If you break a compact fluorescent light bulb in your home, government guidelines for cleaning it up read something like a disaster training manual: evacuate all people and pets, air out the room for 15 minutes, and when you are allowed back, seal all cleaned up materials, even the vacuum bag.

Even if they are not broken in the home, they are eventually broken when they are landfilled, meaning that as Utah County residents look to save money and help the environment by installing the bulbs, we are also increasing mercury in the local air, which ends up in local lakes, and then in fish.

The good news is that there are brand-new local options for recycling the bulbs.

Beginning last month, all local and national The Home Depot stores, at no cost, began accepting any fluorescent bulbs, whether long tubes or compact style, at recycling drop-offs at the returns counter.

Ikea too now allows consumers to drop off compact fluorescent bulbs for free for recycling.

And Waste Management, a local garbage service company, has begun a mail-in program that allows consumers to pay about $15 for a post-paid cardboard box and special mercury-safe envelope. Consumers can then fill the box at home and mail the bulbs in for recycling.

"We have had a tremendous response so far," said Sarah Molinari, national spokeswoman for The Home Depot, of the company's new fluorescent bulb recycling program. "It is something a lot of customers and even associates in the store asked for and that is where the idea came from. ... We certainly see a need for a convenient drop-off location for CFLs."

The Home Depot also now sells CFLs that use less mercury than CFLs sold by other stores, she said.

"They actually have a much lower content of mercury than the industry standard," she said. "I think it is noteworthy. We just want to make sure we are doing the right thing."

Susan Hayward of Waste Management said many consumers are just becoming aware of the dangers of both breaking fluorescent bulbs in the home or sending them to the landfill. While the Waste Management recycling program does cost money, it eliminates the need to travel with the bulbs to a drop-off point, potentially breaking them in a car.

"The problem is remembering to take them and getting them there without breaking them," she said.

While throwing fluorescent bulbs away in your trash is still legal in Utah County, it is not recommended, said Rodger Harper, manager of North Pointe, the north Utah Valley waste transfer station.

To begin its own recycling program on the county level is prohibitively expensive, he said, and he encouraged residents to take advantage of recycling offered by The Home Depot, Ikea and Waste Management.

Marsha McLean of the Utah Valley Sierra Forum said she was unaware of the new fluorescent bulb recycling options in Utah Valley and encouraged all residents to begin taking advantage of them immediately.

"We want to encourage people to use the bulbs and take them to be recycled," she said. "If we can drop them off at Home Depot that would be super."

McLean's plea for residents to not just recycle the bulbs but to use them as much as possible in homes is echoed by both the Environmental Protection Agency and by EnergyStar.gov. While fluorescent bulbs may bring toxic mercury into homes and local air and landfills, they ultimately cut the amount of mercury emitted nationally.

That is because lighting accounts for nearly 20 percent of the average electric bill, and the U.S. releases 104 metric tones of mercury emissions each year, much of it from coal-fired electrical power plants because mercury occurs naturally in coal. Cutting electric demands by using energy-saving bulbs ultimately saves mercury from being released into the air by power plants.

"Mercury released into the air is the main way that mercury gets into water and bio-accumulates in fish," according to EnergyStar.gov. "Eating fish contaminated with mercury is the main way for humans to be exposed."

While the average CFL bulb contains enough mercury to cover the tip of a ballpoint pen, "most mercury vapor inside fluorescent light bulbs becomes bound to the inside of the light bulb as it is used. The EPA estimates that the rest of the mercury within a CFL -- about 11 percent -- is released into air or water when it is sent to a landfill, assuming the light bulb is broken," according to EnergyStar.

Additionally, the average mercury content in CFLs has dropped 20 percent in the past year as technology has improved and government and environmental pressure has come to bear, according to EnergyStar.