Some Recyclers Give Up On Recycling Old Monitors And TVs (vice.com) 274
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.
That's why I pay to recycle monitors (Score:3)
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.
Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors (Score:5, Informative)
What do you think the recycler does with them?
Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors (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".
Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors (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.
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Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors (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.
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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.
Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors (Score:4, Insightful)
As TFA https://motherboard.vice.com/e... [vice.com] 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... [gizmodo.com] 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.
Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors (Score:5, Informative)
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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:
They are more likely to do what I want if I pay (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?
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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
Re:They are more likely to do what I want if I pay (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer is to not buy new things because we don't know what to do with them later.
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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.
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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.
Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors (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?
All it does is improve the odds (Score:4, 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???)
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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.
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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.
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Wrong again (Score:2)
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.
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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.
Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors (Score:4, Insightful)
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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.
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"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
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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.
Not true (Score:2)
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.
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Re: Not true (Score:2)
Re: Not true (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it just goes into general revenue here in BC, and then they use the money to bribe the voters for votes
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This service [swancc.org] 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 [com2recycling.com] who is PAID to take it and break it down and deal with it unlike the company in the parent post.
Yes, free means "free to me". (Score:2)
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.
Re:That's why I pay to recycle monitors (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.
Question of bulk (Score:2)
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 creat
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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.
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to a place where I pay a somewhat hefty fee to recycle (I think around $20-$40).
Bubba's gravel pit and rifle range.
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I have mine on my floor. It's a bit too heavy to carry by myself safely. So I've been putting it off.
Not at all (Score:2)
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.
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Chuck it in the Grand Canyon (Score:5, Funny)
Chuck it all in the Grand Canyon. Plenty of room in there, believe me folks, it's yuuuuge.
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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.
send em to Hawaii (Score:2, Interesting)
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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
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Given the sulphuric nature of lava as well as halogens, contribution to acid raid is the least of your problems.
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OK, I was wrong about acid rain, but the vaporizing of mercury is still a problem--the mercury wouldn't be sequestered.
Re: send em to Hawaii (Score:3)
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 ?
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Bury it and wait, time will take care of it.
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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 [laboratoryequipment.com]
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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.
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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.
Boo hoo, just stop rainwater from leaching lead (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, 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 y
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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",
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Re:Boo hoo, just stop rainwater from leaching lead (Score:5, 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.
locally, about the same thing happened (Score:2)
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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?
Using old crap as a teaching aid (Score:3)
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.
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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.
Still better they're gathered in one place (Score:2)
Yucca Mountain (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, if they're not filling it with radioactive waste, why not store other junk in the caves at Yucca Mountain?
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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.
Just get volunteer help (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.
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Re:Just get volunteer help (Score:4, 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.
Re:Just get volunteer help (Score:5, 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.
Re:Just get volunteer help (Score:4, 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.
Retro Collectors (Score:2)
Government run program (Score:2)
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.
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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
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"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 monit
Two Solutions (Score:2)
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.
Easy solution... (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 :-)
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Waiting to recycle my old CRT... (Score:2)
Bad Waste Policy (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.
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I'm looking for a working Commodore 1084S monitor. If one comes in let me know, I'll pay shipping plus 20 bucks.
Re:Bad Waste Policy (Score:5, 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..
The EU found a solution to this long time ago (Score:5, Interesting)
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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 a
Make America great again (Score:2)
Pick it all up, and deliver to:
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, USA
And it's not going anywhere (Score:2)
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.
Producer responsible for end of life recycling (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Isn't glass pretty inert..? (Score:5, 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... [nih.gov]
Nothing Like a Sony Large Flat Screen (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.
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Re:Isn't glass pretty inert..? (Score:5, Informative)
Glass is water-soluble. That's why supply houses sell distilled water in plastic jugs. http://www.chemworld.com/ChemW... [chemworld.com]
That's why the F.D.A. recommends against using lead glass containers for long-term storage. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/02... [nytimes.com]
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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
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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.
Re:Goodwill & Dell Computer (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.
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I wonder if a future civilization will find the landfills and consider them treasures?
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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.
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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?
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