Thanks everyone. The guy who says he'll take the CRT tvs will also thaek everything else electronic, AC or battery, and I'm going to use what I find in this thread and decide how much other stuff to take to him and how much to dispose of elsewhere.
I've arranged to borrow a pickup to deliver to him, and there's a hamfest the Sunday before that where I can just give some of the lighter stuff to any vendor who might want to sell it and keep what little he gets money.
(One year I had my own "booth" (tarp) for two days at the Gaithersburg hamfest, and I did pretty well. Over night, I just left evefrything there, with prices marked and a couple things were sold, with the money put under the tarp. Nothing expensive.
I guess IIUC UPS would wrap things for shipping if I sold on ebay, but I'm not ready for that yet.
I guess it can depend on if there *is* a market for any of it for some reason. Like, I was given a commercial Hard Drive storage unit that was full of low capacity half height 3.5" SCSI HDDs that turned out to be of use to people running / upgrading a game console of some sort and they all sold on eBay for a reasonable sum.
We have a recycler who pays for old PCB's and even cables and connectors as they recover any precious metals (primarily gold) and even the lead from the solder. Old CPU's and RAM are good as they often have gold plated pins.
So if I have something that is both dead and unlikely to be of any use to anyone else (even if working) I generally take it to bits, recover anything that might be of use to me (screws, switches, fuse holders, IEC sockets, big caps etc) before recycling what's left.
Might be worth a quick check online (eBay etc) *before* you strip something down as you can often be surprised how valuable some old stuff can be. I stripped a couple of brand new / old stock 486 mobos, only to see on eBay they were going for quite a bit (possibly old engineering equipment that still used such). ;-(
Here in Norway, everything is regulated to the bone. E-waste is no exception.
Vendors who sell electronics are required by law to accept e-waste for free. It does not matter where it was bought or how old it is.
Then, there is, of course, a tax: Vendors who collect less then what they sell, measured by weight, must pay a tax for the amount of weight they are "short". This means that the e-waste has actual value to the vendors, so they lock their e-waste into steel containers to keep it from getting stolen.
Fixers and tinkerers who just need a thermostat or a capacitor or whatever, have no choice but to buy a brand new one. Probably from China.
I don't know where Rod is, but in my state (U.S.), recyclers are required b y law to accept CRT TVs if they want to accept any other electronic waste.
Here's an interesting tidbit: I was bringing four or five flat TVs to a rec ycler a week to clear out the stored crap, and after a few weeks, they told us they wouldn't accept any more from us because we were a business. I'm sure the fact that any good boards were long removed from these TVs had not hing to do with their decision. I don't know if they can deny us because w e're a business or not, but it's clear that a good portion of their profits from recycling TVs is running an ebay TV parts store.
And do they actually recycle it? Take it apart and save resusable minerals?
Wow.
But what happens to it? If they just put in a landfill, that would be no better than here.
Baltimore County no longer has what was called Bulk Collection, so if you have something big to get rid of you have to have your own truck or hire someone and they charge a minimum of over $100. That might be worth it if you have a lot of things, but when there was free collection, once a month, I think it was, you could just put out one thing. You didn't have to save up your bulk trask for months until you have $100 worth. So unlike other money-saving measures by the government, this is a tremendous inconvenience.
There are 3 places in Baltimore County that accept recycling and trash and it says they recycle electronics except TVs and monitors, which they do take as trash. Which makes it all the more surprising that this place I mentioned says it recycles them. (And not only that, it's the only place within 50 miles that does so and it's only 3 miles from here. It doesn't look big enough on satellite view but I talked to the guy on the phone and he seemed sane and business-like. I'll have more details in a couple weeks after I've been there.)
**Some things are only accepted at one of the three. I think I had dirty kerosene that at the time only one place would take. They took car batteries and other things, and I'm sure thy recycled them.
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This led to another one I coudln't find before, erevival.com that says "Unlike other electronics and computer recycling companies, eRevival Computer and Electronics Recycling offers the highest value for retired/obsolete computers, monitors, hardware components, networking equipment, media tapes, phone, fax and copier systems. eRevival Electronics and Computer Recycling also have a competitive advantage when it may become necessary to dispose of your equipment when it exceeds the marketable value."
When I was a schoolboy in the UK back in the 1950s, local kids would carry CRTs over a girder bridge across a town river in order to drop them some distance to the water where they would implode.
I averted my eyes as I walked past (to school) in case one got cracked on the girders while still being held by the child...
The official story is yes. There are companies that are approved for collecting (from the vendors) and recycling. Here's how one of them presents itself:
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(Don't worry about not understanding the Norwegian text. It is just as pretentious as the video and music.)
Over the years, there have been a few incidents where nosy journalists have found hundreds of tons of Norwegian e-waste in remote African villages. Let's hope that's no longer happening.
On Tue, 25 May 2021 04:41:42 +0100, micky wrote= :
15-04-/153433002888
in
A guy rang my doorbell a few weeks ago having spotted a few car batterie= s (well 1 car battery and 4 sealed ones from a UPS) lying at the side of= my garage (17m from the pavement) and asked if I wanted rid of them. I= think you can get a fiver each in bulk, I know someone pays =A32 each t= o a local garage to take dead ones from there, and presumably he makes a= profit.
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Has to be a fair price to bother with that. Ebay take 10%, then you pay= shipping. If it's not going to make a profit, put it on freecycle, the= re will be someone who wants to play with old stuff, and you don't have = to bother packing it, they come and collect it.
I have put stuff on "curb-alert" with Craig's List with 100% success - defi ned as *stuff gone within five (5) days*. This includes everything from old toilets & sinks to questionable electronics. Anything that has even a smid gen of residual appeal (to me) goes to Kutztown for the Buy-it-Now pile. Th e most amazing(ly awful) stuff gets a new home from that source.
But, I agree that for the most part, many things find their way to landfill due to very minor failures combined, the rarity of good repair options, an d the cheapness of replacements.
I would not litter but I have broken open a couple CRT tvs, one to see the shadow screen (is that what it's called?) that color tvs had with one hole for every 3 dots. The other was a 6 or 8" tv and I broke away enough of the neck and adjoining glass to plant a plant in it. The thing grew really well, and I wonder if the phosphorus was responsible.
No drainage at the screen end, so I had to be carfeful not to overwater.
Good to see there is some sort of plan though. Not everone has such (judging by the things that are perfectly ok after *just* being cleaned out or a fuse replaced).
;-)
I like the idea of the 'repair workshops' where people bring stuff along and volunteers try to fix it for the cost of any parts and a charity donation or similar?
What get's me is also when the replacement cost is pretty high many just seem to chuck stuff away for the simplest of things (not to them obviously), or worse (unless someone else can get to it and make use of it etc), when there is nothing wrong with it but just last years model or not a colour that matches their new decor. ;-(
I picked up a small Dyson cylinder cleaner that had been bought by someone, apparently it had gone wrong and a new motor fitted, then had gone wrong again and so given away on Freegle with 'needs repairing, possibly a new motor'). I collected it, plugged it in at home, wiggled the lead where it goes into the (moulded) mains plug, heard the motor spin up briefly so just cut the lead off by the plug and fitted a new one and it's been fine ever since. And this is probably around 200 GBP's worth of cleaner!?
I was chatting to a good mate last night and he commented on how many people seem to be ignorant of even the most basic of 'life knowledge and so 'of course' anything that relies on such knowledge would then be a complete mystery to them ('everone to their own' of course). ;-)
Like without Ohms law, or a basic understanding of material science, or the environment, or energy ... how could you then make informed judgments on anything that relied on such?
I have had an electric car for over 30 years and you wouldn't believe how often I've had the suggestion of 'Why don't you fit a dynamo on one of the wheels and that would charge you up as you go along'. ;-)
Even the glass isnt of any real value because its very specialised glass and there is plenty of much more useful glass with used drink bottles.
We do too and all the new stuff is, but we also have VDSL2+ and so do you. I could have said the original better.
I do for the smartphone which I use all the time and for the kindle and for all the fully automated lights etc and for all the stuff like echo dots, google home minis and for the video surveillance too.
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