Short-Lived Electronics Fill Recycling Bins with E-Waste

Electronics recyclers keep old electronic gadgets from polluting landfills.

By Kyle Arnold

Falling prices for electronic goods means Traci Phillips and her team at Natural Evolution Inc. are seeing newer products sooner than ever.

“For a long time people were getting rid of their old CRT televisions and trading them for flat-panel TVs,” said Phillips, president and CEO of the company. “But now there are a lot more flat-screen televisions and monitors coming in every day.”

Natural Evolution, 5719 E. 13th St., is seeing an influx of newer equipment, ranging from computers and cell phones to televisions and monitors, sent to the recycling center as consumers adapt to the latest technologies and dropping prices.

“When you can buy a new television for just a few hundred dollars, why would you go through the effort and cost to fix your old one?” Phillips said.

Older televisions were designed to last decades, with nearly unbreakable heavy glass projection tubes. But the lifespan of early flat-panel TVs and monitors were designed to last only about 30,000 to 50,000 hours. Screens are also more vulnerable to breaking than older glass technologies.

Recyclers usually charge a fee to recycle televisions and monitors, citing the disposal cost from mercury-containing bulbs. Natural Evolution charges $15 for televisions and $5 for computer monitors to cover the cost of environmentally friendly disposal.

“We took apart a television recently that had 26 fluorescent bulbs in it, and each bulb contained mercury,” Phillips said. “That would have been 26 bulbs in a landfill.”

Computers are free to drop off because computer chips and metal components can be sold to waste processors for a profit.

Jim Burge, owner of Broken Arrow electronics recycling business J.L. Burge Co., said rapidly changing technologies are relegating relatively new electronics to the trash bin.

“A lot of people don’t even need a computer anymore because their iPhone does everything they need,” Burge said. “Or they want a smaller laptop that is more powerful than their old computer.”

Computers also pose a potential danger to consumers because of private data stored on hard drives, said Michael Patton, executive director of the Metropolitan Environmental Trust in Tulsa.

“People really need to be conscious about what is on that computer,” Patton said. “It’s not very hard for someone to take your credit card data or personal information if you don’t do something to secure it.”

Natural Evolution and other recyclers say they use magnets and other technologies to wipe hard drives clean.

“If you want to take it apart, you can even dismantle a hard drive with a hammer,” Patton said.

TV recyclers

Many recyclers accept televisions. Fees and other products they take can vary.