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Some Recyclers Give Up On Recycling Old Monitors And TVs (vice.com)

An anonymous reader writes: "In many cases, your old TV isn't recycled at all and is instead abandoned in a warehouse somewhere, left for society to deal with sometime in the future," reports Motherboard, describing the problem of old cathode-ray televisions and computer monitors with "a net negative recycling value" (since their component parts don't cover the cost of dismantling them). An estimated 705 million CRT TVs were sold in the U.S. since 1980, and many now sit in television graveyards, "an environmental and economic disaster with no clear solution." As much as 100,000 tons of potentially hazardous waste are stockpiled in two Ohio warehouses of the now-insolvent recycler Closed Loop, plus "at least 25,000 tons of glass and unprocessed CRTs in Arizona...much of it is sitting in a mountainous pile outside one of the warehouses."
One EPA report found 23,000 tons of lead-containing CRT glass abandoned in four different states just in 2013.

274 comments

  1. That's why I pay to recycle monitors by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    I take my old monitors (CRT and LCD alike) to a place where I pay a somewhat hefty fee to recycle (I think around $20-$40). That's the best I can do to ensure they actually will be recycled, rather than taking it somewhere that supposedly would handle them for free... I do the same for pretty much any electronic device.

    I know that's no guarantee but you do the best you can. Besides, even a warehouse full of dead monitors that will basically just sit forever is still a way better scenario than having them polluting a landfill.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by ArchieBunker · · Score: 4, Informative

      What do you think the recycler does with them?

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    2. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I pay a somewhat hefty fee to recycle (I think around $20-$40). That's the best I can do to ensure they actually will be recycled

      Why does you paying them make them more honest?
      How much fuel do you burn driving there and back?
      Like most recycling, this seems to be more about "feeling good" rather than actually helping the environment.

      Besides, even a warehouse full of dead monitors that will basically just sit forever is still a way better scenario than having them polluting a landfill.

      Except for all the resources that went into building the warehouse. Do you know how much CO2 is generated to make concrete?

    3. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by microcars · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What do you think the recycler does with them?

      in this case it would seem they take money to dispose of them, leave them in a rental warehouse, then walk away leaving the problem with the landlord and the city.
      A warehouse full of dead monitors will not just sit there "forever".

      --
      I like microcars
    4. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And you even existing somehow helps the environment? I highly doubt it.

    5. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      "I take my old monitors (CRT and LCD alike) to a place where I pay a somewhat hefty fee to recycle (I think around $20-$40). That's the best I can do to ensure they actually will be recycled, rather than taking it somewhere that supposedly would handle them for free... I do the same for pretty much any electronic device."

      There IS no place that disposes of CRTs for free. If you do pay for environmentally proper disposal, they end up in the warehouse pile described in the article, in hope that someone at some time will find a way of recycling them.

      Paying to have your old set stored in a pile is at least better than what most people actually do, which is sneak it into a dumpster some rainy night.

    6. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by BeauSD · · Score: 0

      Step 1: Wait till middle of night when no one is watching
      Step 2: Find rural overpass in the countryside
      Step 3: Have scout alert you to lack of traffic and police presence
      Step 4: ???
      Step 5: Profit!

      (Not meant to be a funny post per se)

    7. Re: That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What are you implying, Shanghai Bill, that love of money isn't the root all that is good in the world?

      Jesus weeps, and you can buy the tears for 5 dollars a vial.

    8. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      There IS no place that disposes of CRTs for free.

      In California, we pay for recycling when we buy electronics. The flip side of that deal is that we don't pay when we dispose of electronics, regardless of age. We just take them to the transfer station and leave them in a pile. This is cool for me because I get electronics cheaply from the Salvation Army, go through them for interesting parts, check the router database or whatever, and then recycle whatever I don't want for free.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    9. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by epine · · Score: 0, Troll

      I know that's no guarantee but you do the best you can.

      Considering how much you originally paid for your deoxygenated speaker wire, I would say $40 is the least you can do.

      Were you to model the price signal with quaternion rotation instead, you would discover that the price signal really can spin around to a perfect 180-degree inversion of "the best you can do", given but a sparse free-energy input of mindless optimism, and a scant few months to capture abandoned area under the curve (and that's not even including the machine learning revolution).

      Perhaps capitalism eventually does the right thing, but not until after imbibing all the loose sugar.

      First Law of Mice and Men: If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.

      Corollary: If something can lead to an easy buck, it will lead to an easy buck.

      Unfortunately, all the quaternions in this picture belong to the increasingly neutered EPA.

    10. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Lehk228 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      not getting lead into the ground water isn't about feeling good, it's about not poisoning ourselves

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    11. Re: That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I don't fucking care. Once I can prove I disposed of the crap properly, the recycler can stick his weiner in it as far as I'm concerned.

    12. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by AJWM · · Score: 5, Funny

      A warehouse full of dead monitors will not just sit there "forever".

      In related news, a recent excavation in an Egyptian pyramid has turned up a trove of what appear to be ancient CRTs.

      --
      -- Alastair
    13. Re: That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Calydor · · Score: 2

      And that makes it less of an environmental hazard how, exactly?

      This isn't about pointing blame at the people who bought and later got rid of CRT TVs. This is about revealing that things aren't getting recycled as they're supposed to.

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    14. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by sydbarrett74 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Recycling absolutely helps the environment. The fact that things happen like what's mentioned in the article says something about externalities and other market failures, rather than serving as an indictment of recycling per se.

      --
      'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
    15. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by sydbarrett74 · · Score: 1

      Do you know how much CO2 is generated to make concrete

      How much CO2 is generated mining ore to retrieve lead and other metals present in a CRT, or drilling and refining the petroleum to make virgin plastic, as opposed to reusing what has already been extracted from the earth? This is to say nothing of turning a patch of land into a lunar landscape after the mining company has moved elsewhere.

      --
      'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
    16. Re: That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From now on I'm throwing my tvs on the side of the road and attaching a note to them.

      "This tv was recycled by SuperKendall of Slashdot.com"

    17. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Place I worked at once many years ago decided it was time to throw out the old computer hardware we'd just been stockpiling. It all went into a skip bin, and into a local land fill. There was no other way to get rid of it.

      I read the motherboard article a few days ago, the first paragraph had to glaring mistakes in it - 1) CRT's dont have "gas" in them, they hold a vacuum - hence the hissing sound if you carefully puncture the plate where the EHT line connects with something like a sharp screwdriver and a hammer (Yes I've done that). 2) If you knock the neck of wrong it can implode the entire tube, not explode it.

      I see they have corrected their article now about the "gas" at least :-)

      They also talked about the lead in the glass quite a bit, but never mention why its there, and thats to shield from X-Rays generated by the high acceleration voltage used in color CRTs (40kV or more) , Black and White CRTs didnt have this issue, and the glass didn't have lead in it.

    18. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Price signals are obviously wrong with recycling. Another example of the failure of neoliberal economics to describe the real world. Markets do not allocate efficiently, because markets are perversely incentivized and morally hazardous.

    19. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by nbauman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Besides, even a warehouse full of dead monitors that will basically just sit forever is still a way better scenario than having them polluting a landfill.

      Landfills are designed to hold pollution for a long time. If they follow current environmental regulations, they're in a clay pit which is impermeable to any significant leakage. When they're filled, they're covered with a clay top which keeps the rain out. The main goal for leaded glass is to make sure they don't wind up in the drinking water. There are Roman trash heaps which have lasted undisturbed for 2,000 years.

      There aren't too many warehouses that have survived 100 years.

    20. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by nbauman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As TFA https://motherboard.vice.com/e... says, half of them go to abandoned warehouses in the US. The other half go to Africa and India http://gizmodo.com/e-hell-on-e... where low-paid, unprotected workers burn off the insulation and plastic parts to get the copper. I've seen articles about this in the New Scientist and elsewhere.

    21. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1
    22. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You voted for bernie didn't you... Spending money on feelgood shit that didn't help at all.

    23. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by PPH · · Score: 1

      to a place where I pay a somewhat hefty fee to recycle (I think around $20-$40).

      Bubba's gravel pit and rifle range.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    24. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by semper_statisticum · · Score: 1

      I saw a documentary about the Third World of the Antares system on Futurama.

      --
      The Spanish Inquisition of Psychometrics; Burning all the heretics.
    25. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      "Virtue signalling" - what a wasteful bunch of verbal gymnastics to replace the world "piety."

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    26. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      I have mine on my floor. It's a bit too heavy to carry by myself safely. So I've been putting it off.

    27. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll dump my old electronic waste at whatever passes for the local depot. I do this only because it's convenient, and if it was more convenient to get it to a landfill, I'd send it that way instead. This is not a decision I'll lose sleep over, now or in the future.

      If a place wants to charge me like it's some kind of great privilege to be able to dump my old useless shit with them, they can go fuck themselves.

    28. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Virtually none go to India. Reusable ones go to Indonesia and Africa. A lot of hoax articles 10 years ago

    29. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What they do to them is turn around and sell the junk to the highest bidder, which invariably means it winds up in a cargo container, loaded up on a gigantic ship, and shipped off to China where some children will be tasked with stripping it down and salvaging whatever isn't worthless.

      Paid by suckers to take their obsolete electronics, and paid again to get rid of it bulk. Not a bad deal if you can get it.

    30. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fun fact: CO2 is a gigantic red herring

    31. Re: That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even easier, if you live in a neighborhood with robotic single-arm garbage trucks and no direct human oversight: throw one monitor in the trash can every pickup. Problem solved.

    32. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I worked briefly for an electronics recycler. They too charged to recycle CRTs, and I wouldn't trust anyone who didn't charge to recycle a CRT. From what I gathered of the electronics recycling industry is that even with the best intentions at many levels of the supply chain (if that's the right economic term), a staggering amount of this stuff just ends up shuffled around in a global shell game until it gets to Africa or someplace where somebody just burns it. Probably without adequate safety gear, for themself or the environment. As the article points out, other still-staggering amounts just end up sitting in a warehouse, alleviating the problem exactly none.

      If you think about all the issues (Cobalt mining via child labor, Foxconn suicides, etc) that show up in the other side of that supply chain--the one that brings you the shiny new stuff--it wasn't that surprising to me on reflection that the after-use, "I'm so done with this phone" end of the situation was pretty abysmal as well. America has an overconsumption problem; the past few decades of that involved a large number of electronic devices, many of which are now toxic both literally and figuratively.

      I no longer work at the electronics recycler but, with the exception of cell phones, I haven't bought a still-in-the-packaging new computer system since. Granted, my needs aren't exactly cutting edge computing wise, but neither are the vast majority of people's. Unfortunately, it seems the vast majority of people simply aren't interested in buying a used computer.

    33. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      where's my mod choice that says -1 retarded

    34. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by gumbi+west · · Score: 1

      Can lead be leached out of glass? Generally glass is a pretty good state for keeping things from leaching out.

    35. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm confused by this entire thread, and frankly by the article as well. Somebody has figured out making a profit out of this. I get paid to recycle CRT monitors (and many other electronics) on a regular basis. (I'm located in Ontario, Canada.)

      Every CRT I pick up curbside or from one of my customers nets me between $5 and $15 CAD when I drop it off at a scrap yard. And in my experience the scrap yards I go to have no problem telling me to trash things they find unprofitable - occasionally they even offer to dispose of it for me.

      Maybe it's subsidised recycling? We do pay an eco fee when buying electronics...

    36. Re: That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Old CRTs may not have lead-free solder.

    37. Re: That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why should I care?

    38. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 1
    39. Re: That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And that's why I throw the stuff away from where I live. I have conducted carefully in-depth research to identify the places where I can safely dispose of toxic waste without risk of harm to me or the people I care about. The rest can go to hell.

    40. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Why does you paying them make them more honest?
      How much fuel do you burn driving there and back?
      Like most recycling, this seems to be more about "feeling good" rather than actually helping the environment.

      People in general are swayed towards dishonesty when they are are no longer able to financially support the work they do. You screw your builder he'll cut corners to get off the job site as soon as possible. You throw a CRT at someone for free he'll do the bare minimum needed to turn it into a profit. If you provide the profit then you're more likely to get the result you were after (which is the reason cost-plus contracts exist). Paying someone doesn't make them more honest, but it removes the incentive for dishonesty.

      Fuel? I don't know. My car's weight increased by 1% as a result of me carrying a CRT monitor. It didn't increase in wind resistance at all which is a primary factor on longer trips. I'm going to take a guess with my fuel consumption increasing by nothing at all.
      Oh wait did you think I would drive somewhere to just dispose a CRT monitor? Man I got shit to do. I sure as hell wouldn't drive to a refuse station just for a monitor. I would however take the monitor when I have the entire tray full of stuff and typically also have a trailer in tow as well.

      As for feeling good. Yeah I guess it does feel good to know that much of my stuff is re-used rather than just pushed in a ditch that we all hope doesn't grow big enough that the smell wafts back over the city.

    41. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by RabidReindeer · · Score: 2

      A warehouse full of dead monitors will not just sit there "forever".

      Alas, no. Eventually someone would come into the warehouse, see all those dusty old monitors taking up space and a truck would roll up in the middle of the night, carrying them off to be dumped somewhere in the countryside.

    42. Re: That's why I pay to recycle monitors by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

      Why should I care?

      Because not more than 100 miles from where I sit, authorities discovered a creek full of old lead-acid auto batteries where they'd been dumped. Suppose you lived in an area where the groundwater sourced your drinking-water reservoirs.

    43. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

      Do you know how much CO2 went into generating you? Not being overly facetious, but without hard numbers, I'm not going to assume I know within any orders of magnitude how much any given solution costs environmentally or monetarily (which are often not the same thing).

      Concrete is at least a way of sequestering combustion products, although as far as I'm concerned, whether you scoop out a leakage-lined storage facility from the earth using hydrocarbon-burning earth movers or build a storage facility out of stacked-up artificial rocks created by hydrocarbon-burning grinding and mixing equipment is more or less moot. Either solution is just a parking space and eventually, it would be more profitable to find something productive to do with the assets stored there.

    44. Re: That's why I pay to recycle monitors by pslytely+psycho · · Score: 1

      I live in such an area.

      We have had our water polluted by illegal oil dumps and a guaranteed leak-proof high speed rail refueling station for BNSF, along with various dumps of industrial solvent and such. The water here tastes like shit. Growing up the water was much better after they got rid of the major rail switch yard downtown and turned it into a park. But the last 40 years have seen it return to the 60's.

      Yep, I care too.

      --
      Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
    45. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by retroworks · · Score: 4, Informative

      Mod Down! That's the biggest bullshit. I was at the so-called "largest e-waste dump" in Africa 3 weeks ago (my second visit). Total and complete hoax. World Bank data shows how many African city households had televisions 20 years ago (millions) and the major problem is that Africans aren't throwing them away - there are not enough of them burned, because they repair them forever. I don't like to throw the "racist" term around, but the fact that so many reporters repeated this false story about the "primitive" Africa Tech Sector is kind of telling. UK is the worst, actually put an African TV repairman in jail, citing 80% bullshit statistic at his hearing (which the NGO now admits was false).

      --
      Gently reply
    46. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by jabuzz · · Score: 1

      Thing is last time I checked a CDT can be recycled for profit. At the very least the lead can be relatively easily extracted from the glass for reuse.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    47. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Back in the day, the CRT monitor was hieroglyphics. Why do you think all their ruins are covered in hieroglyphics.

    48. Re: That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Old CRTs may not have lead-free solder.

      Or lead free lead shielding.

    49. Re: That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      Otherwise dump them in a back-alley in a questionable area. Do it quick so you don't lose your wallet and wheels on the car.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    50. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If a meth-head breaks into the warehouse, it will all be taken. Meth-heads know how to make money on anything. Hey, problem solved!

    51. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by OakDragon · · Score: 1

      A warehouse full of dead monitors will not just sit there "forever".

      When I read this, it reminded me of the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Maybe we should have top men working on this recycling problem?

    52. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by nbauman · · Score: 1

      SWEEEP Kuusakoski. Interesting. They claim they can separate lead and glass profitably. They could be right.

      According to TFA, Closed Loop Recycling planned to buy a huge furnace to do just that. Maybe that was the company that made the furnace.

      The problem for Closed Loop was that they needed a $16 million loan to buy the furnace, but the lender pulled out (although Closed Loop won a court case with the lender).

      I didn't see the word "bankruptcy" in any of those stories. It may be that the cheapest and easiest solution to that mountain of TVs would be to keep Closed Loop going and finally buy a furnace to separate them the way they originally planned.

      Or maybe they could ship their TV tubes to one of those European furnaces.

    53. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by aaronb1138 · · Score: 1

      I hope the "fake" recyclers at least have the good sense to yank the copper from around the tube and flyback and smelt that for extra cash. Some CRTs have a quite substantial cash value in copper, it's just disposing of everything else takes it net negative.

    54. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by nbauman · · Score: 2

      Although I give a strong weight to first-hand testimony, I get my information from Science magazine, New Scientist, and the New York Times. For example:

      http://science.sciencemag.org/...
      The Electronics Revolution: From E-Wonderland to E-Wasteland , Oladele A. Ogunseitan1,*, , Julie M. Schoenung2, , Jean-Daniel M. Saphores3 and , Andrew A. Shapiro4
      Science 30 Oct 2009:
      Vol. 326, Issue 5953, pp. 670-671
      DOI: 10.1126/science.1176929

      Since the mid-1990s, electronic waste (e-waste) has been recognized as the fastest-growing component of the solid-waste stream, as small consumer electronic products, such as cellular phones, have become ubiquitous in developed and developing countries (1). In the absence of adequate recycling policies, the small size, short useful life-span, and high costs of recycling these products mean they are routinely discarded without much concern for their adverse impacts on the environment and public health. These impacts occur throughout the product life cycle, from acquisition of raw materials (2) to manufacturing to disposal at the end of products' useful life.

      This creates considerable toxicity risks worldwide (3, 4). For example, the mean concentration of lead in the blood of children living in Guiyu, China, a notorious destination for improper e-waste recycling (5), is 15.3 Âg/dl. There is no known safe level of exposure to lead; remedial action is recommended for children with levels above 10 Âg/dl (6). Polybrominated diphenyl ethers used as flame-retardants in electronics have been detected in alarming quantities (up to 4.1 ppm lipid weight) in California's peregrine falcon eggs, raising the specter of species endangerment (7, 8).

    55. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

      As TFA https://motherboard.vice.com/e... says, half of them go to abandoned warehouses in the US. The other half go to Africa and India http://gizmodo.com/e-hell-on-e... where low-paid, unprotected workers burn off the insulation and plastic parts to get the copper. I've seen articles about this in the New Scientist and elsewhere.

      Well, that only works when the economics of shipping them to China/India/Africa/wherever are favorable. They've been running into issues the last few years that have made the economics turn unfavorable, so more and more they'll likely just end up in the US (or Europe - e.g near the source) somewhere.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    56. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Okay. What is the verb form of "piety"?

    57. Re: That's why I pay to recycle monitors by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      That's why they lasted so long.

      FYI touch-up solder still has lead in it.

      I've still got a can of freon based contact cleaner, the good stuff.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    58. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jesus Christ I have seen you post for so long and sometimes you don't half come out with some ignorant bullshit. Perhaps it's your way of convincing yourself that your laziness is acceptable, but idk.

      As for payment, contract law could help there. The rest of your understanding about recycling, which is a huge industry, is embarrassing.

    59. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Shirley+Marquez · · Score: 1

      Some cities and towns here in Massachusetts collect monitors from their residents for free. But the city pays to have them recycled.

    60. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 1

      don't you know you are suppose to recycle your used motor one quart at a time and the used filter gets its own trip as well. Same things with CFLs and use alkaline batteries. Each one gets its own special trip to the recycling center.

      All joking aside I do a similar thing you do. I have a few bins and containers in the garage that hold all the shit I'm not suppose to toss in the trash or single stream curbside recycling and when I run out of storage I make a trip over to the county recycling center. On the way I stop by my in-laws house and pick up anything they want to get rid of and also stop by my mom's house and do the same as they are all on the way. I make the run a couple of times a year and it is only like a 15 mile drive there an back. And before anyone says what I am doing is illegal my in-laws and mother live in the same county as I do so their crap is allowed to go to that recycling center as well.

      --
      Time to offend someone
    61. Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors by ThePawArmy · · Score: 1

      He pays someone to take them away for $5-$10 each.

  2. Chuck it in the Grand Canyon by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Funny

    Chuck it all in the Grand Canyon. Plenty of room in there, believe me folks, it's yuuuuge.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    1. Re:Chuck it in the Grand Canyon by Xyrus · · Score: 1

      The EPA may need to step in if...

      Oh, sorry. That was the before time in the long long ago. The new Environmental Destruction Agency (EDA) will just dump them in somebody's river.

      --
      ~X~
    2. Re:Chuck it in the Grand Canyon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      new source of 'renewable power'.. endless supply of electronic shit from china gets replaced every year.. so they'll just chuck 'em in a power generating incinerator. environment be damned. it's not "my" problem.

    3. Re:Chuck it in the Grand Canyon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gotta incentivize people to buy bottled water from Nestle and Coca Cola somehow.
      Fuck poor people.

    4. Re:Chuck it in the Grand Canyon by dwillden · · Score: 1

      Plus the river will wash many down into Mead, making it shallower us raising the water levels to ensure that Las Vegas can still take out the water it needs. ;)

      --
      I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
    5. Re:Chuck it in the Grand Canyon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wrong.

      Step 1: Build the Wall
      Step 2: Toss used electronics over the wall.

  3. send em to Hawaii by FudRucker · · Score: 1, Interesting

    and drop em in to molten lava at that volcano since it is hot enough to melt even glass & metal that way there wont be nothing left even the toxic material will be burnt and encapsulated with lava rock when it cools

    --
    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
    1. Re:send em to Hawaii by crow · · Score: 1

      Assuming that would work, it would be quite difficult to do so on an industrial scale safely and efficiently. How do you get the trash into the lava? You can't build a road above it to dump them in. Dropping them in by helicopter, one shipping container at a time, might be possible, but I'm not sure how safe or efficient that would be. Probably the best bet would be to determine where the lava is likely to flow in a future eruption, and just build a big warehouse there to store them until it comes.

      Now I would love to see the environmental impact study.

      What all sorts of hazardous waste would this work for? What would it not work for? I expect one big problem is vaporizing metals, resulting in acid rain, so it would probably mean you couldn't use it for anything with mercury. The end result may be rules similar to what can go in an incinerator, making the lava approach useless.

    2. Re:send em to Hawaii by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just dump them overseas on the way to Hawaii. The ocean is huge and no one will ever know

    3. Re:send em to Hawaii by mikael · · Score: 1

      Given the sulphuric nature of lava as well as halogens, contribution to acid raid is the least of your problems.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    4. Re:send em to Hawaii by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      vaporizing metals, resulting in acid rain

      Literally what?

    5. Re:send em to Hawaii by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I expect one big problem is vaporizing metals, resulting in acid rain

      That's not what causes acid rain. Sulfur and nitrogen compounds are the primary culprits behind acid rain. Neither are metals and neither are found in great quantities in monitors.

      As for the rest of your comment, you're right... the rules for dumping in a volcano would have to be similar to the rules for incinerators. Dumping monitors in would certainly lead to lead vapors which precipitate into the surrounding area, contaminating everything. Lead doesn't degrade and it sticks tightly to soil, too, so it doesn't go away over time (as demonstrated by many, many studies of lead contamination in the soil around coal fired power plants).

    6. Re:send em to Hawaii by crow · · Score: 1

      OK, I was wrong about acid rain, but the vaporizing of mercury is still a problem--the mercury wouldn't be sequestered.

    7. Re:send em to Hawaii by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      The ocean is huge and no one will ever know

      Never mind that man-made pollution has reached the deepest trenches in the ocean.

      http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2017/02/long-lasting-chemicals-have-reached-deepest-trenches-oceans

    8. Re: send em to Hawaii by OneSmartFellow · · Score: 2

      Ok, so that OP's idea won't work,  although it was creative.

      How about a similar solution.

      Encase the offending components in something  (glass?)  and position that in such a way that it gets folded into a subduction zone.  Then it gets melted into the earth - kind of like where it came from anyway.

      Would something like that work ?

    9. Re:send em to Hawaii by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      He means nobody will ever know IT WAS YOU.

      The fact that you can measure the pollution is unfortunate but irrelevant so long as you don't get caught.

    10. Re: send em to Hawaii by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      Vitrification is pretty trivial(indeed, the material being not-recycled here is leaded glass already); getting something folded into the earth's mantle, not so much.

    11. Re:send em to Hawaii by fnj · · Score: 2

      Never mind that man-made pollution has reached the deepest trenches in the ocean.

      Where any normal person is perfectly happy to have it rest forever.

      News flash. Nothing in the deepest ocean trenches has any effect on the human food chain.

    12. Re:send em to Hawaii by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      News flash. Nothing in the deepest ocean trenches has any effect on the human food chain.

      Except that man-made pollution are highly prevalent among fishes throughout the world. You better make sure that your next fish filet you have for dinner is farm-raised and not caught in the wild.

    13. Re:send em to Hawaii by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The wonders of the free market never cease to amaze me

    14. Re: send em to Hawaii by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 1

      Bury it and wait, time will take care of it.

    15. Re:send em to Hawaii by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Conscript progressive lib.comz to do the heavy lifting ... they are the pimps love bitch Gaia so let them slave away disposing CRTs.

    16. Re:send em to Hawaii by c-A-d · · Score: 1

      I doubt that any other economic system would do any different. Someone will just bury the problem, or pass it off to someone else.

      --
      some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
    17. Re:send em to Hawaii by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Works in Minecraft.

    18. Re:send em to Hawaii by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      You will care when Aquaman comes to kick your arse.

      Seriously though, polluting places we currently think are unimportant to our prosperity has not turned out well historically. And we don't really think it's unimportant, since water and pollutants move around and due to the difficulty accessing that depth we don't understand the process that well.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    19. Re:send em to Hawaii by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Spam spam spam spam

    20. Re:send em to Hawaii by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Boy you do not want that if you think the open ocean is worse. I purposely refuse to buy fish at the grocery store as it's all 100% from China or Vietnam

  4. Isn't glass a perfectly safe sequestration? by charliemerritt03 · · Score: 1

    This talk of mountains of leaded glass seems like no problem, unless leaded glass leaches a lot. If nothing else it might be a "lead mine" if and when the price of lead goes up.

    1. Re: Isn't glass a perfectly safe sequestration? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It doesn't leach. At least as long as the tube stays intact.

    2. Re:Isn't glass a perfectly safe sequestration? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They tend to be covered in lead powder (on the outside). At least the old one I took apart once was.

    3. Re:Isn't glass a perfectly safe sequestration? by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      The dag most often used on CRTs is graphite based.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  5. Put on a ship and sink by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They could put all those monitors on a run-down navy ship, then sink it in the ocean with a torpedo.

    1. Re:Put on a ship and sink by GrumpySteen · · Score: 1

      Because the monitors by themselves aren't enough or an environmental hazard, so you feel an entire ship should be dumped into the ocean along with them?

    2. Re:Put on a ship and sink by khallow · · Score: 1

      You may be able to sink my CRT laden ships, but you can't sink my virtue!

    3. Re:Put on a ship and sink by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tell the hippies there is a Trump protest on the ship. When they get on, tow it to the sinking site.

  6. Isn't glass pretty inert..? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is leaded glass actually a problem environmentally?
    I thought glass was pretty near to being inert over the very long term, which is why the use it to encapsulate nuclear waste.

    1. Re:Isn't glass pretty inert..? by The+Real+Dr+John · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Glass is an amorphous solid that is porous if you look under an electron microscope. It slowly dissolves in water (very slowly) and therefore continuously leaches whatever compounds it is composed of. It probably wouldn't be a big problem for local water if you dumped a few big CRT TVs here and there, but if you put a mountain of it somewhere and let it leach into the soil, it could get into the local groundwater. Look, if we want capitalism to survive and not destroy us and the planet while people are making a buck, we need to clean up after ourselves. You don't crap on the living room rug.

      Here is my lab's journal article on glass leaching:

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

      --
      A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
    2. Re:Isn't glass pretty inert..? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The Faculty of Homeopathy" ...WTF?

    3. Re:Isn't glass pretty inert..? by Lehk228 · · Score: 1

      to be fair, believing that glass is water soluble and believing in majic probably do go hand in hand.

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    4. Re:Isn't glass pretty inert..? by nbauman · · Score: 4, Informative

      Glass is water-soluble. That's why supply houses sell distilled water in plastic jugs. http://www.chemworld.com/ChemW...

      That's why the F.D.A. recommends against using lead glass containers for long-term storage. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/02...

    5. Re:Isn't glass pretty inert..? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Glass water soluble? WTF.. Yea like i really like covalently bonded SiO2 in an ionic solution in water. Just No. your wrong. Leaching is *not* even similar to soluble.

    6. Re:Isn't glass pretty inert..? by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      Glass is a term that describes a wide range of materials. The most common glass is primarily silicon dioxide (quartz), which is not noticeably water soluble. It's impurities and glass formulations with other chemicals deliberately included that may result in water solubility.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    7. Re:Isn't glass pretty inert..? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... if we want capitalism to survive ...

      You mean, if we want first-world wankers to survive? Electronics contain many different substances so it's difficult to separate them, causing them to be buried instead. If recycling isn't effective, the e-waste need to be isolated and dumped into leak-proof containers. Countries that don't enforce clean air/water/land laws are poisoning themselves into extinction.

    8. Re:Isn't glass pretty inert..? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      fuck off with your homeopathic cultist bullshit.

    9. Re:Isn't glass pretty inert..? by GPS+Pilot · · Score: 1

      Which situation is more likely to lead to lead leaching into groundwater?

      (a) CRTs stored in an abandoned warehouse, whose roof will eventually leak

      (b) CRTs in a properly-constructed, lined landfill

      --
      That that is is that that that that is not is not.
    10. Re:Isn't glass pretty inert..? by The+Real+Dr+John · · Score: 1

      Option C: recycle, even if it is not cost effective. Lined landfills can also eventually leak. Overstuffed warehouses and lined landfills also cost money, so just do it the right way. Someone needs to invent a system that can chop up all modern electronics and melt it all down and sort out the different materials for reuse. But since that probably isn't practical, just pass a law that all electronics are a) repairable, preferably with replaceable modules, and b) easy to recycle when no longer worth repairing.

      --
      A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
  7. Next disaster will be smartphones and headphones by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With the two year upgrade cycle and very poor warranty coverage it will be worse

    All home appliances and electronics should come with a ten year warranty. All portlable electronics should come with a 5 year warranty

    All consumer products should come with repair manuals

    Its ridiculous how often we upgrade in the "green society".

  8. Boo hoo, just stop rainwater from leaching lead by ShooterNeo · · Score: 1

    So as long as you keep the lead from escaping into groundwater (could bury them in a landfill with a clay or plastic lining in a big mountain), this is fine. If lead prices are so cheap that it's easier to mine new lead than it is to recycle it from CRT glass, and ditto the prices for the other elements in the CRTs (I assume the copper wiring got ripped out right away), then oh fucking well. Invisible hand at work - just need to make sure the storage of the CRTs is adequate to contain the toxic lead.

    And yeah, maybe 200 years from now we'll have mined out all the surface lead and it'll be worth recycling them properly. Or maybe just 20 years from now we'll develop robotic disassemblers (with good manipulators and machine vision that can actually properly see and grab stuff and figure out which part of the TV it's looking at like a human worker would) that can economically take these things apart for the goodies inside for less than mining the same elements fresh.

    The main issue here is a failure for society to properly bill the costs for proper storage of this stuff. Or maybe they should just for residential landfill operators to make the landfills capable of accepting CRT and other waste, since realistically that's what most people are going to do with their broken electronics.

    1. Re:Boo hoo, just stop rainwater from leaching lead by hey! · · Score: 2

      So as long as you keep the lead from escaping into groundwater (could bury them in a landfill with a clay or plastic lining in a big mountain), this is fine. If lead prices are so cheap that it's easier to mine new lead than it is to recycle it from CRT glass,

      True, and true, with reservations. Somebody has got to pay for keeping the lead from escaping into groundwater. Should it be everyone, or the people who benefited from the use of the lead?

      And if everyone pays, human nature being what it is people will pay to make the problem "go away" without looking too closely at the details, where "go away" includes "making it someone else's problem."

      The thing is, if you could completely internalize all those expenses so the cost of dealing with never just "went away", the market would do a fine job of efficiently managing lead and disposal management as a resource. But that doesn't happen naturally, by itself.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    2. Re:Boo hoo, just stop rainwater from leaching lead by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      While that lead is in the glass, what's the risk? I don't think that lead is going to turn back into free metal any time soon.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    3. Re:Boo hoo, just stop rainwater from leaching lead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's human nature to take the easy road. This is true even when the road is _designed_ to be hard, so we find shortcuts.

      Government will always find ways to make you pay for the problem, but they'll rarely use the money to deal with the problem if they can magic-wand it away and spend the money elsewhere (like a bonus check). Free money extracted at gun-point; the best money.

      We do the same in software. A bunch of PhDs write the code quick-and-dirty that solves the basic problem for today. Then you toss the code over the wall to the interns and SREs and let them deal with the production forest fires sweeping across the datacenter. PhDs get recognition, everyone else gets burned.

      As long as price of big hole price of dismantling it we'll choose big holes every time and it's always cheaper to shit in someone else's yard.

    4. Re:Boo hoo, just stop rainwater from leaching lead by hey! · · Score: 4, Informative

      You might not think so, because elemental lead is not water-soluble. However compounds of lead like hydroxides or carbonates are soluble and can form from elemental lead by contact with water, e.g., 2Pb + O2 + 2H2O -> 2 Pb(OH)2.

      This is why it's perfectly safe to drink wine from leaded crystal wine glasses, but a bad idea to store wine in a leaded crystal decanter.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    5. Re:Boo hoo, just stop rainwater from leaching lead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It isn't 100% safe to use leaded crystal. The Pb leeches out of the crystal. The reason it's assumed to be safe is that it happens very slowly, and the Pb is held in the glass, so the majority of the liquid is in contact with SiO2 (glass), not Pb.

      The rate of leeching also depends on how much Pb is in the glass, what other things are alloyed with the glass, what the surface area of exposure is, and what the properties of the liquid are (pH, dissolved O2 levels, temperature, etc.).

  9. Du Pont The miracles of science. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    On the photo with all the boxes stacked about half way down the article.

  10. That is why Africa and Southeast Asia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    are allowed to still exist! They take this for a penny or two.

  11. locally, about the same thing happened by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    six years ago, a group of college students (for class credit) followed a CRT TV (GPS unit embedded ) from recycle bin to its final destination. it was never recycled since the GPS continued to work. they lost the signal after it left San Juan when it was sent outside the USA.

    1. Re:locally, about the same thing happened by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2, Insightful

      six years ago, a group of college students (for class credit) followed a CRT TV (GPS unit embedded ) from recycle bin to its final destination. it was never recycled
      since the GPS continued to work. they lost the signal after it left San Juan when it was sent outside the USA.

      How much do you want to make a bet it landed in the Atlantic Ocean?

  12. How hazardous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is hazardous waste and there is Hazardous Waste. On the hazard scale, old TVs are pretty low. Leaded glass is about as inert as it gets, not going to leech anywhere if simply buried.

    I wonder if this recycler already stripped the big copper coils and has warehouses filled with just the tubes now. Simple solution for that is to crush them and dump in nice deep section of the ocean where they can settle into the mud. Concrete aggregate in highways works too,

    1. Re:How hazardous by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      High lead concrete is a very poor idea. Concrete in roads wears, and the resultant dust is kicked into the air by cars and runs off into the soil when it rains.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    2. Re: How hazardous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, for god's fsck'ing sake... anyone older than roughly 30 who grew up in a real city probably ingested more lead by his 10th birthday than kids born today will likely encounter during their entire LIVES. Unless you're planning to dump a hundred thousand old CRTs into the same lake or spring, the lead in them is basically IRRELEVANT to the ecosystem.

      And we could eliminate roughly 1/4 of landfill-bound monitors from immediate disposal if Congress told the HDCP people to fuck off and fully-legalize HDCP-spoofing HDMI-to-VGA/component adapters, patents & licensing be damned, so they could be REUSED instead of recycled.

    3. Re: How hazardous by Stormy+Dragon · · Score: 1

      Oh, for god's fsck'ing sake... anyone older than roughly 30 who grew up in a real city probably ingested more lead by his 10th birthday than kids born today will likely encounter during their entire LIVES.

      Which is why the crime rate has dropped 60% since the early 90s: because we stopped exposing all of our kids to chronic lead poisoning.

  13. Using old crap as a teaching aid by John+Allsup · · Score: 2

    One serious use is as 'practice victims' for beginning newbies to electronics to play with, as practice in the dextrous tasks of dismantling, identifying, etc, and in the fun you can have in reusing what works. Playing with broke stuff frees you from the risk of expensive mistakes.

    --
    John_Chalisque
    1. Re:Using old crap as a teaching aid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Teaching *what*? EE is a dying career choice in the West, and how would you get people there in the first place?
      You make it sound like electronics is still in the 1960s, where you *could* reuse parts since they each did so little and where huge.

    2. Re:Using old crap as a teaching aid by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      While I agree with the basic idea, monitors aren't ideal because they use very high voltages and are quite dangerous. Better to learn with something safer.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:Using old crap as a teaching aid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      First, learning the manual dexterity involved in, e.g., repairing/maintaining laptops and other computers. Second, it is not so much intended as a career, but for more widespread general understanding, for hobbyists, for therapeutic activities, and for that whole growing 'IoT/arduino' thing, and its utility in teaching children how to _think_ about how technology actually works. The biggest problem we have in the current generation is that most people see computers and modern tech as magical black boxes with flashing lights. There are many paraphrases of the 'he who does not learn for history' quote. In particular, with both electronics, computer hardware, and software, those who fail to grasp how tech got to where it is now, from the old days, will fail to appreciate much of how things are now, and will repeat naive mistakes that previous generations learned hard not to make. Just as learner drivers do not learn to check oil levels, or change tyres, because of some idea of 'making a career out of it', but rather so that they are not overreliant upon some emergency mechanic, so it is with electronics and tech. There are myriad uses for an understanding of how stuff works, and the manual dexterity and confidence to dismantle and tinker with stuff. Careers may not be one of them, but only a fool thinks only in terms of relevance to sales, jobs and careers.

    4. Re:Using old crap as a teaching aid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True - I actually quite enjoyed dismantling old stuff as a kid. If nothing else it improved skills at (de)-soldering and IDing parts and gave me a good supply of free components that I could play with. Might be a bit problematic if you think too much about the OH&S side though: apart from all that lead in the solder and flux fumes you can get quite a nasty shock from the CRT if you're not careful, and that charge hangs around long after the thing has been used. Just make sure the n00bs do *not* just plug them in and start playing!

      (Another point worth noting is that older CRTs are better for this than (relatively) more recent models: bigger parts, less surface mount, fewer anonymous ICs and de-identified parts, and less likely to use non-lead-based solder that can be a pain to work with)

  14. Still better they're gathered in one place by DrXym · · Score: 1

    If someone finds a viable way to recycle these things, then it still only viable because there are a lot of them concentrated in a single place.

  15. Yucca Mountain by crow · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well, if they're not filling it with radioactive waste, why not store other junk in the caves at Yucca Mountain?

    1. Re:Yucca Mountain by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

      Not enough space. Yucca was for the comparatively low volume of nuclear fuel rod waste, not nearly as voluminous as the worlds CRT and electronic waste. Not even close.

    2. Re:Yucca Mountain by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Emissions. You need to check that gas won't build up as things decompose, for example. Also stuff leaking into the ground.

      It could work, you just need to check.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  16. Just why is this an "environmental disaster" ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    When everything is an environmental disaster, nothing is.

    Snowflakes should suck it up and realize that nobody is getting killed. It's just the leftover debris from this advanced society with a high standard of living.

    It is not an ongoing problem either. There are no more CRTs being mass produced. Dig a hole in the desert, line the hole, and bury all this junk.

  17. Just get volunteer help by eyenot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A volunteer can easily tear apart 4 of these per hour if given proper training, tools, and work area. I am pretty sure if the labor cost of separating out glass, boards, copper, and other components were zero, then the net return would no longer be negative. And there are plenty of people who need to clock some verified community service and/or other volunteer time; and hundreds of times more people who want to do it just to feel good about themselves.

    --
    "Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
    1. Re:Just get volunteer help by Lehk228 · · Score: 1

      at that rate, you will need 22,000 man-years to eliminate them.

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    2. Re:Just get volunteer help by Megane · · Score: 3, Informative

      You cant really do this with CRT's because of the gases contained in them.

      Um... what gases? A CRT is a vacuum tube. If you crack the nipple, it sucks in air from outside. (and then becomes inoperative) If you know something that I don't, then please link to this new information. The only problem with CRTs is that the glass contains lead, to shield bystanders from the X-rays that get generated.

      Also CRT's are prone to keep a charge long after they've ever been used.

      For days, weeks, maybe months. But not for years, and it's unlikely that you'll find any that have even been plugged in in years. It is also not hard to discharge the CRT with some wire and a 1 megohm resistor.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    3. Re:Just get volunteer help by aliquis · · Score: 1

      My TV sits behind me.. And guess what? :D

    4. Re:Just get volunteer help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "at that rate, you will need 22,000 man-years to eliminate them."

      Well, at least there's no NEW CRTs to stretch that out even more...

    5. Re:Just get volunteer help by PPH · · Score: 4, Informative

      vacuum tubes arent a perfect vacuum.

      But a CRT isn't a typical vacuum tube. They only work by steering a straight beam of electrons to the phosphor. Any gas molecules will scatter those electrons and defocus the beam. So CRTs do in fact have very high vacuums inside them.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    6. Re:Just get volunteer help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well i linked the info like you asked... its not my fault you cant follow it.

      Go ahead & crack your CRT's open then. see if i care.

    7. Re:Just get volunteer help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "My TV sits behind me.. And guess what? :D"

      You have a sore neck?

    8. Re:Just get volunteer help by ChrisMaple · · Score: 3, Informative

      You either didn't read your citation or didn't understand it. You linked to a very special category of tubes which includes voltage regulator tubes and thyratrons. CRTs have a high vacuum, and (like many other tubes) include a getter to remove any chemically active gasses that remain or leak in after the tube is sealed.

      A gassy CRT works poorly, and if the gas is reactive it will etch away the filament and cause the CRT to fail.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    9. Re:Just get volunteer help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You cant really do this with CRT's because of the gases contained in them.

      Um... what gases? A CRT is a vacuum tube. If you crack the nipple, it sucks in air from outside. (and then becomes inoperative) If you know something that I don't, then please link to this new information. The only problem with CRTs is that the glass contains lead, to shield bystanders from the X-rays that get generated.

      The previous poster is correct the CRT tube contains poisons inside it but it is not a gas. It has a phosphor coating on the inside of tube.

      Also CRT's are prone to keep a charge long after they've ever been used.

      For days, weeks, maybe months. But not for years, and it's unlikely that you'll find any that have even been plugged in in years. It is also not hard to discharge the CRT with some wire and a 1 megohm resistor.

      Incorrect the CRT tube can build up a static charge over time which can kill you.

      I know when I worked for Apple they would have all sorts of safety precautions setup when a technician was working on a CRT tube for just this reason.

      #1 rule was you had to have two people - one to do the work and the other to watch so if anything went wrong they could revive the person and or call for help.

      https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/197/How+dangerous+is+it+to+work+on+a+CRT+display

    10. Re: Just get volunteer help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Free labour you mean. Why not just get slaves to do it.

    11. Re:Just get volunteer help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well that's not very much of a jobs/volunteer program. Let's say that, to get unemployment, you have to go through a day's training and then take apart sets for the next 4 days. Basically, a week of work. In the first week, every set would be completely dismantled, and there would still be 80% of the unemployed workforce (7.6M) that didn't even get to work on one.

    12. Re:Just get volunteer help by Reziac · · Score: 1

      When I was a kid we used to hunt for discarded TVs and break off the nipple with a rock so we could extract the 'gun' to use as toy spaceships. (Color CRTs made for much more interesting toys.)

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    13. Re:Just get volunteer help by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      We played lightsabers with dead fluorescent tubes.

      We had the sense to wear sunglasses while doing it.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    14. Re:Just get volunteer help by Reziac · · Score: 1

      Sunglasses and gloves, I'd think :)

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  18. Mother, pin a rose on me! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Ahhh, how I love the smell of Virtue Signalling in the morning!

    1. Re:Mother, pin a rose on me! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go back to KiA you GilbertGrape

  19. Goodwill & Dell Computer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some want the televisions traced back upstream to the recycling centers where consumers originally dropped them off.

    All of my CRTs went to my local Goodwill drop off that takes electronics to be recycled. I was told by them that Dell computer takes it all and recycles it.

    Now I'm wondering what will happen to all this iShit I have.

    1. Re:Goodwill & Dell Computer by ledow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I have disposed of tons of monitors over the years, all with WEEE-compliant disposal agents.

      One of them told me that they get paid a pound (British) each to take them to Heathrow. They are loaded on a plane. A guy from a company in India / Asia signs them off and gives them the money. He then pays to ship them out to Asia.

      The ONLY way that can be profitable, is for them to be landfilled in a country that doesn't care about what they are landfilling.

      On my end, I have all the paperwork, so I have disposed of them "ethically". So has the guy with the van that he takes to Heathrow loaded with monitors every week. And he takes any boxes of cables, which he tells me the copper - melted down - pays for his fuel. Otherwise he wouldn't make profit himself.

      I imagine your goodwill store are doing the same, they just don't know it.

      Honestly - what possible use is an old, broken CRT monitor? None. That's why we've been throwing them away for decades rather than try to repair them. Even if you look into what's in them, there are no profitable parts you can extract while still being environmentally-friendly (sure, if you don't give a shit about the kids handling rare earth metals to get at tiny slivers of precious metals, then it all "works").

      You've been fed a line. But for the last 15 years I've not heard anything but the same thing from all the different people who come to collect our e-waste, all of whom sign off, all of whom get their thing signed-off, but nobody knows what happens to the end product as it goes abroad (at HUGE expense if you consider cargo rates and handling on tons of monitors).

      There are numerous studies that put GPS trackers in e-waste. Almost without exception they end up abroad and in landfill.

      Whether it's you, the goodwill store, Dell, their disposal company, or the people they use doing that "knowingly" it's almost impossible to tell. But you're aren't doing shit for the planet, I assure you.

    2. Re:Goodwill & Dell Computer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But you're aren't doing shit for the planet, I assure you.

      I did it for practical reasons.

      My local trash company will not take any electronics - if they see it, they'll pick it out and leave it at the curb. I've tried.

      So, either I smash it to bits myself and stuff it into a trash bag or I drop it off at Goodwill and let them do what they do.

      And no, I am under no delusion now that I'm doing anything or have done anything to save this planet when it comes to recycling.

      I guess my only choice is to halt my consumption of electronic shit as much as I can.

    3. Re:Goodwill & Dell Computer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Honestly - what possible use is an old, broken CRT monitor? None.

      There was an article some years back that about the only thing you can do with the leaded glass is melt it down and make a new CRT out of it, and there was like one factory left in the world (in India I believe) still making CRTs.

    4. Re:Goodwill & Dell Computer by sysrammer · · Score: 1

      I wonder if a future civilization will find the landfills and consider them treasures?

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
    5. Re:Goodwill & Dell Computer by thesupraman · · Score: 1

      Actually, no. at a pound a monitor he would be losing a LOT of money flying them out, which should be clear to you if you think about it.

      What he was actually doing was flying them over there and telling them to people to use, you know, on computers, because they will
      happily continue to be useful far in to the future (and in fact tend to have a better lifespan than modern flatscreens).

      Just because YOU dont want functional electronics, doesnt mean no one wants them. It is in fact the BEST form of recycling.

    6. Re:Goodwill & Dell Computer by ChrisMaple · · Score: 2

      Air freight is expensive. What more likely happened was the agent at Heathrow loaded the monitors into a truck, drove them to a seaport, and transferred them to a ship. From there, whether they were dumped mid-ocean or ended up somewhere in particular is anybody's guess.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    7. Re:Goodwill & Dell Computer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cargo ships going out of the U.S. take cargo at incredibly cheap rates, would not be surprised if that were the case in the U.K.

    8. Re:Goodwill & Dell Computer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Honestly - what possible use is an old, broken CRT monitor? None.

      They are great in humid, subtropical to tropical climates. You'll still see them throughout southeast Asia and people often prefer them to the newer stuff that dies in the wet.

    9. Re:Goodwill & Dell Computer by retroworks · · Score: 2

      Bullshit. MIT tracking study found only 14% of CRTs were exported, and most of those were found in reuse operations. And they didn't even track any large CRT TVs (only small monitors) which haven't had much of an export market for a decade. The NGOs who made up this story about "primitive" tech sector have a uniqure role, raising millions with pictures of kids at foreign dumps, but not actually sharing a single penny with the people in the photos - instead driving it into these warehouses. I'm a lifelong environmentalist, but the NGO's "CRT e-waste policy" was a sever case of malpractice, planned obsolescence, and racial profiling.

      --
      Gently reply
    10. Re:Goodwill & Dell Computer by Ihlosi · · Score: 1

      They'll consider them treasure troves of information alright. Information on how bloody stupid the people who created these things were.

    11. Re:Goodwill & Dell Computer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Honestly - what possible use is an old, broken CRT monitor? None.

      Old CRTs + the boards and flybacks in them are quite useful to any amateur electronics geek. Trash day is the cheapest source of basic components you're ever gonna get.

    12. Re:Goodwill & Dell Computer by sysrammer · · Score: 1

      Ha! good snark.

      Back to my point...

      "
      A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap; from early Scandinavian; Danish: mødding, Swedish regional: mödding)[1] is an old dump for domestic waste[2] which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, vermin shells, sherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human occupation.

      These features, therefore, provide a useful resource for archaeologists who wish to study the diet and habits of past societies.
      "

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  20. Re:Next disaster will be smartphones and headphone by eyenot · · Score: 2

    Repair manuals occur only in user-serviceable animals.

    One problem adding to the debris-littered future you (accurately) describe is that the corporate advantages of proprietisation, miniaturisation, and planned obsolescence have convened to create a profit model with a steadfast tenet: do not make ANYTHING user-serviceable.

    From vacuum cleaners, to power drills, to phones and everything else in between and surrounding, nothing is made user serviceable any more. Try opening up one of the latest mostly-plastic vacuum cleaners. Many of them are made to be snapped together during assembly and not to come back apart, ever. Even routine cleaning is a huge hassle, especially with components that can't be opened up. And power drills, don't get me started. There are power drills from WW2 that still run perfectly even if the brushes haven't been oiled in 20 years. You can open the up and clean, repair, or replace every last component. Some of the components can even be hand-built in the garage or machine tool shop. Try to find that level of performance or serviceability in modern power drills.

    --
    "Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
  21. Retro Collectors by Tempest_2084 · · Score: 1

    Some of use retro computer enthusiasts actually collect and will pay money for CRTs and monitors. Of course they have to be certain kinds, but there's gold in some of them dar monitors. A high quality CRT will also fetch some decent money.

    1. Re:Retro Collectors by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      CRTs can also be "remanufactured", which involves replacing the electron gun assembly.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  22. Solution: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Start selling the old TVs for a heavy premium price, now branded as "genuine retro video game displays".

  23. Referb and Resell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Referb and resell those CRTs to the retro/vintage computing/gaming fads that are currently alive!

    I'lll take an NTSC one and a PAL one, please. Color with composite input at the least.
     

    1. Re:Referb and Resell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Absolutely agree, unfortunately there are many that are extremely degraded in their visual quality, some problems could be fixed with the right parts and know-how (which is quickly disappearing due to CRT becoming a thing of the past) and some are just unfixable altogether.

      That and everyone who got into retro gaming because of the "fad" doesn't know what retro consoles really looked like anyway. They think "pixels" are the butt-fugly square stacked boxes that every other indie game is made of nowadays.

  24. Government run program by ka9dgx · · Score: 1

    This is one of the times I think the EPA could do a lot of good by picking a site out west, setting up a furnace and simply grinding and melting these down to then refine out the lead and other metals. They should run it themselves, not contracting it out, and accept all CRTs and e-waste that make it to the loading dock, for free, no questions asked.

    1. Re:Government run program by unixisc · · Score: 1

      We know that the Russians still do nuclear tests. At some point, maybe even we will. Either case, ship these to the site where the test will be done, dump all the stuff into the hole that the test will be carried out, and then do the test. That stuff will become a part of the earth's mass, never to rise again

    2. Re: Government run program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What? Put all of those billions of dollars to good practical use, simultaneously giving people decent jobs in the process? Next you're going to say it should be solar powered. You and I both know this is just as likely as vacuuming unicorn farts.

    3. Re:Government run program by moeinvt · · Score: 2

      "We know that the Russians still do nuclear tests"

      LOL How exactly do you "KNOW" that? Is this the latest conspiracy theory from nutty left-leaning websites intent on pushing the "evil Russians" narrative?

      The Russians did their last tests in the late 1980s. The USA and USSR signed the "Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty" circa 1990. There has been no nuclear testing by either country since then, even underground. A nuclear explosion isn't something you can do secretly. There is a seismographic monitoring network that can pick up the signature from 1000s of km away and narrow down the location to within about 50 km.

      Maybe you're confusing Russia with North Korea?

  25. They should use the Atari E.T. landfill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's only fitting that the couple should be buried together.

  26. That's a good idea!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So tell me, when will you be signing up for your first shift?

    Oh? You mean that you expect OTHER people to do this? Your time is too valuable to be doing this?

    1. Re:That's a good idea!! by GerryHattrick · · Score: 1

      What do they do in prisons now? Pick oakum?

  27. Not true by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    There IS no place that disposes of CRTs for free.

    From time to time there are collection drives that take in some kind of hard to recycle material for free, from time to time there are ones that take TV sets.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Not true by michael_cain · · Score: 2

      My city does this every few years, and they still charge $20 for 28" and down, $35 for over. I got rid of the last one we had -- a color-corrected display my son had used for graphics design -- at one of their events maybe five years ago. It was an awesome sort of sight seeing all the pallets full of old TVs and monitors. If you had one of those 1960s fine-wood consoles they sent you to a special line -- there is apparently a market for those with the old electronics and display replaced with new.

    2. Re:Not true by microcars · · Score: 1

      This service is available for FREE to residents of Northern Cook County in Illinois.
      In addition to having a year-round drop off available, SWANCC has local "bulk electronics day" pickup for several towns.

      That being said, it is FREE to me, as in: I don't pay directly to drop off the CRT.
      But SWANCC is paid by a taxpayer fund to take the stuff and deal with it.
      They take the stuff to COM 2 Recycling who is PAID to take it and break it down and deal with it unlike the company in the parent post.

      --
      I like microcars
    3. Re: Not true by thundercattt · · Score: 1

      In Canada they add an "environment fee" when purchasing any tyoe of tv or monitor. Wonder what it does exactly.

    4. Re: Not true by dryeo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think it just goes into general revenue here in BC, and then they use the money to bribe the voters for votes

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    5. Re: Not true by c-A-d · · Score: 1

      Most likely true. As far as I know, there is no separate bank account for stuff like "environmental fees". I'd be surprised if even half those monies collected go back to recycling. If there was a better place to live in Canada, I'd be there. As it stands, BC is probably the best place to be.

      --
      some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
  28. Re:Next disaster will be smartphones and headphone by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Try to find that level of performance or serviceability in modern power drills.

    If you're willing to pay extra for the big funky chunky pro level stuff from Milwaukee or whoever, they all are designed for the user to replace the brushes and the chuck. If not, then it's still generally possible, but a PITA. With those cheap drills, the gears will wear out anyway.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  29. Go after the manufacturers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Obviously, they should be the ones footing the bill here.

  30. Fucking Faggoty Ass Liberals by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    First you invent LCD TV because you want to have some kind of posh in home theater entertainment system that you can watch while you are sipping away on your bottled water imported from Fiji. Then you get on those 'stupid racist white trash rednecks' that are not recycling. So you invent government sponsored recycling programs. These government programs give taxpayer money to the corporations that you liberals own so you cans safely and environmentally dispose of all the CRT TV's that are no longer posh enough for your like minded liberal bottled water drinking environmentally conscious left leaning individuals.

    I have a solution to all your imaginary problems. Just give your old TV's to a fat redneck. We still use those things. We sit in trailers surrounded by recycled cars / tires, drink water from the hose, and watch TV on good old fashioned cathode ray tubes like God wanted us to.

  31. All it does is improve the odds by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why does you paying them make them more honest?

    I don't, nor did I say so. Please read my post again.

    How much fuel do you burn driving there and back?

    As much as I would taking the monitor to any other place that would have taken them. I try to do electronics in a batch. But honestly you are missing the point entirely by saying anything about fuel use, which is a totally different vector than recycling. I don't care how much fuel I burn for anything (except of course for the cost of it which is real).

    Like most recycling, this seems to be more about "feeling good" rather than actually helping the environment.

    No it's exactly unlike feeling good. I take it to a place I think offers the greatest percentage of the monitor no ending up in a river somewhere which is good for no-one.

    Except for all the resources that went into building the warehouse.

    Irrelevant comment; see my comment re: fuel. Resources do not matter as much as residual pollution does.

    Do you know how much CO2 is generated to make concrete?

    Again, not relevant since CO2 is not pollution and the argument against CO2 is a totally different one than against real pollution. Nature loves and uses CO2 (do you even know how plants live???)

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:All it does is improve the odds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I take it to a place I think offers the greatest percentage of the monitor no ending up in a river somewhere which is good for no-one.

      Stop denying beavers their entertainment.

    2. Re:All it does is improve the odds by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      Why does you paying them make them more honest?

      I don't, nor did I say so. Please read my post again.

      You don't pay? Or you don't think they're more honest?

      If the latter, then why pay?

      I'm a bit confused about what you're trying to say.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    3. Re:All it does is improve the odds by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

      You don't pay? Or you don't think they're more honest?

      I already said what I think in the subject of my reply - all it does is increases the odds. There's never a guarantee.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    4. Re:All it does is improve the odds by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 1

      Well, you CAN get a "guarantee". You can throw it into the river yourself. Then you are guaranteed it is NOT recycled. I know you are looking for the opposite outcome, but at least you will have a non-ambiguous result.

    5. Re:All it does is improve the odds by dryeo · · Score: 1

      Again, not relevant since CO2 is not pollution and the argument against CO2 is a totally different one than against real pollution. Nature loves and uses CO2 (do you even know how plants live???)

      Do you feel the same way about shit, I mean fertilizer? Nature loves and uses shit (do you even know how plants live???)
      Probably was repeated back when the germ theory of disease was advanced and scientists wanted to spend money on wells far away from the cesspools. Surprised people still aren't bitching that the germ theory is not settled science as science always means being skeptical and not spending money on stupid stuff like keeping drinking water separate from healthy plant fertilizer.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    6. Re:All it does is improve the odds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Again, not relevant since CO2 is not pollution and the argument against CO2 is a totally different one than against real pollution. Nature loves and uses CO2 (do you even know how plants live???)

      Anything is pollution if there's too much of it in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  32. Not at all by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    Ahhh, how I love the smell of Virtue Signalling in the morning!

    I hate virtue signaling as well. This is not an example of that; it is merely to point out that if you may to recycle some of the worst items you increase the odds they will be handled correctly, if you cheap out you may end up with the thing you are trying to keep out of the environment actually end up somewhere really bad.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  33. Two Solutions by Gavagai80 · · Score: 1

    Either you tax products made of un-recycled parts up to the point that recycling becomes profitable, or you publicly fund free recycling. We see a lot more of the latter, but I'd prefer the former approach -- a lot of people won't bother to recycle for free but will bother to recycle if businesses are offering them money for it.

    --
    This space intentionally left blank
    1. Re:Two Solutions by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      Although properly disposing of electronic waste is morally the responsibility of the owner, this is one of the rare unfortunate cases where the incentives are wrong and enforcement is impossible.

      Disposal fees/taxes need to be applied before the goods get into consumer hands. Whether this occurs at the retailer or at the manufacturer / importer is unimportant.

      Recycling materials is a side issue. I suppose rebates could be offered to manufacturers that recycle materials, but that's an invitation to cheat and an increase in the size of government. Actually giving people government money to take waste to a licensed recycler seems excessive.

      There have been cases where people on SNAP or other food-assistance programs have bought milk in high-deposit glass bottles, dumped out the milk in the parking lot, and returned the bottles for the cash deposit. This is the sort of waste that happens if government programs aren't well thought out.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  34. Easy solution... by NewtonsLaw · · Score: 5, Funny

    I just put mine in a cardboard box with a random address on it and taped up to look like it's brand new, valuable and awaiting pickup by a courier or freight company -- and then leave it on the street outside my house.

    Within hours -- it's gone.

    Then it's the thief's problem :-)

    1. Re:Easy solution... by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 1

      Check your front porch...they brought it back!

    2. Re:Easy solution... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... they brought it back!

      I've seen televisions down the street land on my back doorstep: Someone in the building was too lazy to take the Tv. back onto the street when he discovered it was broken. So, no.

  35. Waiting to recycle my old CRT... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    I replaced my 12-year-old 26" CRT TV with a 48" 4K HDTV that I got from Costco for $350 this past holiday season. I'm waiting for my apartment complex to have its semi-annual recycle weekend to drop off the CRT. According to the flyer, the recycler accept mainframes. I have yet to seen anyone turn in a mainframe.

  36. Bad Waste Policy by retroworks · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm a professional CRT recycler with experience with the companies in the article. The leaded silicate in CRT glass can actually be valuable as a fluxing agent. It's basically the same as anglesite, the leaded quartz that's mined worldwide. But because of e-waste alarmism (e.g. original article said they were full of "toxic gases", still says the CRTs "explode"), the primary copper and lead smelting industries stopped accepting the material. I personally managed several hundred tons of cullet from one on the companies in the article, but the smelter didn't like the regulators and environmentalists poking around, or the red tape. So they went back to mining lead and silica from the ground. Here's an article I wrote about the "no good deed goes unpunished" aspects of CRT glass recycling. resource-recycling.com/pdfs/Ingenthron0316e.pdf Previously I wrote one - also published in Motherboard - about how Asian refurbishers stopped buying CRTs from America for the same reason (they were being cast as "primitive wire burners). motherboard.vice.com/2011/3/26/e-waste-recycling-exports-are-good

    A good rule of thumb is that the worst forms of recycling are better for the environment than the best forms of hard rock metal mining. But "waste" policy says the opposite, waste is a "liability" for the consuming industry, mined material is subsidized.

    --
    Gently reply
    1. Re:Bad Waste Policy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And that is even before the concept of 'reuse rather than recycle' is fully explored. People these days are also way too myopic about the potential uses for things. Many tech breakthroughs in the old days were by people who weren't so myopic.

    2. Re:Bad Waste Policy by thesupraman · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Pretty much this.

      Nice comfy upper/middle class homestayers mostly, with nothing better to do with their time who think they whole world lives just like they do. they need to feel some self-worth, so make big fusses about things that are 'obvious' to them, although totally incorrect.
      All while they continue their own usually high rate of consumer turnover.
      Therefore we have easily recyclable items being landfilled instead. Sad, really.

      If they got off their arses and actually went to some of these places, they would soon realise that the ONLY items that end up in landfills in India are those
      that have been repaired far beyond usefulness and cannot possible be used any longer. Otherwise items get reUSED, as they still have value there.

      I find it quite funny that when I need additional Xeon CPUs for older servers, I can get them nice and cheap from China/India, because people have sent the
      whole servers over there as trash, where they are available back on the market, as they are often still very useful. The local prices for such CPUs are of course
      still very high..

    3. Re:Bad Waste Policy by amiga3D · · Score: 1

      I'm looking for a working Commodore 1084S monitor. If one comes in let me know, I'll pay shipping plus 20 bucks.

    4. Re:Bad Waste Policy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I still have mine, but you can't have it. I need it for when I play with my old Amiga. (Not kidding, storage cost to me is zero!)

    5. Re:Bad Waste Policy by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      Any CGA monitor will work with an Amiga. I used to have a Philips CM8833-II monitor on mine.

    6. Re:Bad Waste Policy by amiga3D · · Score: 1

      I had a 1084S but it was stolen. The bad thing is the bastards that stole it didn't even know what it was most likely. Probably threw it away when it wouldn't work with their PC. It worked with both my C64 and Amiga. I wanted to use my 64 the other day to look for something on a disk and I have no monitor.

    7. Re:Bad Waste Policy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sell the cullet as a leaded glass frit to glaze manufacturers or hobbyists.

    8. Re:Bad Waste Policy by Reziac · · Score: 1

      You've probably seen this but anyway... apparently adapters exist. First up from a search for "c64 to vga adapter":
      http://www.lemon64.com/forum/v...

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    9. Re:Bad Waste Policy by amiga3D · · Score: 1

      I actually found a TV with composite hookups. It's a 14" model and should be perfect. It has S video also. I thought they were all thrown out.

  37. The EU found a solution to this long time ago by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In the EU, the vendors, merchants, and manufacturers are required by law to take that stuff back and give proof of proper professional recycling. Any store that sells such devices is required to take any device (no matter if it was bought there or not) back for recycling, no questions asked and no fees allowed. Sure, cost of new devices might increase a bit, but not as much given that there is still plenty of competition. It compels manufacturers also to design and build devices in such a way that they are easy and cheap to recycle. Plus, in the EU such devices have a minimum of 2 years manufacturer warranty....unlike the US where stuff is made only as good as necessary to circumvent lemon laws.

    1. Re:The EU found a solution to this long time ago by guruevi · · Score: 2

      This is what actually happens in the EU: You buy the stuff in other member states of the EU that don't worry about giving worthless pieces of paper away or that have a waiver from the EU which allows them to just export it to Asia.

      This issues surrounding 'cheaper' stuff in other EU states is so prevalent that electronics stores in Western areas are often no longer feasible and many over the last few years, even web shops that had been known for decades for being "cheap", shut down.

      Manufacturers don't make anything different for the EU, you really think things are so different there? They get their gear from the same Asian factories as the US does. It's just much more expensive.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    2. Re:The EU found a solution to this long time ago by Solandri · · Score: 1

      The difference is that in the EU, regulations are made by stuffy bureaucrats disconnected from what they are regulating. While this has problems, it at least results in consistent laws.

      In the U.S., laws are made with special interest input (lobbying). Manufacturers don't care about recycling, so recycling laws are almost entirely dictated by environmentalist lobbying. Consequently they tend to be excessively strict. Mining laws OTOH have a vested special interest (mining and refining companies) who will lobby against the environmentalist lobbyists. So those laws tend to be a better balance of environmental and industry interests.

      The net result is that the regulations and red tape for recycling materials are more strict than for mining and refining the same materials. And it thus becomes cheaper to build things out of new materials than with recycled materials, killing the economic incentive to recycle.

      While your EU solution would work, it would probably be opposed by environmentalists. By making manufacturers economically responsible for recycling, you create an incentive for them to get involved in lobbying during the creation of recycling laws. This will result in environmentalists losing sole control over the crafting of recycling laws.

    3. Re:The EU found a solution to this long time ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no fees allowed. Sure, cost of new devices might increase a bit

      The recycling fee is the fee. It's just payed upfront.

    4. Re:The EU found a solution to this long time ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      .... Plus, in the EU such devices have a minimum of 2 years manufacturer warranty....unlike the US where stuff is made only as good as necessary to circumvent lemon laws.

      No one in the United Socialist States of America (USSA) gives a crap about lemon laws.

    5. Re:The EU found a solution to this long time ago by johannesg · · Score: 1

      You should also include the end of that particular story. It goes like this: "and then all that waste is exported to Africa because that is even cheaper than recycling locally, where it just gets dumped in the bush. The end."

    6. Re:The EU found a solution to this long time ago by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      This is complete bollocks. There are no country specific exemptions. Buying a washing machine or PC from Romania isn't going to save you money after shipping. The price will be more or less the same anyway since such goods are low profit margin items and mostly commodities.

      EU products are often different, simply because the EU has different laws on things like the use of lead and minimum warranty periods.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    7. Re:The EU found a solution to this long time ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What really happens is that the Italian mob ships it to Africa for "recycling"

  38. Make America great again by XSportSeeker · · Score: 1

    Pick it all up, and deliver to:
    1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, USA

    1. Re:Make America great again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go up to the whitehouse with a load of electrionic scrap...

      Yeah dude. You get right on that. Let us know how it went.
      We'll expect to hear from you in 5-10 years...

  39. Broadcast/Security/Medical CRT monitors worth $ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you guys come across a warehouse full of old CRTs, separate the 'Professional Video Monitors (PVMs)' such as old Broacast, Security and Medical monitors from the 'consumer' models ones and sell them as 'Retro Gaming' CRTs.

    Seriously, jump on eBay and look at the prices for PVMs. You'll make a mint and you'll help out Retrogamers such as myself by increasing supply.

    For an in-depth look as to why they're highly sought-after: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAi8AVj9GV8

    1. Re:Broadcast/Security/Medical CRT monitors worth $ by Megane · · Score: 1

      Yep, any monitor that does 15KHz (TV sync) analog RGB is quite desirable to retro-gamers, particularly for use with '90s stuff. Note that most VGA monitors did not support TV sync rates, and CGA monitors generally did not support analog RGB. Also, consumer TVs that support analog HD use YPrPb color, not RGB.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  40. Nothing to worry about folks! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Scott Pruitt will direct the EPA to release the 'real' report which will clearly say that dumping these into a landfill actually improves the environment.

    Bam. Done! /s

  41. And it's not going anywhere by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 1

    The lead isn't going to leak out of these things. It's essentially inert.
    The demand just isn't there. Same with scrap metal. My local scrap metal place doesn't pay anything for scrap steel anymore.
    The Iraq war created a lot of demand for scrap steel.
    You'd think that lead recycling would be in demand given that the last US lead smelter closed in 2013 but perhaps manufactured products using lead are all made overseas.

    1. Re:And it's not going anywhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about this: Since the lead is in the glass (mostly bound perpetually, right?) to shield viewers from radiation, send it to Japan to shield the Fukushima site, as its core melts down into the ground, by digging a huge circular containment "wall" into the ground to drop/place the monitors' tubes into. Maybe the circle could be close enough for the core's heat to melt the glass to fuse it together? I suppose the devilish details will center on digging/filling faster than the core meltdown progresses.

      RO

  42. Why throw them when you can build a wall? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you are in need for material to build something like a yuuuuge wall somewhere, why not use CRTs?

  43. Buried treasure by prof_robinson · · Score: 1, Interesting

    In 100 years - hell, maybe 50 years - we'll have swarms of nanobots that will burrow into these landfills and re-mine them back into their original materials. Landfills will cease to be places no one wants; vast legal battles will ensue as municipalities fight with states and the feds over ownership of the contents. Just think of the amount of raw material that will one day be harvested from the Los Angeles landfill! Literally trillions of dollars is buried in our backyards, for future generations to reap. Don't think of it as a landfill, think of it as the fridge out back - we're just saving it for later use. In the end, all of it will be recycled.

    1. Re: Buried treasure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And unfortunatele, the people who be most hated in the future will be the most zealous enviros. Places with high temperature incinerators are vaporising the 'raw ore' of 100 years from now.

  44. Producer responsible for end of life recycling by felixrising · · Score: 4, Informative

    Similar to the End of Life Vehicles Directive in the EU, Similar to the German End-of-Life Vehicles Act of 2002 (extended from a similar law in 1997). Manufacturers are responsible for recycling their vehicle at the vehicles end of life, this means manufacturers design their cars to be more easily recycled and means any overhead costs are built into the cost of the car up-front. There is no good reason that this shouldn't be the case for any larger or common products, why should the cost of recycling be deferred until the product has reached end of life, no consumer will pay more money to have their product recycled *after* it is useless.

    1. Re:Producer responsible for end of life recycling by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      GM is way ahead of them. By the time a GM car reaches EOL, at least half the vehicle's weight has fallen off.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  45. Yes, free means "free to me". by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    I thought it went without saying that "free" meant free to me...

    Even the place I pay for recycling is subsidized by government funds to recycle the stuff. But an extra payment on top of that, just as with any bribe, helps insure better service.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  46. Regulate the Recyling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems that there needs to be regulation of the recycling industry, regular checks and penalties for non-compliance.

    1. Re:Regulate the Recyling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Punishing a company for storing this stuff in a central location is a great way to incentivize people to dump it all over the place.
      The money that would be required to hire an army of government bureaucrats to conduct those "regular checks" would probably exceed the cost of proper disposal of the material.

  47. Building material by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Crush them, use them to build The Wall. Then it's Mexico's problem.

  48. Fund it at the till by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When you buy a new TV, monitor, printer, etc. in Canada you pay a recycling fee. This funds the recycling of old electronics that you are getting rid of once you have unpacked the new shiny toy.
    This is simple - you just need the legislative will to do it. Some things can't be left to the "free market".

  49. Nothing Like a Sony Large Flat Screen by Pauldow · · Score: 2

    There's nothing like the 36" Sony flat screen glass televisions.
    186 lbs. of pure video goodness.
    I saw a few of those smashed at the dump after the bulldozer went through them. That's about the only thing that could cause any damage to those.
    To hold the atmospheric pressure on the flat screen over such a large area, the glass is about an inch thick.
    Those things will be around long after cockroaches are extinct.

    1. Re:Nothing Like a Sony Large Flat Screen by The+Real+Dr+John · · Score: 1

      Funny you mention that, my main TV in my living room is the Sony 36" Trinitron XBR superfine pitch. Had it since 2000, and it still works great. It has always had a bit of an overscan issue (edge of image is off screen), but not too bad. The image is still really bright and clear. Main two reasons I haven't gotten rid of it is that it still works great, and that it weights almost 200 lb and I don't want to move it. And yeah, that glass is really thick.

      --
      A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
  50. They are more likely to do what I want if I pay by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What do you think the recycler does with them?

    I have no way of knowing.

    I do know that if I put a monitor in the trash it's going into the landfill with a 100% probability.

    If I take it to some some cheap or free place I know there's a pretty good chance it will go into a hellhole in some other country to decay and pollute everything.

    If I take it to the place I pay a decent fee there's the highest probability that something as good as possible may be done with it. That probability will never be 100%. But pay paying a reasonable fee I maximize that probability.

    Is your answer truly to just give up and not even try because you cannot know?

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:They are more likely to do what I want if I pay by gumbi+west · · Score: 1

      I might ask if there is a correct thing to do and if anyone actually does that.

    2. Re:They are more likely to do what I want if I pay by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

      The most correct thing to do currently is to take it to a place that attempts to disassemble and extract materials (like copper, gold, etc) from the device. Yes people do that.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    3. Re:They are more likely to do what I want if I pay by RabidReindeer · · Score: 2

      Locally, you can legally put a monitor out by the roadside trash - one monitor per household. The city or its designated collection service (varies depending on where in town you are) hauls it away and presumably it ends up in the city toxic waste recycling facility. I trust that they are going to do something responsible with it, although I've never investigated in detail. We mostly allocate our civic corruption to other endeavours so it's mainly a question of how thorough they are and how responsible the downstream processors are.

      For more than one such device or for less benign waste, they have annual neighbourhood recycling events where you can haul your old paint cans, used motor oil and dead electronics in and they'll load them into trucks that go to that self-same facility, Or, if you'd rather not wait, you can always take it to them yourself.

    4. Re:They are more likely to do what I want if I pay by cdrudge · · Score: 2

      Extracting copper, gold, etc isn't the purpose of recycling them, that's just what makes it possible to do so affordably and hopefully for the recycler, profitable. The purpose of recycling them is to safely recover or at least contain the hazardous materials that would otherwise be buried, released into the air, or leech into water supplies where it becomes an environmental or health hazard.

    5. Re:They are more likely to do what I want if I pay by gumbi+west · · Score: 1

      OK, so exactly what the GP said is the problem?

    6. Re:They are more likely to do what I want if I pay by Khashishi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The answer is to not buy new things because we don't know what to do with them later.

    7. Re:They are more likely to do what I want if I pay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If I put a TV or monitor out in the trash. Some old guy with a beat up truck picks it up before the garbage truck ever shows up. To the point of absurdity. I put out an old CRT Zenith at 6am. It was gone by 7am. Somehow these guys find it desirable to pick up old stuff. I'm glad they do. About the only consideration I have is to disable anything that could cause injury. If they reassemble then the item is their responsibility. Our neighborhood is fairly well off but with small houses. I guess the density/value combo draws these reusers. I suspect having a support infrastructure allows for reuse to be viable where in some areas the density of old stuff and the infrastructure to support it is not so viable. Whatever old guy grabbed the TV, he got some variable caps, tubes, switches,c and transformer if he even disassembled it. It still worked.

    8. Re:They are more likely to do what I want if I pay by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 1

      I always like my county's recycling center. When ever I go there I check to see what they have for deck stain and solvents as nothing beats getting free solvents if you clean parts or do lots of wood finishing. Add in that over the years I have gotten 3 unopened gallons of the deck stain I use and it is great. They will take all of the toxic crap, even coolant poisoned motor oil, and if you can use something you can take it.

      The city cleanup events are also another great place to find quality trash. I told my uncle, who is a garbage man who works a number of these, to keep an eye out for a nice larger cast iron wood stove for when I finally build a cabin on my lake property. He usually sees one about every 3-5 years so I have a pretty good chance of getting one when I need it for free.

      --
      Time to offend someone
    9. Re:They are more likely to do what I want if I pay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From what I know, this would fall under state DEC departments. They usually are quite competent...have not heard of corruption of state troopers often.

  51. Wrong again by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    You can throw it into the river yourself. Then you are guaranteed it is NOT recycled.

    Part of what I do as a hobby is take disgusting trash out of rivers and throw it away in a more appropriate way...

    If I saw a monitor in a river then in fact I would pull out the thing and take it to a recycler myself.

    This is not out of any love of nature as it would not cause that much harm on its won just sitting there slowly decaying, purely aesthetics.

    So even there you cannot be sure of what will happen to the monitor.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re: Wrong again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree. If I ever saw a monitor floating down a river, I'd fish it out and recycle it. By throwing it into another river.

  52. idiots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    not every action requires a profit. leaving recycling to profiteers means corners cut. the environment is a commons, the state should act to care for it, and tax industries that pollute. i recall a guy dumping styrofoam bricks in mixed paper recycling, in BERKELEY, and when i told him they dont go there, he asked "where do they go?" i replied "thats the problem"

    1. Re:idiots by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Where does styrofoam go?

      Into a glass container of gasoline. To make 'kiddy napalm'.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  53. Question of bulk by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    True that landfills are pretty good ways to keep even dangerous trash long-term. But there are two good reasons to recycle some things anyway:

    1) Bulk. Nice not have to have create a new giant clay pit, so try to fill up the existing one as slowly as possible. Especially CRT's are very bulky.

    2) Easier access to rare materials. It's nice to be able to reuse various materials from electronics that are either somewhat rare or expensive to obtain. Of course the process of extraction when not done right creates a whole lot of really nasty pollution so you have to be careful making that choice. That is again why I prefer to pay more for a process that is probably not sending the electronics somewhere that will create even worse pollution than just dropping it into a landfill.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Question of bulk by l810c · · Score: 2

      This is why I am not worried about landfills.

      Eventually(Sometime in the next 20 years), there will be technology to Mine landfills.

      Every scrap of copper, aluminium and rare metals will be extracted from the waste piles. The rest will be turned into energy.

      Someone will come up with technology to make it profitable.

      I am certain of it.

    2. Re:Question of bulk by nbauman · · Score: 1

      A wastewater engineer once told me that it's a lot easier to purify water when you get the pollution at the source, and it's concentrated, than it is after it's dispersed. So it's easier and cheaper to purify sewage in a sewage treatment plant, than it is after it's been diluted in the Hudson River. It would have been easier and cheaper for General Electric to break down PCBs in their factory than it would be now after it's all in the Hudson River. They will probably never completely clean up the PCBs in the Hudson River. It would be too expensive, and it can be safer to leave it lying in the bottom of the river than to stir it up.

      Same with solid waste, like electronic equipment. A few years ago I did a little research on it, and there was a German company that made a big scaled-up blender, with knives that could shred an entire computer or monitor, and I think there are industrial shredders that can shred entire cars. You can separate shredded materials with magnets, pneumatic devices, etc. The problem is cost. Even when they started with clean, separated equipment, it was still expensive, and it could only be profitable in certain circumstances. Copper and aluminum are valuable in commercially pure form, iron less so, and mixed plastics are a problem. Then you're left with shredded fiberboard. Popular Science had a good article about that (but there's lots written). So it can be done, with difficulty, in favorable situations, but the cost/benefit is tricky. When it works it's usually with the help of some kind of government-mandated financial incentive or disincentive. If there's a demand for these shredders, then with the years they should become cheaper and more efficient, but maybe that's my technological optimism talking.

      It may be cheaper to mine aluminum and copper directly than to recover it from junk. That depends on whether mining technology improves faster than recycling technology.

      But once you've mixed the electronic junk with garbage, paper, plastic, furniture, containers, etc., the difficulty of separating it goes up by orders of magnitude. You have to spend a lot of money just to get it back to where it was when it was collected by the recycling center.

      I understand the argument that, "Given enough time, we can solve any problem." It sounds true in principle, but predictions of time are notoriously unreliable. Maybe someone will discover a nanotechnology that will make the copper and aluminum particles in dumps separate and march out like ants into collection bins.

      I congratulate you on your optimism. Let me know in 20 years how it turns out.

    3. Re:Question of bulk by citylivin · · Score: 1

      Pipe dream. 20 years happens in the blink of an eye. We will have the exact same problems and then some in 20 years. "Waiting" for "technology" to solve our problems is not a real solution. You might as well just sit back and wait for the singularity to occur, or jesus to come back...

      If you said 100 years that might be more believable. There are plenty of resources still in the ground to go after first, rather than having the will to make some kind of garbage mining fantasy profitable...

      --
      As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
  54. Re:Next disaster will be smartphones and headphone by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

    even if the brushes haven't been oiled in 20 years.

    All the motor brushes I've ever seen are graphite-based, and graphite is the lubricant. Grease the gears, oil or grease the bearings, fine. Oiling brushes puts an insulator in the electrical path and risks a small fire.

    --
    Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  55. chernobyl by bugs2squash · · Score: 1

    The russians recently built a large concrete containment building and wheeled it into place over the ruins of Chernobyl's reactor, the Japanese must be thinking of doing something similar. I would have thought that crushed leaded glass would be a reasonable concrete ingredient, use it to build a containment shield around every reactor.

    --
    Nullius in verba
  56. waht is it with people by Osgeld · · Score: 1

    listen I dont want poison drinking water, but where do you think this shit comes from, uranus?

    lets not put lead back into the enviroment we mined millions of tons of the shit from?

    omg

  57. It all came out of the ground somewhere... by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure what the problem is, really. Let them sit in warehouses forever. At worst the state won't get tax revenue because no one will want the land/warehouses, but eventually it will become economical and some entrepreneur will go in and dismantle the CRTs for their minerals. It is not like they are going to contaminate the water table with lead or phosphor sitting in a warehouse.

    One thing that people tend to forget is that all these minerals came out of the ground to begin with, and there are plenty of places (like the desert) where you can safely bury trash literally forever. Where trash becomes a problem is where you have a high or mobile water table or lots of rainfall to carry water mobile chemicals into the water table. Burying e-waste in the middle of the desert is like burying your cell phone in the sand of your lizard's terrarium. In 10 years it will be virtually unchanged (assuming you bury the e-waste deep enough).

    --
    If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
  58. Parts by phorm · · Score: 2

    In terms of "melted down for parts" they probably aren't worth much, but how about the actual capacitors etc when removed and re-used. Old CRT's had some badass (and deadly) capacitors. I've been tempted to see about harvesting them for other purposes, except the badass part means that even years after the last use they can zap you but good.

  59. yes, soluable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    First of all, normal glass does have lots of ionic impurities. This lowers the melting temperature to something affordable. Even normal lab glass is this way, though less so and with different impurities. The pure stuff is called "fused silica". Fused silica is really expensive. It's normally used for IR and UV optical stuff, gravity wave detectors, cruciables, and... pretty much nothing else.

    Even ignoring the impurities, glass itself is sort of ionic. In a lab, you can make it hydrophobic or hydrophilic by stripping off some silicon or oxygen atoms with an acid or base. Strong bases will noticably eat away at glass. Water itself is not perfectly covalent; there is a Kw (K sub w) constant for the dissociation of water. It is from this that the pH and pOH of pure water is about 7. Both pH and pOH rise with temperature because Kw rises with temperature. This could be interpreted as water becoming "more base" and "more acid" at the same time as the temperature goes up. Now remember that strong bases noticably eat away at glass. Water isn't sitting there calmly; it is a more dynamic system of both acid and base in balance. Water will thus slowly pick atoms off the surface of the glass.

  60. What exactly is the problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I fail to see the problem here. What does it matter if the CRT monitors and TVs are recycled later rather than now? As long as they are stored properly, there should be no disadvantage. In fact, it could be better if new technologies are developed in the mean time that improve recycling efficiency.

  61. Re:Next disaster will be smartphones and headphone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    That depends entirely on what you buy. Cheap DIY power tools are made to work for a couple of years and then be thrown away. The more expensive stuff from Metabo, Bosch Professional, Hilti, Fein, Festool, etc. will probably last much longer than the average drill made around WW2 and while not as serviceable, it will need far less service, too.

    We tend to overestimate the quality of old products due to our experiences being influenced by survivership bias and the ubiquity of cheaper alternatives that didn't exist when the old things we compare against were made. Of course, product designs tend to be optimised increasingly for low cost, low weight and efficient assembly rather than repeated service. Partly, this is a consequence of a throwaway society, but it is in no small part due to the fact that devices simply need less servicing. New technology, better designs and better manufacturing (tighter tolerances, better materials, etc.) can often make many of the procedures that older tools (or other devices) needed unnecessary within the lifetime of the product. A few of the power tools from the good old days still exist and work today. However, the majority has been thrown away, as they failed anyway or because the advantages of newer alternatives outweighed the disadvantages. Newer things may not always be better, but quite often they really are.

  62. Old-School Solution that Still Works by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One of the first hacks I learned when I got into computers: If its a big, old, heavy, outdated, not sellable monitor, but perfectly functional and it would be a terrible waste to just pitch it in the garbage, there's only one appropriate place left for it: boat anchor. Yes, just give the CRT monitors to old fishermen who need something to anchor their boats in the water while they spend time relaxing at their favorite fishing hole in their retirement years.

  63. Re: Next disaster will be smartphones and headphon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Abbreviated version: the good old stuff that is still around is the best quality good old stuff. There was crap old stuff, too. It's all gone now. Don't make the mistake of thinking all the old stuff was good.

  64. Real Solution by F34nor · · Score: 1

    Place a deposit on all good sold equal to the current cost of proper disposal at net present for the estimated life of the product. The manufacturer has to take the product back and dispose of it at end of life but in return they get an interest free loan for the life of the product. THis shifts the burden to the designers and rewards them for making a easy to dispose of product and rewards them for making it not disposable. The float is how Warren Buffet got rich FYI.

  65. This is a manageable problem by vakuona · · Score: 1

    I imagine that if a typical old monitor is approximately 50cm * 50cm * 50 cm, then you can fit about 1 billion of them into a hole in the ground that is approximately 500m * 500m * 500m.

    This isn't to suggest that waste that is currently unrecycleable is a good thing, but this is a problem that can be managed by having a plan to deal with the issue.

  66. Applying some critical thinking... by GPS+Pilot · · Score: 1

    a warehouse full of dead monitors that will basically just sit forever is still a way better scenario than having them polluting a landfill.

    How did SuperKendall arrive at that conclusion?

    In a deep landfill, a given quantity of CRTs will occupy much less land area than in a one-story warehouse. Furthermore, lead can't leach out of a properly-constructed landfill that is lined with clay. The same can't be said for an unwanted, unmaintained warehouse whose roof will eventually leak.

    A warehouse indefinitely full of CRTs is a real estate asset that can no longer be used for productive purposes, and whose value has become negative (the owner would have to pay someone to take it off their hands, because of the massive expense of disposing of the CRTs). As its assessed value is negative, it will not generate any tax revenue for the local school district or other government entities.

    --
    That that is is that that that that is not is not.
  67. Loaded on a plane? by GPS+Pilot · · Score: 1

    They are loaded on a plane.

    That's very surprising.

    A pallet of CRTs is damn heavy, and shipping heavy items by air is vastly more expensive than shipping them by rail or container ship. (The Chunnel made rail shipment in/out of the UK a viable option.)

    Air-freighting heavy items is only done if you're in a hurry to get them to their destination. Who's in a hurry to get these CRTs into their landfill?

    --
    That that is is that that that that is not is not.
  68. Re:Next disaster will be smartphones and headphone by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

    Repair manuals won't help with mobile phones. They're rarely thrown away because of hardware issues. It's far more likely that they will be thrown away because they are no longer getting software updates. In the case of iOS and some Android devices, a locked bootloader prevents third parties from supporting them, in the case of most Android devices there's no financial incentive for longer-term support so no one does. For example, I have an old HTC Desire that still works fine. It's a bit underpowered, but still runs a lot of modern Android apps. Unfortunately, the last CyanogenMod build for it is based on Android 2.3, which includes an old TLS stack that only supports versions of the protocol and cypher suites that are now not supported by servers because of known vulnerabilities. This means that it can't connect to any HTTPS URL, for example. I can install F-Droid on it, but F-Droid can't fetch the repositories over HTTPS. I can side-load applications, and as long as they don't use TLS (or ship their own TLS implementation), they work fine. It probably has several other known vulnerabilities though.

    At least with CRTs, replacing them with a modern LCD will cut the power consumption by a huge amount (20-50W, vs 100+W), so there's a good reason for using the newer technology. A 7-year-old Android phone is about as capable as a low-end budget phone now, yet became effectively unusable after about 4 years of life.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News