In February, the Consumer Electronics Association conducted a study about electronic waste, specifically to measure what U.S. households were doing with their CRT televisions and computer monitors. For those that aren’t familiar with CRT – those are your old school televisions and computer screens. With new and improved technology available at such low prices, these are commonly being replaced in homes throughout the country. All it takes is one trip down the aisles of Walmart or Best Buy to see that you can get a big screen television for $500 which makes keeping an old one, less appealing.
The challenge has been what to do with these old units and how to keep them out of landfills. Before people became educated as to the dangers that throwing out electronic could pose, most people simply tossed them in the trash. In fact, many electronic recycling programs that send electronics to Asia are still ending up in the trash or burned in local villages. As a result, the rate of cancer in these areas has increased.
Fortunately, educational programs in the U.S. have raised awareness, and more people are finding ways to recycle old devices that are not toxic to themselves or others. This particular study demonstrates how far we have come from the days where electronic waste was more common than recycling. They interviewed 1,023 adults to find out if they had any CRT glass in their home currently or if they had disposed of any within the past five years.
They found that 44 percent of households disposed of a CRT television within the past five years and here is how they disposed of it.
- 45 percent gave it away
- 41 percent recycled it
- The rest threw it away
The Consumer Electronics Association estimates that there are still 77 million CRT televisions in the United States and 30 million CRT computer monitors. Combined, they could equal 7 billion pounds of CRT glass. That is a staggering number, and if 20 percent of households threw their units away, that would represent 1.4 billion pounds of CRT glass ending up in landfills across the U.S. or overseas. Additional education and programs need to be implemented in order to prevent this electronic waste from building up.
As an electronic recycling company, we create easier ways for individuals and businesses to recycle so that they don’t have to throw things away. We host recycling events in local communities where people can drop off their old devices that they no longer need. Additionally, we make it easy for businesses to recycle by picking up old devices from their location. Many of these are given to charities and even placed in local schools.
Depending on the type of device, we will fix it and repurpose it so that someone else can use it in their home. In this way, we can give a new life to devices that would otherwise have no use. The goal is to continue to educate and inform the general public as to ways they can recycle so that our planet doesn’t become full of electronic waste.
