Another field trip today...I swear this is not all we do here! I had a fascinating tour of the Aura Light International and the MRT facilities in Karlskrona.
MRT = Mercury Recovery Technology and this is one of the only companies in the world that manufactures machines that recycle flourescent lamps and recovers mercury in the process. Why is this good....because when you throw a lamp (commonly known as a bulb even though the bulb is solely the glass tube) in the garbage it ends up in a landfill where the mercury ultimately seeps into the earth polluting our ground water among other things. Mercury is not an abundant chemical in nature and when we mine mercury, use it in lamps, then dispose of it in landfills the concentrations systematically increase over time. Nature is not able to cycle through this abundance of mercury so it has no where to go. Ever wonder why there are threats of mercury contaminated fish - particulary in large preditors like tuna - well now you know. When we eat tuna we injest the mercury and essentially pollute ourselves. So, humans started the problem and we are in turn suffering from it, go figure.
So what can we do? Ultimately, we need to phase out persistent elements and replace their use with more abundant elements in nature. This relates to Sustainability Priniple 1 -for those of you familair with The Natural Step (and if you are not familiar with these principles I will be an expert by the time I am done studying here and would love to educate you).
The good news is that a few companies understand this and are taking action. Aura Light International recognizes the harm in using mercury in their flourescent light production process and are diligently researching altenatives. In the meantime, they have produced lamps with less mercury and developed technologies to increase the efficiency of lamps so that they last longer. Not only are the folks at Aura stewards for the environment, they are also forward thinking businessmen/women. They are researching cutting edge technology which puts them ahead of the competition but most importantly they are avoiding an inevitable future when mercury is either no longer available becasue we have mined it all or the damges are so evident that legislation takes action and enforces regulations prohibitng the use of it. Either way, Aura is in a win-win situation as they will survive this fate. Make sense? It is all starting to make alot of sense to me!
The moral of the story is to take responsibility for your actions by making educated decisions. If you have not already, replace your incandesent lamps with CFL's (compact flourscent lamp). It will cost you more upfront but they have a much longer lamp life and are more energy efficient so you will save on your utility bills. And when they burn out think twice about throwing them away...you can RECYCLE them at Ikea! Thank goodness for forward thinking Swedish companies!
Hope you learned something, if not then maybe you can teach me a thing or two.
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1 comment:
loved this post ! Also the post about ur bike :)
Its interesting how we continue to live life without realizing how much we use up from nature and then spit it and throw it right back for her to chew it up . I didn't know most of the facts that you posted about mercury especially about the tuna. Always wondered why there are warnings about the mercury level . See, its good I decided to read your blog ..I learned something new today !
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