Things are starting to happen (a little) from the manufacturers of modern electronics and other things. They call it "life cycle design" or "sustainability" or other buzzwords. They think a little about what might happen at the end of life of the widget they are working on, and how different choices of design affects the recyclability (is this a word?) of the widget. Not sure how successful this has been, other than reducing the amount of valuable stuff in the design. (like gold on CPU's!)
Obviously, TV tubes were obsolete even before this idea was thought of.
Its too bad that there wasn't a way that someone could take TV tubes, separate the leaded glass from the regular glass (I understand that some of the tube is made from non-leaded glass, but could be wrong) and THEN simply reduce the volume the leaded glass took up by crushing and/or melting it.
You would end up with either gaylords of crushed leaded glass or leaded glass blocks. And a little metal from the guts of the tube to help pay for it. I'm guessing the crushed glass would be a little more toxic because of the larger surface area of the glass, presenting more surface for lead to leach from. But melting the glass might give off toxic fumes...
But one would end up with a compact raw material that could either be readily stored for clean up in the future or re-used for other things that required leaded glass.
Its not a complete solution but it gets the tube to a point that it does not take up large volumes of space.
Unfortunately, there is no way to fund this kind of work without governments to help. We've come full circle with the recycle tax idea on stuff that is hard to recycle. Just like tires.
Until then, its fair game for a big company to set up shop who can afford the technology to separate the lead from the glass, and then stick it to every schmuck who wants to responsibly recycle their glass. Until the collective "we" can encourage two or three competitors to set up their own plants to drive the price of leaded glass down or, better yet, PAY a little for it.
Jon.
Whats that? Oh, sorry....END OF RANT.
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