Pity the poor television set. It spends its life glowing with action and entertainment, adored by rooms full of worshipful fans, and then within the space of a few short years becomes an obsolete, useless, heavy hulk.
At the garbage dumps, it is as unwelcome as toxic waste. At charities, it is as unwanted as a broken Barcalounger. Even the recycling-center scavengers working in the dead of night won’t steal the things.
Across the country and around the world, the television is quickly becoming one of society’s most vexing disposal problems, accelerated by consumers’ fickle craving for increasingly advanced entertainment technology.
“You can’t overstate that enough. Never in our wildest dreams did we think the amount of TVs would become such an epidemic,” said Rich Von Stetten, senior manager of statewide recycling for the Delaware Solid Waste Authority.
Last year, the state collected and recycled more than 3.5 million pounds electronic goods. Of that, 1.26 million pounds – almost 36 percent – consisted of television sets. At the next state-sponsored electronics recycling event, scheduled for July 7, 500-plus carloads are expected to show up.
“Cars will come in with three, four, five TVs,” Von Stetten said. “It’s like, where do they keep coming from?”
In the case of televisions, the eco-friendly adage “reduce, reuse, recycle” seems increasingly hard to heed. For one thing, people seem disinclined to lean toward less when it comes to their TVs.
“Americans especially, they always want the newest, the latest, the greatest. Even in the tough economy it doesn’t stop people from buying,” Von Stetten said.
For another, few seem to want a previously owned set. At Goodwill of Delaware and Delaware County, there’s little hope that many donated televisions can be resold in the charity’s retail shops, especially if the technology is relatively ancient – say, a few years old.
“If it’s nonworking, it’s 60 pounds of stuff, and what are you gonna do with it?” said Ted Sikorsky, vice president for marketing and development at Goodwill. “Right now we have to pay to dispose of those. It’s not just us. It’s a nationwide issue.”
Source: delawareonline.com
By Eric Ruth