Why not with the CRTs is that the tubes should be more carefully disposed of and mixing them with... everything else makes that harder.

Am hopefully believing that the actual CRTs *have* been disposed of and we are seeing merely the appliance shells.

@benroyce

Mercury in the inside of the tubes? Both?

Plus they can implode in a pretty explody way

@benroyce

@clew eww

good point

@benroyce @clew

TBH pretty much all CRTs had implosion protection by the 1970s, although correct disposal remains a problem - already a whole load have ended up in landfills across the USA since the 2000s and even here in Europe the "eco-friendly" places often quietly sent them to poorer countries...

looks like the leaded glass was recycled into more leaded glass (more CRTs) until suddenly the market collapsed

I guess we don't want leaded glass to drink out of anymore, either. Uh, radiation-sheilding windows? Is it good for anything that's worth the risk? Is the glass okay encapsulation of the lead if it gets sintered into big glassy blocks, or will the lead leach?

argh

@vfrmedia @benroyce

@clew @benroyce

I think its only major use case these days is radiation shielding windows - even light fittings are increasingly all plastic, including industrial grade ones.

Lead itself is still useful for a lot of things (particularly starter/aux batteries for motor vehicles which are still in heavy demand) and can be recovered from CRTs alongside rare earth metals, but how much this happens will of course depend on market demand and cost opposed to producing new raw materials (lead does get recycled a lot though as its relatively easy to do)

https://www.wiserrecycling.co.uk/our-facilities/crt-recycling/

@vfrmedia @clew

i read somewhere recently that millions of dollars worth of gold and silver goes into swiss wastewater from their various industries centered around refining, jewelry, etc

but it's just not cost effective to recover it

@benroyce @clew there was research carried out in 2017 which suggested only in the Southern part of the country would it be worth recovering it, and its particles weighing just nanograms that cannot even be seen with the human eye..

https://www.dw.com/en/switzerland-sewers-flush-with-gold-and-silver/a-40923630