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Hazardous waste from fluorescent tubes
Fluorescent lighting tubes contain mercury and cadmium. They are classed as hazardous waste under the European Landfill Directive.
Mercury is classified as a dangerous substance and is toxic to humans and very toxic to aquatic organisms and may cause long term effects in the aquatic environment.
The environment agency advisory note for the Special Waste Regulations is that
fluorescent tubes and lamps are always special waste. In the UK every user of fluorescent
tubes and lamps has a responsibility under the Environmental Protection (Duty
of Care) Regulations to dispose of them correctly. The Environment Agency guidance
issued on the Netregs web site is 'Your business must store, collect, treat, recycle
and dispose of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) separately from
your other waste. You must obtain and keep proof that your WEEE was given to a
waste management company, and was treated and disposed of in an environmentally
sound way'.
Traditional Solutions
Larger users sometimes
contain their waste tubes in skips / dumpsters for disposal in bulk. However,
the tubes often break presenting a physical hazard and a potential for contamination of
water courses through surface water drains.
The hire of skips / dumpsters can be expensive and they take up valuable floor
space.Other systems utilise specially designed racks to hold the waste tubes
in storage until ready for disposal. However, these systems again take up a
large amount of space and cannot account for breakages. The user is still left
with the problem of how to dispose of broken tubes.
Now the Sumo Crusher can solve the problem. The crusher is a unique and simple design. The tubes are encapsulated when crushed and the reduced volume of waste is held in a sealed container until ready for recycling or disposal. As many as 300 - 400 tubes can be held in the unit storage drum. | 
