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Thanks to rising gas prices, only the rich can afford vacations this summer. Groceries are out of reach. The pinch is so bad I’m stocking PBR instead of microbrews. Sacrifices everywhere.
Then you come across a headline like this:
“Switch to digital may clog landfills.”
What the? Americans can’t afford to drive to work, yet they’re tossing perfectly good TVs into the garbage?
True. Environmentalists fear that tens of millions of fully operational televisions will end up in the dump because of the switch from analog to digital TV broadcasts next Feb. 17.
Some will ditch their TVs because they’re confused as to how the changeover affects them. They don’t understand that the shift makes no difference if they have cable. And for those who don’t subscribe, you can get a government-subsidized converter box by going to www.dtv2009.gov.
But according to the predictions, others see the switchover as an excuse to upgrade. Flat-panel prices are coming down. Plus, who doesn’t want to look into the pores of the hunk or hunkette who replaces dreamy David Cook as next year’s hi-def American Idol?
Yeah, well. I could get by.
And given the context of peak oil, it’s hard to understand who has so much jack that he could pitch a working TV onto the curb.
But supposedly it’s happening, even if the guys on the Deffenbaugh trucks haven’t noticed an uptick, spokesman Tom Coffman told me.
Maybe the scavengers are grabbing most of them before they end up in the landfills, leaking mercury, lead and other nasty stuff.
But thankfully, the digital switchover coincides with another megatrend, to recycle a 1980s business buzzword.
And that is the rush toward green living.
“There’s no law currently in place that forbids tossing TVs into the landfill,” as Shawnee Assistant City Manager Vicki Charlesworth points out.
No law in Kansas and Missouri, anyway.
Yet on the same day that Shawnee residents set out items on big-trash pickup day, they took more than 40,000 pounds of used electronic equipment to a city-sponsored drop-off site for recycling, Charlesworth said.
They even paid for the trouble: $7.50 for each TV and $4 for computer monitors.
Junked electronics filled two semitrailers, which were trucked to the underground headquarters of Lenexa-based R-3 Technology.
Earlier, those same caves temporarily housed 82,000 pounds of e-waste collected at a similar e-recycling event in Blue Springs. And 50,000 pounds from Lee’s Summit, and 40,000 pounds from Lenexa, and it goes on.
“We’ve had a considerable amount of TVs,” said Dan Sudeikis, R-3’s vice president of business development.
“I think we’re going to see that expand in the next 12 months.”
His is just one of many companies that are in the business of reusing components of the gadgets we throw away. It’s a growing industry and bound to get bigger. Some states already require manufacturers to recycle the products we buy from them. Soon, it could be illegal for the rest of us to toss toxics in the trash.
“Most people get the point that we can’t keep on doing that,” Sudeikis said.
But there’s recycling and there’s recycling.
For instance, Sudeikis and I are aging boomers, and we got to talking about the console TVs we grew up with.
He still has one in his house. It doesn’t work, but he’s in no hurry to get rid of it. One thing about those cabinet TVs: They were pieces of furniture. And once they flickered off for good, they were still good for something.
Said Sudeikis, “My wife says I’m not allowed to get rid of it unless I can find another place to put all the stuff she has stacked on top of it.”
If only flat screens were that recyclable.
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