GE Lighting Products and CFLs

Mercury serves a key role in enabling compact fluorescent lamps to be 75% more energy-efficient than the traditional incandescent lamp. That increased efficiency reduces the need for power generation and thereby reduces power plant emissions, including mercury emissions. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for the equivalent “on” time, the mercury emitted by a power plant to run a CFL is 2.4 milligrams while equivalent mercury emission to run an incandescent light bulb is 10 milligrams.

GE Lighting produces lighting products, including fluorescent and high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps. All such lamps, regardless of manufacturer, contain small amounts of mercury. In high doses, mercury can have adverse health effects. Today, the average four-foot fluorescent lamp contains approximately 90% less mercury than similar lamps produced in 1985. The mercury content of the average new GE Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulb is less than three milligrams. GE is actively engaged in research to further reduce mercury content and to develop next-generation, energy-efficient, mercury-free LED lighting technology.

Over the past 10 years, GE has worked closely with the third-party lamp recycling industry and its trade association, the Association of Lighting and Mercury Recyclers (ALMR), as it has developed a robust national third-party lamp recycling industry. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), to which GE belongs, lists all national lamp recyclers and others offering lamp recycling services on its Web site at:

www.lamprecycle.org

The lamp industry places a mercury label and the Web site address on the packages of all lighting products that contain mercury.

More than 65% of mercury-containing lamps are used by nonresidential facilities. These facilities pay to have their lamps recycled. The lamp-recycling rate for businesses has improved from less than 2% in the 1990s to over 30% today and continues to increase every year.

Starting in 2008, GE has worked with As You Sow, the non-profit shareholder advocacy organization, on ways to provide more information to consumers on the mercury content of CFLs and on safe cleanup methods in case of lamp breakage. That effort culminated in a July 2010 decision by the FTC, which GE had urged to adopt a national standard, that approved a lamp labeling rule requiring that the presence of mercury and a link to cleanup information be listed on CFL product labels.