Then the CRT itself is dismantled. A cathode ray tube is constructed of three parts: the front glass pane, the funnel behind the glass that narrows to a point, and the component that attaches the two pieces together called frit line. These three pieces are separated for recycling.
However, the glass panel has a coating of phosphorous. This has to be removed first and disposed of as hazardous waste. After that’s been done, the panel glass can be reused or recycled. There is lead embedded in the glass, but it doesn’t pose a threat.
Newer televisions create different challenges as many of them contain mercury, a heavy metal that is toxic and would be considered a hazardous waste material. Unfortunately, as much as we would like to see everything that is manufactured be recyclable, this is not always the case. Take LCD televisions, for example. According to a website post on The Electronics TakeBack Coalition (ETBC):
The LCD TV is perhaps the “poster child” for how electronics are not designed with recycling in mind, because of both material selection and physical design.
Most LCD TVs use mercury lamps to light the screen. An LCD TV will have typically 20 long, thin, fragile mercury lamps running from side to side, throughout the panel. Mercury is very toxic at very small amounts. So a responsible recycler would want to remove these mercury lamps before putting the rest of the device in a shredder or doing other processing that might lead to mercury exposure of recycling workers.
But to get at the mercury lamps inside a flat panel TV, you must disassemble the entire TV first, a process that takes a long time – much longer than it would take you to disassemble a CRT TV. So as a result, some recyclers simply toss the whole thing in the shredder, most certainly exposing their workers to mercury.
The good news is that, while not every appliance or device might be completely recyclable, large amounts of the materials can be recovered, reused or at least efficiently disposed of by competent recyclers.
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