Although mercury-containing bulbs were put on a national list of hazardous waste as early as 2008, the sixth article of the list says that households are exempt from the ordinary hazardous waste regulations; so CFLs may legally be disposed as normal household trash.

The Beijing Hazardous Waste Disposal Center disposes of 2 million CFLs a year, more than 50 percent of which are from a compulsory government collection program from public institutions, while the rest are mainly defective products from lamp manufacturers.

"We hope to sign disposal contracts with more companies and public institutions. However, due to their reluctance to pay disposal fees, we have only signed such contracts with around 200 companies," said Wang Dongjian, deputy director of the center.

An anonymous marketing executive from the center told China Youth Daily that when they contacted companies to collect retired tubes, people on the other side of the telephone were often stunned to know that they are supposed to pay the center for the disposal instead of the other way round.

Wang said that his center charges less than 8 yuan ($1.29) for disposing of 1 kg of waste fluorescent lamps and the pricing is not even profitable if depreciation and maintenance of the machine and costs of transportation of the lamps are taken into consideration.

"As mercury is the only mobile heavy metal pollutant, mercury contamination could exert heavy costs on the environment and should be prevented as early as possible," Wang said.

No service providers

Philips Lighting, the largest player in the global lighting market, does not provide individual consumers with service or direction on disposal of their retired CFL products in China. Lighting products retailers, including Ikea, do not offer CFL-return programs in China either.

Li Yan, an associate professor at the School of Environment and Natural Resources of the Beijing-based Renmin University of China, has been studying mercury pollution caused by CFLs since 2007. Li said that the public is ill-educated on possible mercury pollution caused by leaving CFLs in the trash. For example, the government of Xiamen in southeast China's Fujian Province installed bins for spent fluorescent lamps in 2008, which were in service only briefly as they were often mistaken by residents as regular dustbins.

Many economists in China believe that it is impractical to ask CFL consumers to pay for safe disposal of retired products. According to a survey conducted by China Youth Daily on supermarket shoppers, they believe that manufacturers and importers have an obligation to collect and recycle CFLs as the retail price includes an amount to pay for recycling.

However, lighting industry associations say that it is unfair for producers to bear this burden alone. The Beijing Lighting Industry Association once distributed free fluorescent tubes to residents in Beijing's remote countryside areas and put Zhejiang-based Yankon Lighting Group in charge of post-use treatment of lights. Chang Yi, secretary general of the association, told China Youth Daily that the company paid a huge amount of money for transporting these lamps from Beijing to Zhejiang, where the company's recycling facilities are located, as lights are highly fragile.

On November 7, 2012, the China Association of Lighting Industry published an article entitled Scientific Understanding on Mercury Content of Fluorescent Lamps. It said at the end if 150 million lamps expire in China and each lamp contains 1.5 mg to 5 mg of mercury, recycling of these lamps would only produce 0.225 to 0.75 tons of mercury. Meanwhile, the recycling costs total 180 million yuan ($28.57 million). "Considering the small amount of retrieved mercury, whether such huge investment of money and manpower is worthwhile needs further study," the article said.

Chang said that he expected the government to play a bigger role in CFL disposal by investing money to install a regular return system.

Jiefang Daily quoted environmental experts as saying that lighting manufacturers, the government and environmental NGOs should pool their strength to keep CFLs out of the trash. They suggest manufacturers should be required to warn consumers about contamination risks on their advertisements and packaging. "The government should subsidize the establishment of regular pick-up services provided by community committees, NGOs and companies, give residents incentives for handling their waste lights properly and support companies and major cities to establish facilities to dispose of them safely," they said.

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