GE CitizenshipGE Lighting Products
Mercury serves a key role in enabling fluorescent lamps to be 75 percent more energy efficient than the traditional incandescent lamp. That increased efficiency reduces the need for power generation and thereby reduces power plant emissions, including mercury emissions. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for the equivalent “on” time, the mercury emitted by a power plant to run a CFL is 2.4 milligrams while equivalent mercury emissions to run an incandescent light bulb is 10 milligrams.
GE Industrial produces lighting products, including fluorescent and high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps. All such lamps, regardless of manufacturer, contain small amounts of mercury. In high doses, mercury can have adverse health effects. Today, the average four-foot fluorescent lamp contains approximately 85 percent less mercury than similar lamps produced in 1985. The mercury content of the average new GE Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulb is less than four milligrams. GE is actively engaged in research to further reduce mercury content and to develop next-generation, energy-efficient, mercury-free lighting technology.
Over the past 10 years, GE has worked closely with the third-party lamp recycling industry and its trade association, the Association of Lighting and Mercury Recyclers (ALMR), as it has developed a robust national third-party lamp recycling industry. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), to which GE belongs, lists all national lamp recyclers and others offering lamp recycling services on its web site at www.lamprecycle.org. The lamp industry places a mercury label and the web site address on the packages of all lighting products that contain mercury.
More than 80 percent of mercury-containing lamps are used by nonresidential facilities. These facilities pay to have their lamps recycled. The lamp-recycling rate for businesses has improved from less than 2 percent in the 1990s to nearly 30 percent today and continues to increase every year.