CRT monitors to take a company up to the 200 kg threshold. Waste contractors will not be allowed to collect waste from any site that has not registered.

The third piece of legislation is the WEEE Directive (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment), which is finally coming into force next year. At that time, it will become mandatory to recycle lamps and tubes – so everyone involved really needs to be gearing up for these changes now, if they haven’t already started to make plans.

Because of these changes, the majority of building operators will find the most cost-effective route for complying with the new legislation will be to team up with a specialist contractor that is licensed to deal with hazardous waste. In many cases this relationship will be through an electrical maintenance contractor, rather than the end-user dealing directly with the waste contractor. However, building operators will still have an obligation to ensure that the maintenance contractor is working with a waste contractor that adheres to the required standards.

Special treatment

When teaming up with a waste specialist, electrical contractors must ensure they choose a firm that can deal with gas discharge lamps, which are among the most challenging forms of hazardous waste to deal with. This is mainly because lamps use so many different materials that have to be separated.

Consequently, there are only a few specialist companies in the UK with the facilities and expertise to ensure that 100% of the lamp components are dealt with in compliance with the legislation. Mercury Recycling employs state-of-the-art machinery and techniques to meet this requirement. For example, the vacuum within the lamps means they implode when crushed, so the crushing procedure has to be contained within specially constructed machines. Highly flammable hydrogen gas is also released when the sodium from sodium lamps is exposed to water, so special precautions have to be taken with this when processing and storing these lamps.

In addition, the glass in many lamps is coated with a mixture of phosphors and this has to be stripped off before the glass can be reused. These phosphors also contain mercury, which is distilled from the phosphor mix at high temperatures (around 800°C) to reclaim pure liquid mercury. In the case of sodium lamps, the sodium is reclaimed. Ferrous and non-ferrous metals are also separated from other components and sent for reuse.

In preparation for these changes, the lighting and waste industries have been working closely to ensure procedures are in place. To that end, a not-for-profit organisation called Sustainalite was established to, among other things, create an approved protocol for lamp recycling methods. Mercury Recycling is a founder member of Sustainalite.

Ongoing implications

Lamp recycling is one element of the life cycle costing that is being introduced by many organisations to take account of the real costs of the equipment they use. This means that the cost of lamp disposal now needs to be taken into account from the initial design phase of a project.

In particular, this has an impact on the value engineering exercises carried out by many contractors, because lamp disposal costs will have an impact on the overall payback time of the project. As a result, there will be many more projects where higher quality, longer life lamps are more viable than they used to be.

Of course, by using longer life, more efficient lamps, building operators will be able to mitigate some of the extra costs through improved energy efficiency and extended maintenance cycles. It will also encourage them to switch to group lamp replacement schemes using contractors, rather than in-house staff replacing individual lamps. A major incentive for this is that discharge lamps give out less light as they get older, while using the same amount of electricity. Tests have shown that most discharge lamps start to waste energy when the light output has fallen below 80% of their original output.

Figures provided by Sustainalite show that around 12·5 million lamps were recycled in 2004. However, during the same period, 100 million lamps were distributed in the UK, so there is still a huge gap. Thanks to the changes in legislation, that gap will be closed significantly in the coming years.

Bryan Neill is managing director at Mercury Recycling.