Recycle those burnt out lightbulbs!

So I was putting up Christmas lights today and replacing the burnt out bulbs with working ones. They were a bunch of sets given to  me from a friend whom had gotten them from a garage sale. I was super pumped about reusing these lights that to a lot of people they would just throw away. That got me thinking of all the endless strands of lights are thrown away because one bulb is burnt out and effects the rest of the strand. Not to mention the bulbs that get thrown away and the expectancy of it depleting away is vary vast. I thought I'd search around and check out what we can do to recycle the whole light strand and some statistics.

Check out my findings!

I found that light strands are barely biodegradable (if at all). Plastic and wire can take hundreds or thousands of years to decompose. Not to mention the risk to the animals that rummage in and near our landfills.

Three Ways to Recycle Christmas Light Strings


Fortunately, there is more than one way to recycle your unwanted lights.
* Donate working strands to your neighbors in need. If you still have the box, try Goodwill, the Salvation Army or similar organizations. Drop them by your local homeless shelter to brighten the windows. Give to a neighbor who's a little tight on cash, or take them in to work and offer them to your colleagues. A great way to connect your usable items with neighbors is through online services such Freecycle .
* Creatively recycle and reuse the strings at home. By stripping the wire from the plastic you can collect the copper and recycle it to get paid for by the pound. However, a short amount of time doing this in your own home can result in a nice collection of convenient twisty-ties for your household's use (World Environmental Organization). Forum member "VP" at how can i recycle this? uses the wire for plant ties, and saves the plugs as spares.
* Send the stands in to Christmas lights recycling programs. How to recycle your Christmas light strands Several North American companies offer light recycling, many times offering reward discounts on new strands.

 

Just another fact......

* Electricity Waste
Regardless of how great outside Christmas lights may be to see, they require a lot of energy and are an immense waste of our planet resources. According to a report commissioned by The Department of Energy, holiday lighting consumes more than six terawatt-hours per year, the equivalent of the total electricity consumption of 500,000 homes in one month. It is hard to ignore the environmental consequences of this unnecessary electricity consumption. The energy used in powering seasonal lighting results in the wasteful burning of coal, oil and natural gas. The unwanted by products of this can include smoke, acid rain, and carbon dioxide emissions.


Why LED are better........

LED Christmas lights only use 10 percent of the power needed by incandescent lights. LEDs also last as much as 10 times longer, with an operating life of 20,000 hours!

Well finding lots of resources regarding recycling Christmas lights was a great success. I did realize that maybe the old sets of lights may be more of a concern now that I have seen the environmental impact the are having to be using up. Maybe for now I can display my lights for a few hours on a timer and cut down on energy waste and by even turning them on by a few nights a week. I think I will purchase a new strand of LEDs a year to replace the older ones.

Hope you all consider these facts and we all can help lower the impact of wasted resources.


You can purchase LED lights at.....

Amazon,
Canadian Tire,
Home Depot
Walmart


Recycle More!

Home Depot- Recycling program - You can  recycle your old Christmas lights, light bulbs, lawn mowers.

Rona Recycling Program - Rona has their big bins outside their store which consists of  stations
containing six compartments for recycling batteries, compact fluorescent bulbs, power tools accessories (e.g. blades), cardboard and paper, plastics, glass and metals, and mobile phones.

Do your part,its takes a little extra time out of our lives to organize it according to being more eco efficient but the results if we all do is amazing!