Recently, I received a follow-up email from a reader asking for recycling information in greater detail:

Q: In making my commitment to live a greener life, I’ve stocked up on compact fluorescent bulbs and have replaced all of the old light bulbs in my lamps with them. Now I’m worried about what I’m going to do when they burn out. I know that I probably don’t have to worry since they’re supposed to last years, but, what can I say, I’m a worrier. Anyway, I don’t live near any IKEA stores and my local hardware store doesn’t take the bulbs for recycling. Where does that leave me?

A: I’m sure that there are many other readers who find themselves in a similar situation–wanting to make sure they properly dispose of CFLs but not wanting to either a) spend money in the process or b) drive all over creation finding a place that will recycle CFLs for free. Well, everyone can worry just a little bit less because, with some extra digging, I’ve come up with other ways that people can recycle their CFLs beyond bringing them to an IKEA.

For starters about two months ago, Home Depot announced that it would take CFLs back for recycling in all of its U.S. stores. Here’s what a Home Depot press release had to say about that:

“At each The Home Depot store, customers can simply bring in any expired, unbroken CFL bulbs, and give them to the store associate behind the returns desk. The bulbs will then be managed responsibly by an environmental management company who will coordinate CFL packaging, transportation and recycling to maximize safety and ensure environmental compliance.”

According to this New York Times article on that CFL recycling initiative announcement, there are 1,973 Home Depot stores in the United States, with most citizens living within 10 miles of a store. This is surely good news and quite a development since I wrote that first post on CFL recycling.

Luckily, Home Depot isn’t your only recycling option. The folks at Miron Construction in Neenah, Wisconsin, were kind enough to write and share some of the CFL recycling resources that they share with their customers. Here are some of their ideas, along with others I’ve pulled together:

* Our Earth Recycling directory let’s you search by state and community to find local places where you can recycle just about anything, including CFLs. I must admit that when I searched my own state for CFL recycling, it wasn’t immediately forthcoming. But who knows: in searching the Our Earth directory, you might come up with other recycling resources about which you didn’t already know.

* The Focus on Energy website, which provides a directory of retailers (in Wisconsin, only!) that recycle not only CFLs but also everything from appliances to water heaters. Gee, now if only every state had such a helpful resource.

* Recycle a Bulb is also a searchable directory of retailers that recycle CFLs. (It is an offshoot of the Veolia Environmental Services RecyclePak program, which allows you to purchase postage-paid boxes for shipping back CFLs for recycling.) Supposedly, this website will guide you to smaller hardware stores that take CFLs, but when I searched using my own zip code, I got hundreds of Home Depot locations and nothing else. I guess that’s a good thing, though.

“If all else fails,” writes Theresa Lehman, Miron Construction’s Director of Sustainable Services, “the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resource’s ‘Responsible Unit’ contact listing identifies specific contacts within each county that should know where items can be recycled.” I’m sure other state’s DNR or environmental protection department could offer similar suggestions.

Now, I realize that there are plenty of places where people can go online to order recycling kits, which they have to pay for, such as Waste Management’s CFL Recycling Kit. And I’m sure there are plenty of dark green folks who don’t mind shelling out $15 a pop to recycle their bulbs. However, I’m thinking that if you want people to be fully compliant with recycling CFLs–and not just tossing them in the trash–then you’ve got to make it convenient and easy for them to do that recycling. And when I say easy, I mean easy for them to accomplish and easy on their wallet.

What say you?

While this made for an interesting tidbit in a science project, it was a cause for concern on another level. After reading a recent Associated Press story on CFLs, specifically how dangerous it can be to simply throw them away, I realized that we still hadn’t come up with a plan for what to do when these bulbs need to be replaced. That is, not every place around recycles them, and, because of the mercury content, you shouldn’t throw them in the trash.

Normally, my first stop when figuring out where I can recycle anything is Earth 911. And so I plugged “CFL” and my zip code into Earth 911′s search box, and I came up with a couple of places that can recycle them. One offered a drop-off program; another requires you to purchase prepaid shipping labels to send the CFLs in via FedEx for recycling.

Thanks to this aforementioned AP story, I then headed over to the Association of Lighting and Mercury Recyclers’ website to see if it could help. On the home page I saw the phrase “member recyclers” and I clicked on it, which brought up a national map. When I clicked again, the map reappeared with “bubbles” I could click on to find a recycler that was local to me. One of them was the same company I found on Earth 911.

You can also check out the Environmental Protection Agency’s website for more information on how to recycle CFLs.

Here’s another option to consider: the next time you go shopping at IKEA, bring your used CFLs with you. IKEA has CFL recycling bins available in all of its stores and will take back your bulbs for free. (I’m assuming that since you don’t need to show a receipt or anything before dropping off the CFLs that they’ll take back bulbs that you bought at any store.)

If you’re a business owner and would like to offer a similar CFL recycling program, you can purchase recycling kits from CFL manufacturer Osram Sylvania. I suppose if you’re desperate and have no other option for recycling CFLs, such as you don’t live close enough to an IKEA to recycle bulbs for free, you could purchase these kits for your own use as Joe consumer. (The cheapest recycling kit, which holds 15 bulbs, costs $39.) I don’t know but paying to recycle stuff like this just feels wrong. Wouldn’t it be smarter for a company like Sylvania to offer some kind of coupon with their bulbs for free recycling? Wouldn’t that make people buy more of their bulbs in the long run?

Finally, if I lived in a place like Madison, Wisconsin, or in Vermont or Maine, I wouldn’t have to worry about this at all. These locations require retailers that sell CFLs to take them back for recycling. If only all 50 states were so progressive.

It was during a recent trip to Home Depot when we’d done this stocking up of CFLs, and, while at the store, I couldn’t help but keep thinking about a green contradiction someone had pointed out to me.

In our post-”Inconvenient Truth” world, it seems like nearly every company is doing its part to promote a green message. Whether it’s switching to packages made of post-consumer content recycled materials or creating energy-efficient appliances, you can’t turn on the television, flip open a magazine or walk down a store aisle without seeing those infamous “chasing arrows” or the Energy Star label. Don’t get me wrong–this is all good, and I’m not complaining. In fact, I’m thrilled that so many companies are embracing the green trend. I know that I’ve become a more conscious consumer in what I buy, and often how something is packaged will be the one factor that makes me put a product into my shopping cart or place it back on the shelf.

Which brings me back to my light bulb shopping at Home Depot and that green contradiction. Why is it that all of these “green” light bulbs are packaged in environmentally unfriendly packaging? Have you noticed the same? Even the “Energy Smart” bulbs that I bought are sold this way, when you buy the bulbs individually. That was one of the reasons we chose the cardboard multi-pack.

In the old days light bulbs came packaged in in a light, cardboard-like paper, which was easily recyclable. These days, CFLs come sealed in those evil, PVC-plastic “clam shell” packaging–that rigid container that’s great for displaying products on a store shelf but which is terrible for the environment (made from chemicals, and it’s not universally accepted for recycling with other plastic goods). What’s worse is opening these packages. A nick from a plastic clam shell makes paper cuts seem like a walk in the park. (No wonder some genius came up with a clam shell-opening tool!)

But really, there has got to be a better container for selling CFLs. I mean, even Target is doing away with its PVC packaging in the electronics department, and obviously GE (in which company I do not have a financial interest, FYI) has figured out a way to package its CFL multi-packs in cardboard–I’ve got the proof right here next to my laptop. So when are the other light bulb companies going to have their light bulb moment?

As it is, CFLs cost more upfront than incandescent bulbs, which may dissuade some consumers from purchasing them in the first place (though Wal-Mart is using its influence to convince light bulb suppliers to make CFLs more affordable for the average Joe). But if consumers have to wrestle with a clam shell package just to get out a light bulb–and wrestling is not an understatement since some folks have broken bulbs in the process–then where is the incentive to do the right light bulb thing?

It will be a glorious day when these light bulb companies can fully embrace their product’s “green-ess” and sell it in a recyclable container.

First, train yourself (and your spouse and your kids and your pets–wait, my dog doesn’t have opposable thumbs so he can’t help in this regard) to turn off the lights and nearly every other electrical appliance in use when they leave the room and are done using it. Why? To save energy. I’m sure your mom told you the old saying, “The last one to leave, please turn out the lights?” Well, mom was on to something, and it’s a wise saying I believe we should pass on to our modern-day families.

Second, invest some time and money in removing all of the incandescent bulbs from your lamps and replacing them with compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). Sure, CFLs cost a bit more upfront but your pay off will come in the long run. Studies show that CFLs last 10 as long as traditional light bulbs, meaning a bulb you install in your living room today might not need to be replaced until 2012. At the same time, Energy Star says CFLs use up to 75 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs.

OK, so this sounds like a “yadda yadda yadda” commercial for light bulbs and whatnot, but here’s where the real-life proof of changing bulbs and turning off lights comes into play: yesterday, we got our PECO electricity bill. And since making the concentrated effort to change our lights and turn them off, our electricity bill has gone down.

This month, our bill was $153.00.

The month before that, it was $213.00.

As far as kilowatt use goes, this month we used just over 900 kilowatts.

The month before that, we used just over 1,350 kilowatts.

Except for a spike in August, when it was really hot, our kilowatt use has been going down steadily since we moved in six months ago.

I’m sure it’s helping now that, with cooler weather, we have neither our central air nor our pool pump running, but the bottom line is this: we’re using less energy and saving money to boot.

So maybe this year your holiday gift to your family, though not very sexy, should be a series of CFLs and a concentrated effort to make sure that if you are the last person to leave the room, you really do turn off the lights.

* Use task lighting only, instead of power-sucking overhead lamps. Also, change out incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescent lights (CFL).

* Make sure the ceiling fan in my office is spinning the right way to lower my heating/cooling bills. FYI, it would be clockwise in the winter to push down warm air and counter-clockwise in the summer to lift up warm air.

* Continue to recycle used printer and copier cartridges by taking advantage of the manufacturer’s free recycling program. For example, whenever I buy a new toner cartridge for my HP LaserJet, the box from the store includes packaging I can use to send the used cartridge back to HP for recycling.

* Always print on both sides of paper before tossing it in the recycling bin or shredding it. (Note to cat owners: you can use shredded paper as a free replacement for cat litter.)

* Instead of tossing my old magazines in the recycling bin, I’m going to see if any local doctor’s offices might like them for waiting-room reading, or if local schools could use them for projects.

* Keep all of my electronics plugged into a single power strip that I can turn off at night.

* When I need to ship something, use the USPS’s Click-N-Ship service via the USPS website, which allows me to print out mailing labels and postage, and I can put the packages out with my regular mail. This saves me from taking extra drives to the post office.

* In a perfect world I would have an all-in-one machine that acted as my laser printer, copier and fax machine. I’m sure one machine would use a lot less energy than the three machines I currently use. But I’ve only seen all-in-ones with ink jet printing. As an author, who prints hundreds of manuscript pages at a time, an ink jet just isn’t up to the job.

As I look around my office (yes, I’m sitting in it for a change), I’m drawing a blank on other green things I could do in here.

What would you suggest I add to my eco to do list for the home office?