Wal-Mart’s CFL Paradox

Home Depot recycles compact fluorescents. Why not Wal-Mart?

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CONSUMER RETORTS

Consumer Retorts

Wal-Mart’s CFL Paradox

Home Depot recycles compact fluorescents. Why not Wal-Mart?

WAL-MART has taken the lead (and the credit) in promoting compact fluorescent lightbulbs. More than 260 million have flown off its shelves since November 2006. But what about taking back used bulbs, which contain enough mercury to qualify as hazardous waste? Home Depot lets customers hand over spent CFLs at the returns desk, while IKEA has on-site disposal bins. For its part, Wal-Mart has invited customers to bring in their old bulbs just once—on a single day in 2007. Its website doesn’t mention that the bulbs require special disposal or that they contain a neurotoxin that escapes if they break, say, in your kitchen trash. Spokesman Greg Rossiter says there are no collection plans in the works, “but if someone did have a bulb to recycle, we could direct them to a local location.” The company notes that it’s made suppliers cut the mercury in their bulbs by as much as a third. It also says its goal is to “create zero waste”—so why not start here?

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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