America's Television Graveyards

whitefox

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https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/americas-television-graveyards

Article is too long to copy here.

Startups like Closed Loop Refining and Recycling aimed to capitalize on these problems, charging recycling centers every time they took in one of the 705 million CRTs sold in America after 1980, and warehousing them against the day they figured out how to safely dismantle them. After playing a years-long shell game with environmental regulators -- engaging in shenanigans like moving tubes from one warehouse to another to evade rules requiring waste to be disposed of within a year -- the company went bust, leaving warehouses full of super-toxic, lead-leaching e-waste that the taxpayers will have to deal with.

Closed Loop used off-the-books facilities to house the sets, leaving regulators and bankruptcy trustees with the challenge of simply knowing where the future problems will be.

It's not alone, either: other recyclers (or "recyclers") like Creative Recycling went through the same cycle, abandoning tons of toxic waste when they ran out of money.

It appears that the recyclers began in good faith, but quickly realized that they had been too optimistic in their projections of the costs of disassembling and disposing of old TVs.

1487200308572-Closed-Loop-USE-THIS.jpeg
 
And to think, when they are disposing of all those tubes, some could've been usable as donor tubes.
 
Good article. Now, how can we get that Videocon company in India to make us new CRT's for our hobby?
 
Just think. Start a company that will go in and sorts all of the tubes/televisions by type, than start selling replacement parts to those who need it. In the process, you could probably recycle a majority of the non-hazardous parts, like plastics, boards and wiring. The remaining tubes could be warehoused for the time being in a smaller space, and some could be purchased for re-use with the proceeds to go to helping recycling the rest.
 
Tubes

I contacted a local recycler in Minneapolis a few years ago and tried to get something started. It seems like they are not prepared for dismantling used TVs. It's strange...

Assuming you are planing on recycling for a company, city or county disposal, it would be advantageous to be able to be able to sell the tubes and reduce your overhead costs.

I gave them examples of what tubes would be a good candidate and chatted a few times.

Summary - I tried to look into this and it never went anywhere.
 
My local ewaste lets me take what I want with the condition that the bad tube is reinstalled and returned, because he gets paid 37 cents per pound for them.

he also said that most of them are shipped to Mexico and our ground up and turned into floor tile and sold back to us, using less than ideal practices to process them.
 
So who wants to make a monitor run to Arizona!

We gotta find that warehouse!

:D
 
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