And how are those CFLs manufactured and where??? Ohh.... in China, powered by the same dirty coal plants.
Nice try! And ALL lighting technology is "dirty". However, I'll buy into your statement when you back it up with data across all types of lights being used for any purpose. I've seen no data suggesting LED is dirtier than CFL, or HPS, or Metal Halide, etc. without facts to back it up, your mouthing platitudes rather than valuable information and you'll convince nobody with opinion vs facts. So, go ahead, pick your poison.
And all that "naturally occurring" mercury is being redistributed in to pockets of dangerous proportions. NO? Then explain the increasing amounts in wildlife and our food supply. Your free to believe whatever you want.
And I've seen the "efficiency" of many of those recycling programs, and they do NOT fill me with confidence as to their efficacy!
and it doesn't change the fact that their light producing efficiency is on the low end, and their useful life in a growroom is 3 to 6 months. That alone contributes to the mountains of trash we humans create. My "poisonous" LEDs will still be functioning 5 years from now. Where will your CFLs be??? Creating continuing trash and pollution.
I'd gladly grow all my plants outdoors, under the sun.But even in "legal" to grow areas, most do NOT allow outdoor growing. In fact, commercial and personal grows are done 90% indoors because they are forced to by law! And then the politicians bitch about power consumption. When you teach me to grow indoors without lights, I will be your disciple!
If you want to grow under CFL or any other form, have at it!
I'm going to just bypass the assumption you have absolutely no real idea of what your talking about and just gloss over the undeniable facts...
mercury is naturally occurring. It's in the water you use, it's in the soil you use, it's in the rocks around you and it's in your body. It's in space as well, and existed naturally on this planet before it was habitable for life. Redistribution of a natural substance can be called whatever you want - but CFLs or not it's out there. A burple light and the dirty coal burned to power the factories to build them, and the extra coal and oil you use to power these less efficient lights, the mines in China with almost nonexistent environmental protections, and the substantial amounts of fuel to send millions of tons of supplies back and forth across the oceans to bring you the junk releases TONS of mercury into the air and into densely populated parts of the planet.
it's not a fact I can prove offhand, but a very reasonable assumption to state the environmental mercury redistribution (and concentration in human life) is greater from a burple light vs a CFL setup.
Ps. You know you can recycle CFLs in a safe manner in almost any nation om earth right? A burple light... Not so much. Maybe for scrap tin or scrap steel that gets sent back to china and does additional untold environmental damage.
grow without a planet, without water, without soil, without electricity, without fertilizers. Riiiight.