The first batch of energy-saving lights supported by government subsidies, about 100 million, has reached retirement age. These lights harbor a huge pollution risk because the mercury in just one such light can contaminate as much as 180 tons of water and adjacent soil. This contamination could easily find its way to humans through food chains and ecological cycles, says an article in Beijing News Daily. Excerpts:

China has not established an effective national recycling system to deal with the potential huge and fatal pollution sources. China has many energy-saving light factories, but only three authorized recycling enterprises for the used lights, which can deal with only about 7,000 tons. The three enterprises do not have enough wasted lights to process now. It means many lights end up somewhere in garbage dumps.

The authorities have not paid enough attentions to the problem so far. Local governments are not active in promoting the recycling industries because it is costly and contributes little to local economies compared with the production industries.

Garbage-classification systems are not developed yet in many places in China. That situation makes collection of the waste lights more urgent. In Germany, communities are responsible for collecting the used lights. In Japan, 93 percent wasted energy-saving lights are collected by civil environmental organizations, and 7 percent are collected by the production enterprises.

The Chinese government should take some money from its subsidies for the lights as special funds for processing the used lights. In the future, more than 1 billion energy-saving lights will be consumed each year in China. If we do not deal with them properly, China will pay a heavy price for the energy-saving technologies it promotes.