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Sustainability at ORNL > Questions, Comments, Ideas > Information Exchange > Categories

4/7/2010

Use different font for reports to save toner ink
I've seen this story repeated in a couple of places - 

This seems like a good idea - while presented in the context of default email fonts, it could be a good idea to change the font used in report templates to one that uses less ink when printed.  Toner cartridges are very expensive, and this would save $ as well as reduce spent cartridges.  You could even track the total $ across the lab (from purchasing records) before and after a switch to quantify savings. 
Posted at 10:23 AM by Sieger, Matt T. | Category: Disposal | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/17/2009

Compact fluorescent light bulbs
Christine Goudy comments:

Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) are very energy efficient, but no local communities are making it possible to easily dispose of them properly. I didn't even know they are considered hazardous waste when we started using them in California several years ago. We suspect many people are still just dumping them in the trash, where they end up in landfills. If CFLs are going to be environmentally and energy friendly, disposal must be part of every community's normal trash/waste management system. If we had small bins specially marked, we could just gather bulbs as they wear out and have them picked up.

Susan Michaud, ORNL's Pollution Prevention Coordinator, responds:

Compact florescent bulbs (CFLs) are more energy efficient than traditional incandescent bulbs. Manufacturers have made many improvements in the size, appearance and quality of light they emit. If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars. ENERGY STAR qualified bulbs use about 75% less energy than standard incandescent bulbs and last up to 10 times longer. (http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=cfls.pr_cfls)
 
However, CFLs are considered hazardous because of the mercury in them. This means you must dispose of them as hazardous waste. You might wonder if the trade-off is worth it – it is! If the electricity used to operate your lamps is generated from coal and you operate 100-watt incandescent lamps for 10,000 hours, the power generating plant will release between 40 mg and 70 mg of mercury into the environment, depending upon the type of coal being used. If instead of the 100-watt incandescent lamp, you use a 25-watt CFL, the power plant mercury emissions drop to between 10 and 18 mg over the same 10,000 hour period, again depending upon the type of coal used. Even when the 5 mg of mercury in the CFL is added to the environment at the end of the lamp's 10,000 hours life, the total mercury from using the CFL is far less than using the incandescent lamp. (http://www.cflfacts.com/)

Note: incandescent bulbs are not hazard free. At ORNL we handle them as hazardous because of the lead in the solder.

So as long as you handle the used light bulbs properly, switching to CFLs is the right thing to do. Each county has a collection system for CFLs and other household hazardous waste.

Knox County has a permanent collection facility at Solid Waste Facility, 1033 Elm Street. For more information, go to Knox County’s website: http://www.ci.knoxville.tn.us/solidwaste/hazwaste.asp, or call David Newman at (865) 215-6700.

For questions about Anderson County’s annual collection, call Geoff Trebalka at (865) 463-6845. For Roane County's annual collection, call Ralph Stewart at (865) 590-7779. For information on Loudon County's household hazardous waste collection, call Gordon Harless at (865) 988-0175.

The state has much more information about other items accepted and the schedules for other counties on their website: http://www.state.tn.us/environment/swm/hhw/hazcoll.shtml
Posted at 9:20 AM by Salk, Marti | Category: Disposal | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)