Having recently been privileged to be chosen to take part in the IKEA Live LAGOM research project, one of the obvious ways to lower one's environmental impact footprint is to swap out existing incandescent and fluorescent bulbs for the IKEA LED variety on offer.
Since this project is geared towards being more responsible in all aspects, I did a quick search to see if the bulbs were recyclable. To my surprise... fluorescent bulbs ARE recyclable, however the standard or halogen incandescent bulbs are NOT recyclable!
They wont be accepted by the usual recycling services i.e. local council or roadside recycling bins etc, reason being they are indeed glass, but contain lots of metal in the construction.
I was a little bit surprised at this, considering the push in the past away from incandescent, now accelerated vastly by the drive towards LED globally.
Incidentally, the three scientists who bought forward the LED revolution we are now rejoicing in were awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics. Profound stuff then.
Almost everyone I had spoken to or read of on the Live Lagom Facebook group was looking to upgrade to LED bulbs, and would possibly end up throwing their old incandescents into landfill waste - which makes me sad :(
Acknowledging that incandescents may not be mainstream recyclable was a stop-gap, as I refused to waste something that had taken so much resource to create and still likely would be working. Surely someone out there must have up-cycled bulbs out there... and surely they had! :)
Picture speaks a thousand words etc, so here are some great Youtube videos of up-cycling light bulbs.
Those give you the method, and I really like some of those, but loving what has been done here!
Enjoy and please share your up-cycles on the Live LAGOM Facebook group!
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