Breaking: These two categories of lighting products will be phased out in 2025!

Recently, the official website of the "Minamata Convention on Mercury" announced the deliberation results of the "Fourth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury" held in March this year. The meeting adopted a proposal for an amendment to Annex A (Mercury-added products) of the Minamata Convention on Mercury.

According to the amendment, fluorescent lamps under 30 watts with self-ballast and cold-cathode fluorescent lamps for electronic displays, as two categories of mercury-added lighting products, will be prohibited from production, import, or export starting in 2025. See the table below:

The Minamata Convention on Mercury entered into force in August 2017 and currently has 137 Parties. For a long time, the China Association of Lighting Industry (CALI) has actively followed the negotiation process and implementation status of the Minamata Convention on Mercury, cooperated with member countries of global lighting associations, jointly participated in and promoted the implementation of the Convention's requirements by the global lighting Industry, and safeguarded the sustainable and healthy development of the lighting Industry while stabilizing the global lighting market and ensuring consumer demand.

Beyond the requirements of the Convention, based on global development goals to promote energy conservation and emission reduction as well as environmental protection, many countries or regions worldwide are also formulating plans to replace or phase out mercury-added lighting products in their respective countries or regions. For instance, the EU's new RoHS directive proposes a step-by-step, location-specific, and specification-based phased elimination of fluorescent lamp products starting from 2023; ASEAN, African regions, etc., are also promoting the market transition to LED lighting products by continuously improving the energy efficiency levels of lighting products .

With the maturation of LED lighting technology, fluorescent lamp production has declined rapidly since 2012. In 2021, China's total output of fluorescent lamps was less than 800 million units (approximately one-tenth of the total output in 2012) , accounting for about 5% of the total production of major electric light sources in China. In recent years, China has actively developed the LED lighting industry, significantly optimizing its product structure. After the implementation of the Minamata Convention, China's lighting industry still maintains a clear advantage in the global lighting market.

Source: China Illuminating Engineering Society