TVs are Not Designed For Recycling

LCD TVs are the biggest seller in the flat panel market right now in the US. But LCD TVs are not designed to be easily recycled. Here’s why:

• Mercury lamps are hard to remove.
  LCD TVs contain several mercury lamps – long, skinny fluorescent tubes that light your TV screen (and probably your monitor and laptop). Yet recyclers say it’s very difficult and always time consuming to safely remove these mercury lamps (without breaking) when they take apart LCD screens for recycling. Mercury is highly toxic in small amounts, and needs to be handled carefully.  Sometimes the lamps are fused to other parts, and can’t be removed without breaking.
• LCD glass isn't recyclable
  LCD "glass" is made from dozens of types of liquid crystals. But currently there is no one who is recycling LCD glass, although some chemists are working on developing this technology.  So the TV companies are selling millions of pounds per year of LCD glass, knowing that the only solution when these products are no longer working or repairable is to burn the LCD glass.  This doesn’t seem like “designed for recycling” to us.
• Brominated Flame Retardants in the Plastics.
  Brominated flame retardants (BFRs) have been added to plastics in electronics for many years. Some companies are in the process phasing them out, but they are still in use.  Recycling plastics in electronics is an important goal because electronics like TVs use a lot of plastics.  But plastics with BFRs cannot be recycled back into electronic products, because the plastics are too impure. They are sometimes “downcycled” into other products or used as filler in asphalt roads.

What’s the Answer: Green Engineering

ETBC believes that the electronics industry should be considering the full life cycle of their products (including recycling and disposal) when they design their products. We encourage them to adopt the following “Green Engineering” principles:

• Fully assess and minimize the potential environmental, human health and social impact of the product’s production, use and end of life treatment, including commonly used recycling technologies (like shredding).
• Don’t use customers as the testing ground for whether materials in the product are safe or dangerous. Ensure that all material used and or released are as benign and inherently safe as possible BEFORE putting products on the market, by applying a precautionary approach to chemical management and by finding safer substitutes for chemicals that persist and accumulate in the environment.
• Design for carbon neutrality when possible to reduce the energy impact of the product throughout its life cycle.
• Maximize design for reparability, reuse and durable use, to increase the longevity of the product and thereby reduce consumption of limited material resources.
• Plan for recyclability and ease of disassembly of the product, including using materials that can be recycled easily into new products, and minimizing waste.
• Minimize use of raw virgin materials , and maximize use of recycled materials , to reduce consumption of limited natural resources.
• Invest in solutions that go beyond our current dominant technologies to improve, innovate and invent technologies that achieve sustainability. \Actively engage communities and stakeholders in the development of new design solutions that improve the life cycle impact of electronic products.