governments failure to be proactive on the CRT disposal issue

Well once we grant amnesty to our own slaves, we wont need to ship the stuff to china... there fore making the recovery costs sustainable for long term . My other idea is to use natural geologic features as a landfill base and use the crushed crt s as a lead liner for a nuke waste storage site. Just stirring the pot here....

On tje phesants, i feel your pain. Natural local game species managment has never been a priority. The damming of tje Columbia has ruined the greatest fishery in the lower 48, it will never recover with western civilization pressures for resources managing the water levels for agriculture and power generation qith barely a afterthought given to game.

since you bring up the issue of properly recycling crts... you're right. 100% right. Politicians and bureaucrats would rather sit there and tax/levy/fine the crap out of us instead of trying to come together and solve the issue at hand. That issue right now is obviously the overwhelmingly high amount of crt tubes and how to properly recycle them. This nation as a whole is never going to 'get it' when it comes to properly recycle anything. There needs to be a national recycling program that's made up of scrappers and companies willing to sit down and fix these issues. It needs to be fee free but at the same time stringent so as not to let everyone in who says their a scrapper(it's how corporate corruption starts), otherwise we're going to end up like that village in China with EWaste everywhere.

-Matt

Thanks for the comments guys! I was specially thinking of you guys that do this full time or as a major part of your income. It seems that the small business guy tries to do it the right way but the cards are stacked against them. Everybody buys big screen electronics so put a very small extra tax on them and dedicate that towards getting rid of the old stuff right. To me, it seems like a straight forward type of solution although I'm sure there would be some technical details to be worked out. Maybe the problem isn't "sexy" enough to make tv news (no irony there, huh!) but the various bureaucrats notice because getting paperwork "i"s dotted and "t"s crossed is their life. Just crazy...

I would say .... be proactive !

You plant a seed and if it lands in fertile soil it will grow .... and grow .... AND GROW !

It's like that with government programs of any kind. They start out small and harmless enough but over time they take on a life of their own. Once they're firmly rooted they're pretty hard to kill.

What you eventually end up with is a form of government called a bureaucracy. It's a form of government in which the department heads of all the different bureaus make most of the important decisions and set public policy. If the leadership is excellent this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

There's one problem .... our form of government is a representative democracy. If we want a bureaucracy we should vote on it as a people and make the appropriate changes to our constitution before handing the power to run things over to them. ( I don't see that happening. )

Long story short .... don't plant that seed ! Assigning responsibility to the government isn't the answer to all problems.

We might consider developing some industry standards here. If we govern our behavior accordingly there might never be any need for government intervention.

it'd be nice if that worked in a perfect world, but our government's known for sticking its nose where it doesn't belong

Quite true ... it isn't a perfect world and we already have a mess on our hands that needs to be cleaned up. The government is already involved. There are a lot of state programs underway across the U.S. The potential for something good to come from it is there if they manage it wisely.

The point i'm trying to get across is : Let's take a step back and re-think things a bit. Whenever somebody says that there's a problem the first answer that often comes to mind is that we need a new law or a new department within government to deal with it.

Instead of doing that ... why don't we ask what WE can do to deal with it ?

It seems irresponsible and selfish for someone to just scrap what they can from a TV and leave a trail of toxic waste in their wake.

Perhaps we could make another choice ? That way the government would have no cause to be getting up in our stuff ?

I agree 100%. I believe those set up as a recycling center/refinery should have the necessary tools to be able to dismantle this stuff properly and safely. I was reading that some outfit in Arizona was offloaded a bunch of tubes to another outfit somewhere in the states to be recycled. Exported is more like it >.<

What to do with all that heavy leaded glass? One word comes to mind.
Fukushima.....

Proactive? At school when I was 8 we were doing a anti smoking class, making posters etc.
They asked "whats the best was to stop people smoking?"

I suggested "That we raise the minimum smoking age from 18 to 19 at the end of the year and raise it by one year every year afterwards."
If that had happened, the youngest smoker now would be aged 55......

In the immortal words of George Carlin: Gotta get em' while they're young !

Our early influences have a profound effect on how we look at things. That's especially so in school where we're socialized and conditioned to one day become good citizens in the society we're a part of.

It was a little different here in the states. Every day, for at least ten years, we started off with the pledge of allegiance to the flag. It went as follows:

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Our country was founded on some pretty radical ideas for their time. It was about the notions of freedom,liberty, and a profound regard for the inherent human right of self determination.

Part and parcel with having the freedom to make your own choices comes the responsibility for those choices.

If you leave a toxic mess of TV parts in your wake it's your responsibility to clean them up.

Originally Posted by Scrappah

We might consider developing some industry standards here. If we govern our behavior accordingly there might never be any need for government intervention.

Well said. Action is needed buy the people the issue (crt's) concerns.

Originally Posted by Scrappah

In the immortal words of George Carlin: Gotta get em' while they're young !

Our early influences have a profound effect on how we look at things. That's especially so in school where we're socialized and conditioned to one day become good citizens in the society we're a part of.

It was a little different here in the states. Every day, for at least ten years, we started off with the pledge of allegiance to the flag. It went as follows:

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Our country was founded on some pretty radical ideas for their time. It was about the notions of freedom,liberty, and a profound regard for the inherent human right of self determination.

Part and parcel with having the freedom to make your own choices comes the responsibility for those choices.

If you leave a toxic mess of TV parts in your wake it's your responsibility to clean them up.

Teaching them young is a start. But continued awareness is also important. Not mention a great selling point. When people know you do your best to properly dispose of or recycle they want to do business with you. I find that a lot of people are just total interested in what I do as a scrapper.

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.

I don't see why the glass in CRT's can't be recycled into decorative glass items or used as an aggregate in cement. It would also seem that it could be used as an insulator for electrical equipment.

Guys .... I've got a few simple suggestions.

1: As much as i would prefer to reduce the size & scope of government there are a couple of things that seem to work here in Maine.

We do have state mandated drop off points for electronics. It seems to work however i have no idea where the tv's are going.

We've had an automotive battery recycling program in place for as long as i can remember and that seems to work well. When you buy a new battery you pay a ten dollar fee. When any scrapper turns in an old battery he gets a ten dollar bounty.

If they had a ten dollar bounty on crt's it would be open season.

2: I really feel that we're making proper CRT disposal far more difficult than it needs to be.

There are plenty of industrial uses for leaded glass. The main reason they use it is to reduce radiation hazard. (Lead leaching out of the glass doesn't seem to be a problem at this point.)

This is simple as pie. Just use the ground up CRT glass as an aggregate for making concrete. Use that kind of concrete as radiation shielding at nuclear waste sites. This would effectively re-purpose the leaded glass into a useful product with very little energy expenditure.

The heck with melting it down into other products. That's expensive and wasteful of our energy resources.

* disclaimer * This looks like a workable idea but it should be thoroughly lab tested before putting it into practice.

Originally Posted by t00nces2

I don't see why the glass in CRT's can't be recycled into decorative glass items or used as an aggregate in cement. It would also seem that it could be used as an insulator for electrical equipment.

Great minds think alike !

( We posted at about the same time.)

Originally Posted by t00nces2

I don't see why the glass in CRT's can't be recycled into decorative glass items or used as an aggregate in cement. It would also seem that it could be used as an insulator for electrical equipment.

I think it's more about the phosphorus dust inside the tube rather then the lead because lead in small amounts isn't that harmful(if it were, crt's wouldnt've been built in the first place). I read somewhere that some places add a mineralized liquid to the tube to bring all that dust to a solid at the center so that it can be treated as it is. The lead on the other hand I don't get how they'd get out but then again, I've seen too many youtube videos of folks just smashing the glass into pieces and recycle the pieces as glass(not saying I'd do that, just what I found).