To help combat mercury pollution in the U.S., major thermostat manufacturers established the Thermostat Recycling Corp. (TRC) in 1998, and stopped making mercury-containing thermostats altogether in 2006, though millions of those units are still in service.
While having mercury thermostats in homes and buildings across the U.S. is not necessarily a bad thing, controlling what happens to those thermostats after they’ve been pulled off the wall is vital in keeping the powerful neurotoxin out of the environment. And since HVAC contractors and distributors are on the frontline, they are the first, and perhaps most important, step in making sure these thermostats never end up in a landfill.