The short answer to that question is; “we decommission the equipment so it can’t be used again, then we dispose of the remains responsibly”, a more detailed response is provided below.

Many lighting products (with the exception of the globes themselves) have multiple components, they all have different requirements, as the different materials have different processing requirements. A fairly common product we remove is the fluorescent “troffer” light fitting. At a basic level, these ordinarily consist of a housing (or chassis), a ballast, and the lamps (the fluorescent tubes).

For the housing, we (at TEIGE) strip the fittings of their fluorescent tubes (globes) along with recoverable copper products (wiring and ballast). Then, the individual metal components are sent off to the local metal recycler.

Unfortunately, fluorescent tubes contain a small amount of mercury that if sent to landfills, will convert to methylmercury. Methylmercury is a very poisonous form of mercury. It forms when bacteria react with mercury in water, soil, or plants. For this reason, these products are diverted from landfills and sent to specialist recyclers (like FluoroCycle) for the recovery of the mercury for re-use and the separation of the remaining glass and metal components to be recycled effectively.