The federal government is working with the provinces to keep mercury out of the country’s landfills.
Before Parliament rose for the summer, a bill was passed that requires the Environment Minister to work with the provinces and come up with a plan to safely dispose of light bulbs containing mercury.
Bill C-238 was put forward by Dartmouth-Cole Harbour MP Darren Fisher.
“Look up to the ceiling, you’re probably sitting in a room right now that has a fluorescent light bulb. Those long tubes that you think of as light sabres, they all have mercury in them. About ten to twelve years ago the CFLs became the norm. Using them is not the issue, it’s the disposal of them.”
Mercury from the bulbs can leech from landfills into water supplies causing numerous health hazards.
“They’ve been thrown in the garbage then just dumped in the landfills across the country. It shocks me that we’ve not come up with a regulation that these light bulbs can not and must not be thrown in the garbage and disposed of at the curb.”
Fisher says there won’t be a one size fits all solution.
The idea is to work with individual communities to determine which disposal methods will work best for that region.
