A NEW service has been launched to help protect the environment from the millions of fluorescent tubes thrown away by firms in Lancashire every year .

LWS Waste Services, a private company owned by Lancashire County Council, has introduced the scheme to collect and safely dispose of the tubes, which each contain enough mercury to poison 30,000 litres of water.

Collected tubes will be processed in special crushing machines that separate out harmful materials and enable the glass and aluminium parts to be taken out and recycled.

"We were very concerned that potentially harmful metals such as mercury and cadmium were being released into the environment when flourescent tubes were disposed of with general waste," said company chairman county councillor John West.

"We looked long and hard for a solution to the problem and are delighted with the new service which also helped us to meet our objective of continually improving recycling facilities for the people of Lancashire."

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