By Rick Manning — The incandescent light bulb has a new lease on life as Congress is delaying implementation of the impending January 1, 2012 ban on the sale of traditional 100 watt light bulbs until October 1 of this upcoming year.
Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson, whose group has led the charge against banning consumer light bulb choice praised congressional Republicans today for fighting to delay the ban stating, “It is absurd for the government to force Americans to purchase expensive and environmentally dangerous curly cue CFL light bulbs due to an ill conceived attempt to save energy. Congressional Republicans have stood up for American consumers being able to make the choice of what lighting products they wish to use, and that is a small but important step away from the nanny state envisioned by the social engineers on the left.”
The irony of environmentalists decrying the forced sale of CFC bulbs is found on the Environmental Protection Agency’s guidelines for the disposal of these new bulbs. As ALG’s Rebekah Rast reported in an article entitled, “The Lights Go Out on 200 More U.S. Jobs”, the two page EPA disposal guidelines can be summarized as follows,
“[I]f a Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) breaks, it is important to air out the room where it broke. If it fell and broke on a hard surface, you can carefully scoop up the broken pieces and place them in your canning jar or a zip-tight plastic bag. You can also use a damp cloth or sticky tape to pick up the remaining pieces and powder (mercury) that has escaped the bulb. The cloth and/or tape also need to be placed in the jar or bag with the broken glass. Do not, however, sweep or vacuum the area.”
And this is just the start of the disposal criteria. One can imagine the toxic time bombs that millions of these light bulbs will become as they enter our nation’s land fill system, yet rather than praising Congress for delaying the ill-conceived incandescent light bulb ban, far left environmentalists instead are condemning it.
It is anticipated that the debate over the virtues of lighting alternatives will continue through the months ahead, as both the states of South Carolina and Michigan are looking to join Texas in allowing incandescent light bulbs to be manufactured within their states for sale within their state boundaries.
Rick Manning is the Director of Communications for Americans for Limited Government. You can follow Rick on Twitter at @RManning957.
