The big compactor massacre
 

CAUTION: graphic images, not for the weak of stomach...

This really sucks... dozens of vintage TVs and electronics thrown out for trash day meet their fate in a compactor truck...

We better find and preserve what's left before it's too late... 2009 will be a busy year for compactor trucks...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOdRFOtmcms&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgJ6XrIlD_c

I love the slumped shoulders on that guy when he first sees that pile. My question is about the environmental impact of all that lead in the screens. I lost track of VCRs after eight or so.
Sheesh.

Tom

Looked like a load of junk to me. I have to admit that my trash looked like that a few times.

I shed a slight tear when I saw that RCA or Victrola horn... :tears:

I missed that part, let's hope it was a "Crapophone" horn.

Most of the stuff looked like modern junk but this goes on all over the place and some good vintage stuff no doubt gets tossed.

Did you see all the dust from the breaking CRTs? that can't be good to breath!

Maybe it would be a good idea to get friendly with the sanitation workers, educate them on what to look for and offer them rewards for vintage gear?

I'm sure at least some of them already know and would save the good stuff for eBay.

It was right in the beginning of the second video.. it was a black horn...

If nothing else, it would have made a cool decoration...

I have known a few trash guys.. not only did they make good money, but they had some bad ass gear that was all tossed.. I know one guy in this area that must have about 15 vintage Pioneer recievers, all salvaged, and some quite nice..

You can relax, it was a BBQ, you can see the wheels if you look very carefully. :banana:

The arrows in the pic point to the handle and wheel.

The thing next to it however did look like a 60's console TV.

WHEW!!!! Thanks for making my night, and allowing me to sleep tonight :D

I guess when you see that much gear in one place, you start seeing things.....

Looks like some AK'er cleaned out his basement or garage.

It scared the pants off of me watching those guys crunch up all those CRTs with NO SAFETY GOGGLES! That's the definition of an accident waiting to happen.

Around here, some people still complain about having to recycle but I suspect most would think it's criminal crunching up all that lead and plastic and who knows what else. We'd never be allowed to do that any more, and that's got to be a good thing!

Depends on where that truck is going. I didn't see any garbage, just trash (some was probably some good trash for us AKers here, but...). Anyway, maybe the truck takes it to a recycling place that melts it all down and recovers the raw materials. Better it directed to reuse than to get loose in a swampy landfill.

i closed it halfway through... i couldn't watch

I am jealous of a place where you can still just pile a bunch of stuff at the curb, and the trash truck will take it all away, no limits on what it is or how much. Wow, those were "the good old days", compared to here in California. Let's see:

-We have specific can sizes that we pay to use; a TV set would not even fit in our cans.
-We cannot "throw away" TV sets at all, they must be taken to a recycler and we pay them to take them.
-Once a year, we can schedule a "super" pickup day when they will take one TV, one appliance, one piece of furniture, four tires, and two cubic yards of lawn/yard trimmings.
-Everything else besides the above, we have to bring to the dump ourselves, and pay to get rid of it.
-Oh, yes, we cannot even throw away fluorescent bulbs or batteries anymore, either-they must be recycled, too.

Anyone notice the wooden case sitting in front of the pile in the first video? Any ideas, perhaps a old tube checker? It gets tossed in at 3:40 into the video...

Cheers,

We have free dropoff points here in the Los Angeles area. Usually once or twice a year at random places, like schools or the train station. I've never gone to one, being afraid of what I'd see. Kind of like visiting the dog pound. I know I'd see some old TV that I'd really want, and it's illegal for the workers to allow anything to be removed once it's been dropped off as "hazmat waste".

Someone here who may have more time than I have, might want to attend one of those events, then find out where it all goes. Then go to the source and find out who to write to. Maybe there would be a chance, especially if money changes hands.

Charles

This Saturday is our local once-a-year "hazmat" collection. I can never make it as there is always another event I go to on that same day. I did go about 5 years ago. They had a roll-off dumpster with the end open. The gentlemen manning it carefully placed all the items inside, stacking them neatly. Nothing was tossed; no damage was being done. I have met the man in charge, and have casually mentioned my interest in old stuff. It is sad to think what might show up.

Then I think back to the early 90s when I cleaned out the shed at my mother's place. I carried several truckloads of old tv sets to the town dump. I thought they would turn me away after awhile but they never did.

Most of that stuff was BPC spare the couple of console TV's and the empty maggie cabinet. Something tells me that guy is a copper scrounger. None of those sets had cords dangling from them.

Yea, you'll also notice that the yokes are missing off the CRTs,

Here in the SF area, there are lots of places that will take electronics for free. Among them are various surplus stores (which I also shop at frequently) and Goodwill. Goodwill takes any TVs and electronics, even non-working for recycling. I have mixed feelings about it, but I think in the end it's good. Making it harder to get rid of old TVs means that people are more likely to try to sell them, or give them away. Also, since the trash man won't take them, they often sit at the side of the road long enough for someone like me to find them.

Speaking of trash finds, I just rescued a nice Amana Radarange a block away from my apartment. I was driving home and noticed a brown box at the side of the road when I glanced down the street at a stop sign. I thought maybe it would be a radarange, so I went around the block and sure enough it was an RR-9 sitting on its side. It's is very good condition and seems to work fine. Last year I picked up a Sony KV-1311CR TV from the same apartment building. That's really funny because my last apartment had both an RR-9 and a 1311CR in the kitchen. I am very fond of both items which are currently in storage in PA.

I might have to peek in the windows of that apartment to see if my entire PA kitchen is in there...

Yet another vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpydH3qMx4o

hhhm.. you have to wonder what the guy's thrill about the videos is..

Here, people load their crap in pickups, haul it to the "collection centers" & toss it...Or if you're lazy, just take it out on a backroad somewhere, & dump it off the side, down in a ditch...Sometimes, the "better" pieces get put aside at the collection centers, but 90% of the time its BPC, or pressboard w/vinyl woodgrain junque...

I wonder if any of that stuff still worked? It is a shame that we are a wasteful society. Makes me feel good that I salvaged a CD player (for a compnent stereo system) that was made in 1984. The reason it was tossed, the CD drawer didn't work, the only thing it needed was a belt to replace the worn one on the pulleys or even a gumband.

And that's a bad thing? I think there is enough mercury among other harmful chemicals in our landfills already. :no: People need to get edjumucated on what not to throw away. Example: pretty much any kind of electronics, cell phones, home cordless phones, batteries, the list goes on and on. All items like this need to get the proper recycling so the harmful chemicals don't make their way into our landfills and drinking water supply's. Items that most people don't think twice about throwing in the garbage.

Cool. We had a Radarange just like that with the glass tray and everything when I was a kid. I think my parents bought a new one and gave it to my grandparents. They used it for quite a few more years after that.

I am definitely in favor of recycling; it mainly bothered me that this law started without advance coordination with the "trash" companies to provide containers or handling methods for the "new rules" when they started. Instead, now we had/have these items sitting in our houses and we have to figure out what to do with them. I think the trash haulers finally started accepting some or all of these items again, maybe a year or more after the law was put in effect.

Just wait until they ban Incandescent lightbulbs and the dead, overheated CFL's start to pile up. We've had three CFL's overheat in the past couple of years. The tubes themselves seem to outlast the power supplies.

Here in Hong Kong, a lot of things get thrown away, but a decent percentage (most) of them get retrieved for resale at the export wholesale market I talk about here sometimes. and/or recycling - the unwanted stuff ends up being stripped apart for recycling at certain villages in China.

Oddly enough, other toxic things like batteries just get thrown into the ordinary household trash. I have heard of schemes for recycling rechargeable-type batteries, but the collection points are too few and hard to find. Regular batteries just get thrown out in the ordinary trash, to pollute the landfill sites. A lot of metal scrap goes through the recycling places, but some still goes into landfill. I think it is all determined by what can make money!

I have heard/read that those recycling-center villages in China are VERY toxic areas, and the poor people who live and work there have high rates of cancer, birth defects and other health problems, due to the local pollution caused by the gear they dismantle. The stuff gets stacked up in big piles outdoors; there is little or no safety gear or protection involved as they dismantle and sort stuff using hands and hand tools. It used to be common for stuff from the US and Europe to be shipped there for recycling, but I think the government has largely stopped that, to lessen the pollution problems (not sure of details on this part).

I have quite a few CFL's in my house and over the last couple years have had quite a few that last no longer the a standard incandescent bulb. I have reason to believe that after manufacturing and recycling costs they aren't saving anyone any money. It's just too bad that when these go bad they are probably getting thrown directly in the trash. Either people just don't care or they are too ignorant to know any better. And people wonder why the fish we catch in our lakes and ocean are laced with mercury. It's sad because flourescent bulbs have been around for a long time and I know people still smash them and throw them in the garbage when they go bad. You would think people should know they aren't supposed to do this. CFL's are no different. :no: Take your pick, LAZY or IGNORANT. I don't think either is a good excuse.

Chinese companies are putting an unauthorized UL label on their cheap CFL lamps and selling them to bottom barrel discount stores, Dollar general, Biglots, etc. Some of these lamps have even been sold to name brands like sylvania, who were not aware of the questionable pedigree. They are known to melt, the thin glass envelopes explode, and have even caught fire.

I noticed that all CFL power supplies have a small iron core choke in them, i wonder if it could be used in homebrew power supplies?

Yeah, ill drink to that! There even stricter up here in Sacramento county! 20 bucks to recycle some POS 1990's 13" tv!!! Criminal!

Oh joy, all my CFL's came from Big Lots...:scratch2:
No problems yet other than a couple burned out, still I don't leave them on when I'm out.

Come to think of it the CFL's are the ONLY electronic item I've gotten from Big Lots that have actually worked.

I have mostly stayed away from CFL's after seeing one catch fire at my mother's house. I suspect it would have self-extinguished, but I don't know. I did finally break down and buy one to try but it wouldn't fit most of the fixtures in the house.

Does anyone make CFL's in the US?

I converted to 100% fluorescent about five years ago or so, a total of 21 bulbs including two outdoor flood lights that I can think of. After five years, I have replaced maybe half of the bulbs one time and the others are still going fine, and I have saved 75% of the power cost to use incandescent bulbs through my house. None of my bulbs has burned up or anything similar. What is nice is, when they do burn out, they just go dark. None of that scary, shocking bright flash you see when an incandescent burns out. I also use fluorescent bulbs in my work lights, where I do not have to worry about burning my hand or fingers when I touch the lit bulb.

I am replacing updating mine as the incandescent ones burn out. I still need to find a place to recycle the fluorescent ones. So far none of the fluorescent ones have gone out.

I have to disagree with ChrisW6ATV about the heat. I had to remove one of the fluorescent ones after it had been on awhile. It was warm enough as to be hard to handle.

I try to avoid the trash truck at all costs, so I don't see something like this. I can't watch. :tears: