November 3rd, 2009 · No Comments

By Bill Sullivan
Green Right Now

Looking to upgrade from your old, often unreliable incandescent Christmas lights to those cool, environmentally-friendly LED (light emitting diode) numbers you’ve heard so much about? The Home Depot is offering an incentive to do just that.

Between Nov. 5 and Nov. 15, you can redeem old or non-working Christmas lights and get a $3 off coupon toward the more energy-efficient LED string lights as part of the company’s second annual Christmas light trade-in. Customers are limited to five redemptions, and all of The Home Depot’s US stores are scheduled to participate.

LED lights cut energy use by about 80 percent over traditional incandescent string lights. They also are estimated to last up to 10 times longer.

So, what happens to your old lights after you part with them? According to The Home Depot Web site, here’s the recycling process:

• The light bulb coupler and the socket plug are manually clipped.
• Three byproducts result and four categories of raw materials.
• Each byproduct is independently shredded for separation, returning glass, HDPE plastics, and non-ferrous copper as well as ferrous steel.
• The prepared separated raw materials are then sent to licensed smelters for re-casting or re-molding, all in accordance with local, state and federal statutes.

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