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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.
One EPA report found 23,000 tons of lead-containing CRT glass abandoned in four different states just in 2013.
What do you think the recycler does with them?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
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
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.
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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; }
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.
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...
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.
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.
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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