I have two questions: I would like to confirm that the weight of fluorescent tubes that I recycled are to be added to total weight calculations used for MR2 although they don't weigh much. I am not certain if they contained mercury and if so, would they be classified as hazardous materials and not used in the calculation? Also, I donated a couple furnaces and a hot water heater to Habitat and assume that I just estimate the weights on these items. Is this correct?

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LEEDuser Expert

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Wed, 12/03/2014 - 15:37

Joseph - All fluorescent lamps contain mercury - http://www.ecy.wa.gov/mercury/mercury_light_bulbs.html. I have always treated their proper disposal via recycling to be hazardous waste for the purposes of LEED. Please refer to this discussion on the LEED-NC v2009 forum for a more detailed discussion - http://www.leeduser.com/credit/NC-2009/MRc2?all-comments=true#comment-11501. Here is a link to the EPA about businesses and mercury-containing lamps- http://www.epa.gov/osw/hazard/wastetypes/universal/lamps/index.htm. Please also refer to the Should I include hazardous material such as lead-based paint in MRc2 calculations? FAQ above, which discusses excluding hazardous materials from the numerator and denominator portions of the credit calculations. Regarding your Habitat donations, yes - you would estimate the weight of the diverted items if you are using weight as your metric (vs. volume).

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Fluorescent Light Tubes and Donation of Equipment

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