No more swirly-do light bulbs…

I really don’t mind being environmentally friendly and stuff. But let’s talk about what I would like to call marginal changes in waste footprints. We’ll define waste footprints as larger then carbon footprints as we’ll include other waste like in landfills or whatever. And we’ll define marginal changes as the changes that I, as an individual consumer, can make so this world is a better place.

For example, Josh and I own a sauna bench. When my folks moved into their house, it was a bench in their sauna. Then, when my parents took out the sauna, it became a stereo table in Becky’s room. And it has served as stereo tables or coffee tables in my various apartments, and will serve as some sort of horizontal space in our house. We’ll eventually sand it and (re?) finish it. And the greater family waste footprint is smaller because we use the sauna bench. The repurposing of the sauna bench, so long as it is in good shape, is a marginal change in the greater family footprint.

I’ve had the swirly-do light bulbs, those light bulbs we will be mandated to switch to in a few years. They’re florescent or something and they are in a swirly-do shape. And supposedly, they decrease your electric bill or something. I haven’t really noticed a difference. But they do last quite a bit. I’ve never really kept track of if they last long enough to make for the cost difference between swirly-dos and incandescent but I was OK buying the swirly-dos until freaking now.

Do you know how bad those suckers smell when you break them? OK, further, they have mercury in them. I am a pregnant mommy and have been scared of any mercury contamination, and I go out of my way to make sure vaccines I take do not have mercury based preservatives. I vaguely remember that my mom once owned a mercury thermometer but have been warned against such a sin against my children. So, it is supposed to be “good for me” that I have a smelly mercury light in my house?

Back to breaking those things (two since we’ve moved in…). OK, so you have to open all your windows, turn on your ceiling fans, and vacate the building for fifteen minutes (like what if it broke in the winter?). Then the grown up is supposed to enter the house and, with rubber gloves, dispose of the light bulb in a sealed container and bring it to haz mat.

HOW, may I ask, does this make ANY marginal difference in my waste footprint to use the swirley-dos? And furthermore, someone is nuts-o enough to tell me that having smelly mercury bulbs in my house is good for either me or Baby? We will be de-swirly-doing our house before baby is born.