With household bills on the rise — food, gas and sewer among them — the utilities themselves are ramping up cost-cutting efforts. Toward that end, Hawaiian Electric Co. yesterday launched a promotion aimed at encouraging both energy conservation and recycling.

The company yesterday began giving away 1,000 recycling kits to consumers to use to mail used compact fluorescent lights to the Mainland for recycling, rather than dumping them in the rubbish.

"This is a limited promotion that's intended to get the ball rolling on CFL recycling on O'ahu," said Robert Alm, Hawaiian Electric executive vice president for public affairs.

"Lighting is one of the biggest uses (of electricity) in Hawai'i," he said.

The Environmental Protection Agency has ruled that residents can dispose CFLs in Hawai'i "household trash." But environmentally conscious consumers worried about the small amount of mercury in the bulbs — about 5 mg per bulb — have said they would prefer to see the energy-efficient bulbs recycled — rather than end up in an incinerator or landfill, Alm said.

The company has been pushing customers to use the CFL bulbs for years, offering coupons and other incentives to help save energy. Through its rebate program, the company said it has tracked an increase from 140,000 CFLs sold in 2006 to five times that — 700,000 — last year, Alm said.

O'ahu residential customers who pick up the free kits may pack their spent unbroken CFLs in the kits and drop them off at a U.S. Post Office or give them to a U.S. Postal Service mail carrier. All shipping and recycling costs have been prepaid by Hawaiian Electric.

The packages then go to a specialized recycling center in Phoenix where the materials are recycled.

Alm said no Hawai'i company currently offers that kind of recycling.

Each recycling kit can hold six to eight regular size CFLs or 10-12 mini or specialty CFLs. HECO spokesman Darren Pai suggests putting the box in a closet to safely store the lights as they burn out. Since those bulbs burn out less often than incandescent bulbs, he said it's likely you'll have that box in the closet for several years.

The service became available in Hawai'i recently after Veolia Environmental Services, a Mainland-based recycling company, reached an agreement last year with the U.S. Postal Service that will allow the CFL kits to be shipped through the mail from Hawai'i.

The kits cannot be used by businesses which are required to follow state and federal environmental regulations for disposal of universal waste, Alm said.

CFLs are energy efficient light bulbs, using one-fourth the energy of an equivalent incandescent bulb.