Where CRTs go to die: Overseas

When you bought that nice, new flat panel TV, you dutifully recycled your old, giant CRT to keep all that lead out of the landfill. But what happened to it? Buried in the eighth paragraph of this Popular Mechanics story, you'll find out. Most CRTs aren't disassembled and carefully broken down into parts for reuse, they meet another fate: A cargo container for shipping overseas.

Old CRTs get shipped to (primarily) Malaysia, where the tubes are stripped out and put into new chassis, then sold as new TVs in developing countries. Tubes that don't work are melted down and rebuilt into new CRTs or shipped off to lead smelters, where it is conceivably reused in industrial applications like making car batteries. (The story goes on to note that even though there is some re-use at work, the people that work in these smelting factories deal with a crushing amount of exposure to lead.)

It's probably all told a better end result than the alternative: Over half a million tons of CRTs will make their way into landfills this year, with an estimated 46,643 tons of that representing lead. The lead isn't hazardous as long as it remains locked up in the glass, but how likely is that in the long run? One study performed almost 10 years ago found that enough lead leached out of landfills "to qualify as toxic waste."

If there's a glimmer of a bright spot here it's that CRTs are rapidly on the decline here, so there are fewer around to have to deal with. But that also puts you in a strange position should you be hanging on to one. The problem is this: Eventually we'll reach a point where even overseas markets no longer want CRT televisions, and they'll stop accepting the old sets for rebuilding into new ones. When this happens, any sense of "recycling" them will probably vanish altogether, and it'll be landfill all the way.

Of course, even recycling a CRT is only prolonging the inevitable. That lead is going to wind up somewhere in the end, right? Exactly where it ends up is likely to become a sticking point in the next few years.

LINK: Recycle Your Television Now-Before It's Too Late