What happens to old CRT monitors?

[Mike Tomlinson]

What happens to old CRT monitors when the PC disposal man turns up in
his white van to take them away? The company I work for has just got
rid of a huge quantity of monitors.

Surely they do get recycled somehow or is it landfill? The tube has all
sorts of toxic nasties in it.

 

[Mike Tomlinson]

What's to recycle?

Plastic case? I also seem to remember that the tube electron guns
contain a small amount of precious metal and the "recyclers" send them
out to the third world where the tube necks are broken and the guns
extracted, then the rest is abandoned.

 

[Sylvia Else]

Plastic case? I also seem to remember that the tube electron guns
contain a small amount of precious metal and the "recyclers" send them
out to the third world where the tube necks are broken and the guns
extracted, then the rest is abandoned.

Sounds like more trouble than it's worth, literally.

Sylvia.

 

[mm]

What's to recycle?

Chris

What I'd like to konw about is this story of lead and it poisoning the
earth. I thought 99% of the lead waa mixed with the glass in the
front of the CRT and the only part that could leach out is a small
part along the surface. So what's the danger?

 

[Les Matthew]

What happens to old CRT monitors when the PC disposal man turns up in
his white van to take them away? The company I work for has just got
rid of a huge quantity of monitors.

Surely they do get recycled somehow or is it landfill? The tube has all
sorts of toxic nasties in it.

Deflection coils around the neck of the tube have copper wire. Mains
transformer, flyback transformer also full of copper wire.

les.

 

[Chronos]

What's to recycle?

The yoke mainly, copper prices being what they are. Apart from that,
bugger all.

 

[baron]

Mike Tomlinson Inscribed thus:

What happens to old CRT monitors when the PC disposal man turns up in
his white van to take them away? The company I work for has just got
rid of a huge quantity of monitors.

Surely they do get recycled somehow or is it landfill? The tube has
all sorts of toxic nasties in it.

If they are anything like our disposal people they get crushed and the
glass gets recycled. All the metal is recovered and recycled too.

 

[baron]

mm Inscribed thus:

What I'd like to konw about is this story of lead and it poisoning the
earth. I thought 99% of the lead waa mixed with the glass in the
front of the CRT and the only part that could leach out is a small
part along the surface. So what's the danger?

The crushed glass (cullet) gets mixed with fresh silica and melted down
to produce "Milk Bottles", jars and containers among other things.

 

[baron]

Daniel James Inscribed thus:

Quite a lot of glass, for one thing.

A former colleague told me of an interesting experience he'd had in a
former life (job) getting rid of a decommissioned mainframe. He had
all sorts of quotes from people wanting to charge him for disposing of
the kit, and a local scrap dealer offering to /pay/ him for it. It
turned out that mainframes of that age had enough gold in their
contacts for it to be worth recovering it (by dissolving it in
cyanide, I gather -- don't stand downwind!). The cabinets would have
been good for scrap metal, the rest was probably landfill.

Cheers,
Daniel.

I used to know a guy that went around buying up the old Strowger
telephone exchanges, just for the precious metal, platinum, used for
the contacts and gold plating. He extracted the contacts and other
stuff he wanted then sold the remainder for scrap metal. He made a lot
of money doing that.

 

[D Yuniskis]

Hi Sylvia,

Sounds like more trouble than it's worth, literally.

Depends on the particular economies involved.

Often, there is little/no cost of *acquiring* the "materials";
folks "give them" to disposal companies/sites. A local
non-profit (here) probably processes a few thousand a year?
(They *charge* to dispose of TV's, though, as TV's are
often harder to recycle -- wooden enclosures, etc.)

Most are shipped to places like Mexico where they are
disassembled and recycled at a lower level. E.g., yokes
are almost pure copper, glass can be ground up and mixed
in asphalt for new roadways, etc.

I think even "empty containers" going back to the far east
are often filled with "junk" like this (since the container
has to get back there anyway!)

I think the basic unspoken assumption is "better discarded
on THEIR soil than on OURS" :-/

 

[Baron]

Robert Macy Inscribed thus:

"..they all get crushed.." and we all know how painful that can be.

Yes very painful...

Actually a guy who used to work at the crushing mill lives round the
corner from me. He got trapped by one of the three crusher balls and
lost both his legs.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

You'd think that, given the high prices of gold and copper, it would be
profitable to recycle monitors.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

You'd think that, given the high prices of gold and copper,

Labor cost is probably the reason.

Well, we've seen a lot of electronic equipment shipped off to third-world
countries for recycling.

 

[Baron]

Robert Macy Inscribed thus:

Horrible. My apologies.

No apology needed. The guy freely admits that it was his own fault for
not making sure the machine was isolated and made safe before working
on it.

Just to give you an idea of the guys nature, he has a pair of prosthetic
legs that are hollow at the bottom, he hides his girlfriend's weed in
them. His standing joke is "I've weed in my legs" !

He's a really nice guy.

 

[Mike Tomlinson]

[loadsa links]

Thanks Jeff. The CRT Angel (self-contained CRT recycling unit) was
especially interesting.

This is how to deal with a balky PC:

 

[Jeffrey D Angus]

California spent a bundle of the smoking tax money on
commercials instead of the health care they promised the
money would be spent on. One of the funnier ones asked
the tobacco companies how they covered up evidence of
wrong doing. "You know, those office shredders just aren't
up to the task of shredding thousands of documents."

Then proceeded to throw laptops, PC desk tops and finally
a complete 4-drawer filing cabinet through truck mounted
wood chipper.

Was quite the fun thing to watch even if it was fake. ;-)

Jeff

 

[Peter Hill]

What happens to old CRT monitors when the PC disposal man turns up in
his white van to take them away? The company I work for has just got
rid of a huge quantity of monitors.

Surely they do get recycled somehow or is it landfill? The tube has all
sorts of toxic nasties in it.

Domestic CRTs get put in wheelie bin and go to landfill.

Same as all those ECO friendly bulbs that contain mercury.

OK a few do get taken to the tip. CRTs/electronics go in a container.
They have a sealed "coffin" with a tube sized airlock for tubes. The
last time I took some they seemed quite surprised, I think most people
just break them to fit the wheelie bin. I'm about to see they how get
on with 3 ECO bulbs. I've got 2 5ft tubes, a car battery, 10L engine
oil, 3 oil filters, 2 14" CRTs, 1L brake fluid to go too, bet I have
to sign for every item in triplicate due to toxic nature of them.

Industry has larger batch volume, hard to hide, more likely to be
traced to source and the penalties make it worth doing the right thing
with them.

 

[Peter Hill]

the Zilog Development system has over $320 of gold in it.

What?? Tell me more, I've not found it.

MCZ-1/05, MCZ-1/20?

 

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

Domestic CRTs get put in wheelie bin and go to landfill.

Same as all those ECO friendly bulbs that contain mercury.

That's just ignorant fools doing it wrong. Big surprise.

Our wheelie bins have stickers on with a whole bunch of "Don't put
these things in here - put them in the recycle bin or take them down
your local recycler".

OK a few do get taken to the tip. CRTs/electronics go in a container.
They have a sealed "coffin" with a tube sized airlock for tubes. The
last time I took some they seemed quite surprised, I think most people
just break them to fit the wheelie bin. I'm about to see they how get
on with 3 ECO bulbs. I've got 2 5ft tubes, a car battery, 10L engine
oil, 3 oil filters, 2 14" CRTs, 1L brake fluid to go too, bet I have
to sign for every item in triplicate due to toxic nature of them.

Our local tip has a half-container that's always fairly full of TVs
and monitors, a half-container that's always fairly full of random
electronics (mostly PCs and stereos), and a sort of enclosed skip
affair for fluoro lamp tubes large and small. Plus a lovely greasy
used engine oil thing.

It doesn't have anywhere specific for oil filters or brake fluid, as
far as I know, but I've never had to recycle those.

Cheers - Jaimie

 

[Rob Morley]

Our local tip has a half-container that's always fairly full of TVs
and monitors, a half-container that's always fairly full of random
electronics (mostly PCs and stereos), and a sort of enclosed skip
affair for fluoro lamp tubes large and small. Plus a lovely greasy
used engine oil thing.

Ours too, except it's a "recycling centre", not a tip.