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Making the digital switch? Toss your old TV set properly

May 31, 2009

BY LAUREN FITZPATRICK, Staff Writer

The guts of an old television set look like a bunch of junk.

There's a heavy glass screen, a bunch of plastic plugs and a jumble of wires tucked inside a wooden or plastic cabinet. A cathode ray tube, the key to the picture, hides more glass, a metal frame and up to 8 pounds of lead.

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The digital television turnover had to be extended four months to June 12 partly because the program providing coupons for converter boxes ran out of money.

Thousands of people who applied for the $40 converter coupons at the end of last year were put on waiting lists, informed they likely wouldn't get them in time for the original Feb. 17 conversion.

And without the boxes, analog TVs that rely on antennas to pick up over-the-air signals won't work.

A proposed $650 million was added to the initial $1.5 billion fund subsidizing the boxes, which will be needed by anyone with an old TV set that does not have cable or a satellite system, ala one that relies on rabbit ears.

The money pays for the converters, a free help hot line at (888) 225-5322 (888-CALL FCC), and no-cost house calls to anyone who can't manage to set up a converter box with telephone help from the FCC.

Despite the delay, a May 21 digital test-run by the Federal Communications Commission turned up more problems in the Chicago area than in any other market.

And some 3.3 million people nationwide still don't have a digital-ready television, according to the Nielsen Co.

So, if you need help or still have questions about digital broadcasting, call (888) 225-5322, or log on to DTV.gov or DTVanswers.com.

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Nothing will prevent Southlanders from chucking old sets once the June 12 switch changes broadcast signals to digital, when analog TVs, the kind with the tube inside rather than a digital tuner, become obsolete. Curbside garbage pickup grabs electronics, too. State law doesn't yet prevent electronic trash - or e-waste - from going to the landfill.

Not that couch potatoes are rushing to toss their old analogs en masse, since cable watchers will experience a seamless conversion. Many others with tube TVs opted for converter boxes, which at about $50 or $60 come cheaper than a new digital TV.

Still, to mistake any of those old TVs as trash is shortsighted.

The guts of a TV can be hazardous if not treated properly. They take up a lot of space as trash. And they're valuable as raw materials when recycled.

They're also gold to a Chicago Heights company, which will transform those insides into ingredients purchased by American manufacturers.

Salvaging everything possible

Walls of old console TVs stand inside Intercon Solutions' giant warehouse, piled up 10 feet tall on an industrial floor still scarred with steel rails from when the Washington Street building contained railroad cars.

Shrink-wrapped on wide pallets, TVs in bulky wood consoles and colored plastic cases alike await disassembly in a process Intercon Solutions calls "demanufacturing." Pieces get unscrewed, unhooked, unfastened, all by hand, in the opposite order of their manufacture. The parts are then sorted by materials and packaged for shipping to a series of manufacturers within the United States (but none in Illinois).

Nearby, workers are dismantling old telecommunications consoles from the outside in, while conveyor belts sit silent, full of plastic calculators from another shift. And a carton of old film unspooled from Defense Department reels waits to be stripped of its silver.

Mark Medic of Intercon said this recycling process is tidier than shredding, and keeps hazardous materials from contaminating the ground. Intercon doesn't resell working gadgets overseas for consumer reuse. And they put nothing into landfills, he said.

This is important because the lead alone in TVs causes health problems when released haphazardly into the environment. Other heavy metals like mercury and cadmium - found in the TV tubes - also can contaminate groundwater. Mercury causes birth defects and damages the central nervous system. Lead poisoning often leads to learning disabilities in children. And cadmium irreversibly damages kidneys and lungs, and softens bones.

Intercon pulls the lead components out of the sets and sends them downstate where the metal is smelted out. The smelters get the glass, too, which they use to help regulate the heat of the smelting process.

The lead is resold to electronics companies, mostly for use as solder. Wood from cabinets is chipped up for particle board. And the plastics become plastic lumber and parking bumpers.

And the more metals that can be salvaged from junk, the fewer that must be mined underground.

You don't want to fill the landfill

Intercon charges for recycling dropoffs. Several times a year, the company partners with area municipalities who pay the fees, which start at $10 and depend on the size of the set.

"You don't want to fill the landfill with (hazardous materials), you don't want to fill the landfill anyway," said Marta Keane, a recycling specialist at the Will County Land Use Department. "Once it's full, we have to make a new one somewhere else. So why fill it up with televisions just because we're going to switch to digital?"

Illinois passed a law in September requiring manufacturers to take back e-waste and recycle it, said Dave Walters, a waste reduction manager at the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. The law starts to take effect in 2010, and by 2012, all TVs, computer monitors and printers, and other electronics will be banned from the landfill stream.

"The new Illinois law is really much broader than other states," Walters said. "It's the first piece of legislation that includes printers."

About 20 states have some kind of e-waste laws, most of which are recycling programs rather than bans on landfills.

"So I would not say we're late in coming to the game," Walters said. "We're ahead of the curve than in other states."

Lauren FitzPatrick can be reached at lfitzpatrick@southtownstar.com or (708) 802-8832.

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