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"In terms of hazardous waste, a landfill is defined as a disposal facility or part of a facility where hazardous waste is placed or on land and which is not a pile, a land treatment facility, a surface impoundment, an underground injection well, a salt dome formation, a salt bed formation, an underground mine, a cave, or a corrective action ...
Disposal of HHW. Because of the expense associated with the disposal of HHW, it is still legal for most homeowners in the U.S. to dispose of most types of household hazardous wastes as municipal solid waste (MSW) and these wastes can be put in your trash. Laws vary by state and municipality and they are changing every day.
Other anthropogenic sources of mercury include: cement production (mercury in lime), mining (iron/steel, zinc, gold), use of fluorescent lamps, various instruments and dental amalgam fillings, manufacturing of products containing mercury (thermometers, manometers and other instruments, electrical and electronic switches) and waste disposal.
A medical mercury-in-glass maximum thermometer showing the temperature of 38.7 °C (101.7 °F). One special kind of mercury-in-glass thermometer, called a maximum thermometer, works by having a constriction in the neck close to the bulb. As the temperature rises, the mercury is pushed up through the constriction by the force of expansion.
Proper disposal of mercury-containing items such as medicinal packaging and thermometers, using mercury-free bulbs and batteries, and buying consumer products with zero or minimum mercury emission to the environment can make a significant difference in recovering the world's ecosystems from mercury pollution leaving a minimum legacy of mercury ...
Another form of recycling is the salvage of constituent materials from complex products, due to either their intrinsic value (such as lead from car batteries and gold from printed circuit boards), or their hazardous nature (e.g. removal and reuse of mercury from thermometers and thermostats).
Certain items such as batteries and fluorescent lamps can be returned to retail stores for disposal. The Call2Recycle maintains a list of battery recycling locations and your local environmental organization should have list of fluorescent lamp recycling locations. The classification "household hazardous waste" has been used for decades and ...
Several countries have specialised recycling or disposal systems for fluorescent bulbs. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the amount of mercury contained in a compact fluorescent lamp (about 4–5 mg [20]) is approximately 1% of the amount found in a single dental amalgam filling or old-style glass thermometer. [21]