The Australian Government today took another step to keeping mercury out of landfill with the accreditation of Lighting Council Australia’s Fluorocycleinitiative, a voluntary industry-led product stewardship approach.

Date: Friday, 12 September 2014

Accreditation is the Government’s seal of approval for the Fluorocyclescheme through which industry hascommittedto doublingits recycling of mercury-containing fluorescent tubesand lamps and reducing the amount of mercury going to landfill. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that is harmful to the environment and to human health. It can remain in the atmospherefor a year and make its wayinto marine and aquaticfood chains.

Under FluoroCycle, organisations from the commercial and publiclighting sectorscommit to recycling their own mercury-containing lamps. These sectors produce 90 per cent of waste lamps.

Product stewardship acknowledges that those involved in producing, selling, using and disposing of products have a shared responsibility to ensure that those products are managed in a way that reduces their impact, throughout their lifecycle, on the environment, human health,and safety.

Fluorocycleis a good example of shared responsibility in action: the big users of lamps undertake the safe recycling of the products they use and the lighting manufacturers and importers work togetherthrough Lighting Council Australiato operatethe scheme.

Accredited voluntary product stewardship arrangementsare authorised to use the Government’s product stewardship logo. Like the National Heart Foundation’s ‘Tick of Approval’ or the National Energy Rating labels,the Australian Government’s Product Stewardship logo represents the quality of the expected outcomes of any accredited programme.

Fluorocycle’s use of the logo willsignal tobusiness and the community that the schemerepresentsAustralian best practice, if not world’s best practice, for a scheme of its typeto manage end of life disposal of their mercury-containing lamps.

FluoroCycle has 230signatories including commercial users, building and facilities managers, government departments, recyclers and othersinvolved inthe recycling and re-use process.

I encourage business and the community to support participating organisations and ask non-household users of mercury-containing lampstoconsider joining FluoroCycle. For more information click here.

For further information please contact.