Joplin a green town? Apparently so.

According to 18Seconds.org, a Yahoo! Web site that tracks sales of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), this Southwest Missouri community hugging the Ozark Mountains has sold more CFL bulbs on a per-capita basis than any other city in the nation.

CFL bulbs use about two-thirds less energy and last up to 10 times longer than their incandescent counterparts

Joplin’s No.-1 ranking translates into 274,135 bulbs sold within the past year or so. The Web site says the buyers of those bulbs will save a cumulative $5,643,343 in energy costs.

It’s the equivalent of keeping the greenhouse gas emissions of 2,265 cars from entering the atmosphere or saving 33,234,385 pounds of coal. In terms of Joplin’s carbon footprint, the purchase of those bulbs prevents the release of 142,243,169 pounds of carbon dioxide — a major greenhouse gas — into the atmosphere.

Cost of success

But the emerald city has a problem.

CFL bulbs contain minuscule amounts of mercury, a neurotoxin and long-lived contaminant that can cause brain and kidney damage at high exposure levels. When one of the bulbs goes dark, it should be recycled to keep the hazardous substance out of local landfills, but Joplin does not have a recycling program for CFLs because it costs too much.

“No, I can’t take them,” said Mary Anne Phillips, coordinator of Joplin’s recycling program. “It would cost us 72 cents a bulb to recycle them. We can’t afford that. We’re already operating a recycling center that does not make money.

“The companies who make these bulbs should subsidize the take-back program. Instead, they have put the burden on society instead of sharing in the burden. It’s called product stewardship. In this case, the responsibility falls solely on the user,” she said.

It’s a problem that Kent Comstock, a Wheaton poultry farmer, is dealing with on a daily basis. He prefers to use the bulbs in his chicken houses not because they reduce his energy costs but because they last so long.

“They save me time, though they are more expensive. I don’t have to change them as often. I’ve got to reach a 14-foot peak to change a bulb. It’s a matter of simplicity,” he said.

“I have purchased hundreds of them. When one of them goes out, I’m putting them in a bucket until I can figure out what to do with them,” he said.

Because he is a major user, Comstock is concerned that “someone 10 to 15 years down the road will come back on me and ask me how I disposed of all these bulbs. I don’t want to become a hazardous-waste site or be accused of throwing away hundreds of light bulbs that contain mercury in a landfill.”