Yeah, what will we do with all of those analog TVs?

I was cruising around Crave a bit ago and came across an interesting article that got me thinking along with them: with the forced migration to digital, what are we going to do with all of those analog TV sets?

Crave, citing the CEO of a company called Electronic Recyclers puts the number at 80 million. Eighty MILLION sets that will be needing to be disposed of in the next 12 - 24 months.

Digital TV will bring a new world of entertainment to consumers and generate a big honking pile of electronic waste.

Roughly 80 million analog TVs will get heaved out in 2008 and 2009, according to John Shegerian, CEO of Electronic Recyclers (ER), one of the largest e-waste recyclers in the U.S., and someone is going to have to dispose of those old TVs properly. The glass in the tube consists of about 22 percent lead.

Now, to me, the rest of the article reads like a border line ad for Electronic Recyclers. Fascinating reading and good to know but, outside of calling this company or one like it, what's the average Joe to do?

I think we are going to need a real strategy to deal with all of the e-waste that this one simple move will cause. Yes, many people have already upgraded their existing sets for the new HDTV whether LCD or Plasma. But most probably haven't done it because of the switch to all digital except maybe the early adopters.

The rest of the folks, as the article points out, have them languishing in their garages or back porches. But what about the folks who haven't been paying attention and been sporting their circa 1995 36 inch SD TV when they pull the plug on analog?

Will they know about the need to recycle their sets, when, where and how?

Having had to go through this process myself, I know where my local free hazardous waste dump site is in my community. My local Fire Department is very happy to have taken all of my old TVs. I wouldn't have like to have been paid by the pound for them like you are when you turn in your old soda cans but ... you can't have everything I guess. And it sure beat being charged for disposal at the local dump.

I hope we get the word out to start thinking strategically about this problem before it becomes a problem.

Hopefully the model won't turn into a "pay to dispose" solution like companies are trying to convince us to pay a premium for going green to begin with.

Comments

[tomko]

Actually, no one will have to dispose of his or her set that early if they don't want to. There will be adapter available at a nominal cost to make the analog sets continue to work. In fact, the gov't may be subsidizing the adapters since there's probably a significant population of less affluent folks who don't want to buy an hd set in a year or two, esp since the one they have works fine.

I have an analog set that works great and have no need to upgrade until it breaks...so I'm probably have to get the adapter...and I'm relatively tech-savvy with several computers in the house, a wifi router, and several ipods...

[Contributing Writer, Aaron J. Walker]

Thanks for the comment Tomko.

It's nice to know some people are thinking forward and have already investigated what the switch to digital from analog means to them and how they will handle it.

Hopefully more people have done what you already have done by educating themselves instead of being caught unprepared.