Study: Mercury thermostat pick up lags

Environmental activists say a national program to collect mercury thermostats to prevent them from contaminating the environment is failing its job in Rhode Island.
The advocacy group Clean Water Action said the Thermostat Recycling Corporation, or TRC, a Washington, D.C.-based agency established by thermostat makers in 1998 to spearhead the collection, picked up 370 thermostats in 2008 in Rhode Island. Clean Water Action estimates that number represents just a small percentage of the thermostats taken out of service that year.
“We don’t know where the rest are going,” said Sheila Dormody, director of the Rhode Island chapter of Clear Water Action. “They could end up in a Dumpster, and then in a landfill.”
Mercury is highly toxic, even in the tiny amounts used for switches in older thermostats, and exposure to it can damage a person’s nervous system, heart, kidneys and lungs.
Environmental advocates fear that improperly disposed thermostats getting into the solid-waste stream – ending up in dumps or incinerators – will release mercury into the environment.
Earlier this month, the group released a report critical of TRC’s collection efforts nationwide. The document’s release coincides with efforts to strengthen thermostat-collection laws in several states, including Rhode Island.
While the sale of mercury thermostats is already illegal in the state, advocates are pushing for local legislation that would set the number of thermostats that should be collected by the TRC annually. If collections are too slow, the legislation would then require thermostat manufacturers to pay a $5 “bounty” for each one turned in.
Dormody pointed to Maine – where the law requires the $5 payment to people who turn in thermostats – as proof that the incentive works.
Maine, which has the most successful thermostat recycling program in the country by far, collected 5,555 thermostats in 2008 – a ratio of 42.2 thermostats collected per 10,000 residents. Minnesota ranked second in ratio, collecting 24.4 thermostats per 10,000 residents. Rhode Island ranked 26th with 3.5 per 10,000 residents.
But the bill in Rhode Island has met resistance from the three manufacturers that established the TRC – Honeywell International Inc., General Electric Co. and White-Rodgers Inc., a division of Emerson Electric Co.
Variations of similar bills passed both the House and Senate last year, but the bills were never reconciled. Earlier this month, lobbyists for the manufacturers testified against the latest version of the bill, sponsored by Rep. Jan P. Malik, D-Warren, who was recently stripped of his chairmanship of the House Committee on Environment and Natural Resources by new House Speaker Gordon D. Fox.
The proposed measure has been held for further study.
Mark Tibbetts, executive director of the TRC, contended recently that it is not the financial incentive that boosts usage of the voluntary recycling program. Increasing the public’s awareness of the program helps most.
He told Providence Business News that about 26 percent of thermostats recycled in Maine don’t have the coupon attached that would entitle the person who turned it in to collect the $5 reimbursement. “If this was such a game-changer, why are so many people forgoing the $5?” Tibbetts said.
The nationwide TRC program works this way: The organization, which has two full-time staff members and a $700,000 budget, mails specially designed bins to wholesalers and large contractors, for a one-time, $25 charge.
When the bin is filled with thermostats, which can often take months, it is shipped to the TRC, which recycles the mercury and sends the bin back.
Advocates in Rhode Island say there’s a lot of room for improvement. Dormody figures there are 500,000 mercury thermostats in use in Rhode Island, with thousands coming out of service annually, much more than the 370 collected in 2008.
In addition, there are only five TRC collection sites in Rhode Island, including at the R.I. Resource Recovery Corp.’s Eco-Depot. Resource Recovery officials said last week that they haven’t used the bin yet because mercury thermostats they’ve collected are disposed of as part of their household hazardous waste program. In fact, the hundreds of thermostats collected in recent years haven’t been counted in TRC figures.
But TRC pointed to the growth of its program in Rhode Island, jumping from 81 thermostats collected in 2007, to 370 in 2008 to what it told PBN was 654 last year. Tibbetts said his group collected about 7.37 pounds of mercury in 2009, up from 2.94 pounds in 2007.
“Are we where we should be? Absolutely not,” Tibbetts said. “But are we proud of the growth? Absolutely.” •