Light Ballast Recycling

[AJ1978]

OK, not sure if this is covered or touched on. I have been going eco friendly lately, and wandering if anyone knows what I should do with my older NON PCB Ballasts from my T-12 8 foot fixtures, I estimate to have about 20 or so ballasts.
I have been reading and places want, from 90-140 bucks for a 5 gallon bucket to ship 50 plus pounds back to them.

I am thinking of calling places around me that are lighting super stores. HITE COMPANY , etc to see if they take them. I dont mind paying a couple bucks each to get rid of them, however I dont want to spend a fortune to do the right thing.

 

[Charles (in GA)]

scrap or salvage, they are full of copper.

Charles

 

[BFBOB]

Scrap copper is over a buck a pound, two in the recent past. If you have a metal-cutting bandsaw, it's pretty easy to yank the copper out of a transformer, take it to a metal recycler. Ditto your scraps of Romex, etc. Doesn't take too many pounds to be worth a trip across town. If you don't have a good way to extract the copper, some recyclers will take transformers and motors intact - at a greatly reduced per-pound price, of course.

Oh, yeah, before going to all that trouble, make sure the windings are copper! I ran across a washing machine motor that was wound with aluminum enameled with a perfectly copper-colored coating.

 

[Greatbear]

The problem with typical magnetic ballasts is they are potted with a thick tar. This makes stripping them of copper a futile task unless you burn them. I don't recommend it.

I have over two dozen magnetic ballasts hanging around in a box left over from when I retrofitted the fixtures with T8s and electronic ballasts. I've tried to give them away without luck, aside from a couple being used as replacements.

 

[Falcon67]

They pulled a bunch of ballasts out of our building during the summer lighting retrofit. From the local EPA issue handling guy, they are hazardous waste and required disposal- PCB or not.

 

[jdaallen]

They pulled a bunch of ballasts out of our building during the summer lighting retrofit. From the local EPA issue handling guy, they are hazardous waste and required disposal- PCB or not.

Only PCB containing ballast are "regulated waste" and must be disposed per regulation. Non PCB containing are recyclable. Just take them to your local metals recycling facility. The ballast are not worth the trouble of disassembly and you will not gain any value by doing so.

 

[tfi racing]

Only PCB containing ballast are "regulated waste" and must be disposed per regulation. Non PCB containing are recyclable. Just take them to your local metals recycling facility. The ballast are not worth the trouble of disassembly and you will not gain any value by doing so.

Same story here,only PCB ballasts(production ended 1978-1980ish) must be disposed of by a certified disposal company,it is also illegal for anyone other than the disposal company to transport PCB ballasts.Typically the disposal company will provide lined 45 gallon steel drums for you to place your PCB ballasts in,then they will come seal them up and take them away for a considerable fee per pound.In western Canada there is only one facility(Swan Hills,AB) that processes PCB ballasts and only a handful of companies that provide disposal service.All other ballasts are typically accepted by your friendly scrap metal dealer,around here I get about $10 per 100 ballasts or so,not really worth it for the typical homeowner...