What happens to old CRT monitors?

What's to recycle?

Chris

In article , Chris Whelan writes

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.

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?

That's a lot of weight to ship half way around the world for a very small return.

I really doubt that many CRT's are not just sent to land fill.

Chris

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.

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

les.

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

Chris Whelan wrote in news:Cvlon.355167$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe24.ams:

I know Tektronix used to recycle old CRTs that were returned from TEK service centers;they removed the guns,refurbished them,saved the faceplates and refurbished them,saved quite a bit of money doing this.

I believe my local landfill disassembles the CRT TVs and monitors,and sends the PCBs to a recycler,and the CRTs go elsewhere for crushing and the glass gets reused.

Front Glass (viewing area) which could be up to 1" thick on some large models is very high in lead contents.

Until recent EU legislation on lead crystal processing: these front bits were sliced and shipped to factories in Germany.

all

see:

Apparently there's even a town called 'HP Laserjet' because of the accumulated printers dumped by the west:

Mike Tomlinson Inscribed thus:

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

mm Inscribed thus:

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

Daniel James Inscribed thus:

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.

If you put your CRT monitor under your pillow the CRT Fairy will take it and leave a shiny new penny.

"Raj Kundra" wrote in news:fUoon.51298$ snipped-for-privacy@text.news.virginmedia.com:

so now what do they do with the leaded glass? And how many Germans lost jobs from that move?

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" :-/

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

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