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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.
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."
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?
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
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
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.
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 :-)
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
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
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.
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.
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