Road to hell lined with old TVs

What, you need a bigger flat screen movie/entertainment display? We have a deal for you.

The Globe and Mail's, Grant Robertson highlights the growing presence of bigger TVs in both our homes and landfills. Falling prices on new flat panel, LCD, and plasma televisions illustrate the problems with an economic system that fails to internalize costs of resource use and waste disposal. What do you do with the TV after it's obsolete? Can we afford to recycle all of these TVs?

Consumer demand has the potential to make demands for better working conditions, environmental practices, and, unfortunately big wasteful TVs or cars. However, manufacturers and stores are also responsible for stoking demand for High Definition TV and accompanying bigger screens. This may be a case where even a responsible producer is going to end up damaging the environment as a fundamental aspect of their business. Retrofitting is not even on the table, especially, when "[i]t is cheaper for electronics makers to shred them than pay technicians to determine what the problem was."

Businesses like the SIMS Group have stepped into carry out the complex act of taking apart a TV by hand and disposing of lead, mercury and other potentially dangerous TV components. However, according to Robertson, there are not enough facilities in Canada to do the recycling required by the incredible turnover of TVs.

This suggests a business opportunity for other manufacturers and scrap metal companies. However, in the long run, a way to close the material and energy usage loop is needed to ensure sustainability. Companies like Interface (carpet manufacturer) provides lessons:

1. Eliminate Waste: Eliminating all forms of waste in every area of business;
   
   
2. Benign Emissions: Eliminating toxic substances from products, vehicles and facilities;
   
   
3. Renewable Energy: Operating facilities with renewable energy sources – solar, wind, landfill gas, biomass, geothermal, tidal and low impact/small scale hydroelectric or non-petroleum-based hydrogen;
   
   
4. Closing the Loop: Redesigning processes and products to close the technical loop using recovered and bio-based materials;
   
   
5. Resource-Efficient Transportation: Transporting people and products efficiently to reduce waste and emissions;
   
   
6. Sensitizing Stakeholders: Creating a culture that integrates sustainability principles and improves people’s lives and livelihoods;
   
   
7. Redesign Commerce: Creating a new business model that demonstrates and supports the value of sustainability-based commerce

Reality Check:

$1,099 — Average cost to make a 42-inch high-definition television last year

$820 — Average cost to produce that TV now

150 million — Global demand for HD TVs by 2010

Each TV takes 16 minutes to recycle with shredding [At SIMS Canada]. In that time, plants in China will have made 623 new ones.

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