Bankruptcy of CRT Refiner

I recall one of our members bringing up the feds removing them (CRT's) from the hazardous waste list.(google search it) No doubt they(CRT's)remain on many if not most of the states' hazardous waste list. It seems that the lead which is mixed with the glass ,not on the surface, does not easily leach out. I would think that the glass has little re-use purpose so it comes down to solid waste.



My theory is that with this rather recent change by the feds charging for the recycling of CRT's may be soon over with.

Recycling of the new tv's is well under way and falls into the same steams as computers. Mike

Originally Posted by miked

Recycling of the new tv's is well under way and falls into the same steams as computers. Mike

Mike D,

I respectfully disagree. here is a quote taken from electronicstakeback.com

"The LCD TV is perhaps the “poster child” for how electronics are not designed with recycling in mind, because of both material selection and physical design.

Most LCD TVs use mercury lamps to light the screen. An LCD TV will have typically 20 long, thin, fragile mercury lamps running from side to side, throughout the panel. Mercury is very toxic at very small amounts. So a responsible recycler would want to remove these mercury lamps before putting the rest of the device in a shredder or doing other processing that might lead to mercury exposure of recycling workers.

But to get at the mercury lamps inside a flat panel TV, you must disassemble the entire TV first, a process that takes a long time – much longer than it would take you to disassemble a CRT TV. So as a result, some recyclers simply toss the whole thing in the shredder, most certainly exposing their workers to mercury.

The “glass” in the LCD screen is made up of a layer of many kinds of liquid crystals. The liquid crystals are one of the most expensive materials in the TV. Can the LCD glass get recycled, to recover the liquid crystals? No, the “recommended” method of disposal of liquid crystals is incineration."

This is certainly NOT how we handle computers here. That being said we can agree to disagree. We've spoken on the phone a few times and I like ya a lot!

I do feel you on this "disagreement" and really don't consider us to be in a real disagreement at all. To take it from where you are the feds have strongly encouraged us to purchase the "improved" light bulbs for our houses that are manufactured in China and each contain mercury as well. I think we may be able to overcome this little fed induced bit of mercury endangerment with the coming of led light bulbs. I am currently changing over to the led type myself. I have not looked into what material they may contain but I know what is in the other ones.

To take this a little further each of the fluorescent lights in every public building for the past 50+ years has some mercury in them.

More than one wrong does not make a right but we are not being given any good solutions on much of this. Also in my opinion much of the scientific community follows the dollar and finds that agreeing with the political types ensures them grant money. Keep at it folks I look forward to the in the trenches fixes for recycling. Mike