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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.
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
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.
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.
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..
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.