Manufacturers’ Collection Falls Short

Hartford - Today Clean Water Action released a report, Turning Up The Heat documenting that thermostat makers have collected less than 5% of the thermostats coming out of service over the last 10 years. Therefore, Clean Water Action is calling on the Connecticut General Assembly to pass a state collection program that includes incentives to recycle and performance standards to ensure meaningful progress.

"Connecticut has one of the best energy efficiency programs in the country and it's great that homes and businesses are saving energy and money by switching to digital programmable thermostats," said Roger Smith, climate and energy campaign director for Clean Water Action. "It's critical now that the state require thermostat manufacturers to make it free and easy to recycle old mercury thermostats. People are rightly concerned about mercury in new efficient light bulbs, but many don't realize that each old thermostat contains about 800 times more mercury."

Mercury containing thermostats are a significant source of preventable mercury pollution. The U.S. EPA conservatively estimated that 2-3 million thermostats come out of service each year nationally, amounting to 7-10 tons of mercury annually.

In 1998, the "Big 3" thermostat manufacturers, Honeywell, General Electric Co., and White- Rodgers, created the Thermostat Recycling Corporation (TRC) to collect and recycle used thermostats. As TRC states on its website, "a mercury-switch thermostat poses a risk to the environment... when improperly disposed in solid waste" because the mercury will be released if the thermostat is broken, crushed, or burned during waste handling or at a landfill or incinerator. However, TRC still collects only a small fraction of the thermostats coming out of service. From 1999 to 2008, TRC collected 3.65 tons of mercury, less than 5% of the amount of mercury the EPA conservatively estimated came out of service.

"The thermostat manufacturers recycling program is not working in Connecticut. Their own numbers show Connecticut only collected about 1800 thermostats in 2008. In comparison, Vermont and Maine collect 4 to 6 times more thermometers per capita because they have comprehensive mercury collection laws requiring manufacturers to collect mercury thermostats, and provide a $5 incentive to turn in old thermostats," said Smith. "Mercury poses a serious, but preventable pollution problem in Connecticut so our state legislators need to create a serious collection and recycling program."

Background

Over the last fifteen years, mercury use in U.S. thermostat manufacturing has been reduced from an estimated 15-21 tons annually to less than one ton per year today. This dramatic drop can be attributed in large part to the passage of legislation in 15 states, including Connecticut, banning the sale of new mercury thermostats. In the face of shrinking market availability for their mercury products, Honeywell announced in 2006 that it would end its production of mercury thermostat switches, and the other large manufacturers have followed suit.

However, taking mercury thermostats off the market is only part of the solution. Tens of millions of mercury thermostats containing several hundred tons of mercury are still in use in U.S. homes and businesses. The mercury in a thermostat will pollute the air, land or water if not managed properly at the end of its useful life. Given that thermostats can last for decades, the vast reservoir of mercury currently on the walls in homes will be making its way into landfills and incinerators for years to come - unless effective collection programs are developed.

This is a pressing public health concern as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that between 300,000 and 630,000 infants are born in the United States each year with mercury levels that are associated with the loss of IQ. Connecticut's Department of Public Health has issued statewide advisories regarding mercury contamination of fish in Connecticut's lakes and rivers.

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Read the full report at www.mercurypolicy.org