The bulb eater works exactly as its name implies – it crushes glass fluorescent light tubes and sucks up the chemicals inside.
The University of Saskatchewan plugged in the machine in January 2008 when it started replacing 60,000 light tubes as part of a campus-wide lighting retrofit. 
The old tubes were fed to the bulb eater.
Kelly Goyer, waste prevention co-ordinator for the university’s facilities management department, said the university is replacing T-12 light bulbs with more efficient T-8 bulbs. The older four-foot-long tubes use 34 watts of energy compared to 12 to 14 watts with the newer ones.
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“We’re saving 20 watts per bulb – that’s 40 watts per fixture,” Goyer said.
As well, the university replaces 12,000 to 14,000 bulbs a year as they burn out.
All of this activity is sure to keep the bulb eater busy. Goyer describes it as a high powered vacuum coupled with a spinner chain assembly attached to an electric motor and an entry tube.
The spinner chain spins at a rate not visible to the eye and coupled with the vacuum, it creates negative pressure inside the barrel. As a light bulb is placed inside the tube, it is pulled in quickly and smashed. The vacuum system is designed to pull mercury vapour and phosphor powder out of the chamber through a series of three filters.
The smashed bulb, aluminum bits and residual phosphor powder end up in a 45-gallon barrel, which holds 775 crushed fluorescent light tubes when full.
The barrels are shipped to a company in Regina that separates material for further processing. The glass is used to produce highway paint, providing the reflective properties.
“Why are we just throwing these away?” Goyer said.
“For many, many years we have. In Canada it’s still legal to throw these in the garbage. What landfill research is starting to tell us is when you take inorganic mercury (in its natural state) and when you take that and dump it into a landfill, it interacts with the bio-organisms that are in there. As they consume this mercury along with the organic matter, it is readmitted as an organic form of mercury known as methyl mercury.”
Common landfill practice is to vent or burn off the gases, which allows methyl mercury to re-enter the environment in a gaseous form or run into ground water.
“The really scary thing is we really don’t know how it interacts with our environment, yet we know for sure that it’s escaping into it.”
Methyl mercury is a potent neurotoxin that can cross the blood-brain barrier.
“It can cause all sorts of problems in terms of brain development, learning, co-ordination – all that stuff,” Goyer said.
“So it’s important that people know that you can’t just toss this in their bin. They need to do something responsible to deal with this.”
Municipalities are also taking steps to safely handle fluorescent light tubes.
For example, the City of Saskatoon works with a hazardous waste service company to organize household hazardous waste days, which among other things collects fluorescent tubes and compact bulbs for free.
Goyer said rural residents should contact and lobby local officials and environment ministries.
“We need to do something significant about this because it’s entering our land and water systems and we don’t know what it’s doing to us.”
