One CFL in my picture is broken and two EOL burned out. I'll take them apart, pull out the motherboard, and do the rest. Because the motherboard inside can light up other fluorescent lights. If it was a light tube, I would put them through various tests and then throw them out and smash them.

Here (Europe) the law mandates the places of sale to offer collection boxes to collect the spent lamps back from customers for proper disposal (then the tubes are supposed to go through a mechanical/chemical processing line where the materials are separated and mainly the mercury extracted)

There's a municipally operated recycling centre nearby that I take all my spent lamps to.

I'm not sure if they still do but it used to be common for stores like Home Depot, Lowe's, IKEA, and Canadian Tire to have a bin for recycling spent lamps too. It was a optional thing so I think some of those stores no longer accept lamps. 

@ Medved - Don't think I've seen anything like that around here. I think there may be some at wholesalers, but definitely not at any retailers we've been to.

When we made enquiries with our local council, they just told us to put them in the normal household waste, which I found incredible, but there you go.

No matter what happens in other countries, the tubes in China are put into harmful rubbish bins and there is no special recycling channel. Even if recycled, some of my tubes are not up to standard because they are more than 10 years old.

Stuff like CFLs just go to one of the stores here that have recycling bins for them.

Linear fluorescents (if not lost vacuum) are kept so they can be fried/finished-off in an electronic ballast. .lol. Then they can be gotten rid of.
Lowes stores used to have a bin for recycling, but I don't think they do anymore, so I guess I'll have to start trashing them.

No matter what it is, I see no point in keeping fully dead lamps around.

I'll keep a very rare one that I'm unlikely to find again, but ordinary household lamps and ones I have working examples of can go.

Hello,

Here in France and Germany we also have recycling stations in stores or our local recycling centre. Usually all electronic stores, and hardware stores take back lamps, but also more and more supermarkets. In France they are accessible for everyone in the entrance or exit of the store, so you can also take something xD. In germany however they are more often gbehind a counter.

Actually, when I was in london three years ago, Tesco had an recycling ile on the parking that also accepted lamps. Maybe close to you there is something similar, and you never noted.

Best regards,

Alex

@ Alex - that's possible, but it's by no means universal, nor legislated for. Recycling seems to be a very hit and miss affair in the UK, certainly as far as domestic refuse collection goes. Some areas seem to recycle everything, others practically nothing, with all variants in between. Here, they take most stuff, but not mixed materials, which annoys us, as the blister packs used for tablets these days are a mix of plastic and metal foil, and the total amount of it thrown away annually must run into millions of tons 

Going back to recycling bins for lamps, we have never seen any here, not at retailers, anyway. It's possible electrical wholesalers have them, but there are none in our immediate area and we don't have a car to go looking for them.

No matter what happens in other countries, the tubes in China are put into harmful rubbish bins and there is no special recycling channel. Even if recycled, some of my tubes are not up to standard because they are more than 10 years old.

The age of the old lamps does not matter, the same processing goes for all, regardless if it is F40 from the 50's or a modern CFL tube. Both are made of glass, both contain way too much Hg for a landfill. It does not matter if there is a gram of Hg or fraction of a mg, the process is the same.
Maybe the first generstion Be phosphors could be a problem, but I doubt those were spread that much over the world. Be was a strategic material for other uses (heat management on power RF devices), so I don't think even where the environment was no concern at all, it was ever used once the halophosphate technology became available.

Of course, if the proper disposal is not available, there is not much you can do. Definitely your local authorities should know, whether there is any collection system in place or not...