Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil Nelson
Reminds me of the last recyclling/haz-waste event in our town, which happens twice a year. It is illegal in the Seattle area to throw a TV, computer monitor, etc., out for the landfill. You have to pay $20 to dispose of the average TV, more for a big projection set, etc.
At the spot where I dropped off a computer monitor, they had stacks of 1980s/etc. TVs, some already stacked on pallets and shrink wrapped.
Some (maybe all) of this stuff gets shipped to "recyclers" in China, who are children wearing flip-flops, crouching in a smoking wasteland bashing things up with hammers. Metal is salvaged -- some of it anyway. The rest, probably including all plastic cases, is tossed into heaps and burned. I read a scary magazine article about this a while ago. Sounds more like an eco-disaster than true recycling.
Some European countries have a better scheme, which requires manufacturers to take back their old products for responsible recycling.
Phil Nelson
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Not necessarily there is a place in Mollala OR. That recycles electronic's The take the metals out the valuable indivual parts are also sorted out the Plastic's if recyclable are ground to a sawdust like grain. The plastic and stuff which can't be recycled are thrown in a 45 foot semi trailer and twice a week taken to a huge modern landfill.
I know I hauled that trailer a hundred times or more under contract.
The business was run by a Russian American and a Japanese American and their families. Most of the workers from what I could tell were of Mexican decent.