RCO Pilots Fluorescent Lamp Stewardship

The Recycling Council of Ontario (RCO) and Toronto District School Board are pioneering a new environmental stewardship project to recover and recycle fluorescent tube lighting from Toronto District School Board schools.

The program is slated to recover 48,000 lamps in six months from 600 buildings, recovering at least 557 grams of mercury, and avoiding its deposition into Ontario landfills and incinerators.

The pilot involves all parties associated with fluorescent lamps, from producer to distributor to user and finally to recycler. This arrangement ensures proper environmental stewardship and sharing of the financial costs of recovering and recycling mercury-containing fluorescent lamps. The partners include fluorescent lamp manufacturer Osram-Sylvania, fluorescent lamp distributor Wolf Electric and Lighting, the Toronto District School Board and fluorescent lamp recycler Fluorescent Lamp Recyclers Inc.

There are about 30 million fluorescent lamps sold into Ontario annually with over 90 per cent of these lamps currently ending up in the waste stream. The 30 million lamps are comprised of 8.8 million kilograms of glass, 110,000 kilograms of metals, 140,000 kilograms of phosphor and almost one tonne of mercury.

(Source: February 2007 WasteWatch)

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