They are making this too hard.

So I had a fluorescent light in my kitchen for the last 34 years and for the last couple months the thing was not always starting so I bought a new version that's LED and installed it. Took longer to wash the grease off of the ceiling than to install it. It works great! Starts right up. No flickering, Only a fraction of the power. Getting rid of the old one though was a different story. Took it up to the county dropoff and was turned down. They want you to separate thd metal from the wire and the plastic and the ballasts are to go into hazardous waste at a hefty charge (ever though it says it contains no bcbs.). Then each item must be dropped ofv in a different building. Riiiiight.... So i took it home. Disassembled it. Pounded the sheet metal out flat and took it up to the cabin for covering mouse holes. Coiled up the wire and put in on the garage wall for home repairs, saved the screws and nuts and put the rest in the circular file.

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

ArishMell · 70-79, M

Ooh, I do like the way you salvaged so much for other uses!

My local Council skip-yards want the flourescent tubes themselves put in a special box of their own, but the rest in an electrical / electronic scrap crate.

It doesn't charge householders for this.

Brings back a memory.....

Not long before I retired my employer replaced all the flourescent ceiling lamps with l.e.d equivalents. Some hundreds of 'em. Some were also emergency lamps so also contained a sealed lead-acid battery.

I spent many days, between other support duties, dismantling them. Luminaires in one crate, batteries in another, electronics in a third, the rest (case, diffuser and wire) in the scrap-metal skip.

This was an industrial setting though, so we needed be law-abiding and anyway paying contractors to dispose of the lamps complete would likely have been a lot more expensive. Also, the company was seeking ISO14000 environmental-protection registration so was being very thorough.

.....

Don't let the mice find your tin-snips.....