Business PickupThe 1980s to mid-1990s was known as the “manilla era” in consumer electronics, a time when most consumer goods were cast in a stylish creamy white that would fade to a nicotine yellow over time. During this period, electronics were much larger, consumed much more electricity and were exponentially dumber than our current tech. Computer towers took up half of your desk space, keyboard buttons were over an inch thick, dot-matrix printers tapped and screeched endlessly and stereos were considered furniture, often built into full size wooden cabinets housing mammoth speakers. It was the time of giants, but even in a time of giants, one must rule them all.
I’m talking about one of the biggest, bulkiest and most cumbersome electronic devices on the planet. Like the tyrannosaurus-rex or the automobile, certain things resonate as historical symbols, icons of their era. The cathode ray tube, or CRT, defined our generation. Huge solid glass screens that haunted our homes and workplaces for most of our childhood, they stand as an epitome of the 80s, and the socioeconomic lynch pin of the 90s. The CRT gave our planet its first look into a new electronic realm.
The average CRT weighs in at 35 pounds with majority of the weight represented by a bulk of leaded glass. The only way to increase the size of CRTs screens and make the image larger was to manufacture larger tubes. Massive CRTs were developed for the home market, some weighing in at over 300 pounds. Every home in North America had at least one of these in their homes by the end of the 1980s. The explosion of home computing in the 1990s put an exponential curve on CRT usage, making it one of the single most popular inventions ever created.
We entered the 21st with unwanted CRTs representing more than half the entire electronic waste stream. Often when people think of recycling value, they usually relate it to cash for commodities. People talk about gold and silver, copper wires and aluminum heat sinks, all items of inherent value. This ideology was passed on from the traditional ferrous and non-ferrous scrap industry, which many electronics recyclers evolved from. The CRT is the perfect example of why this thinking fails in the tech recycling racket.
On average, each CRT contains about 5 pounds of lead. It’s added to the glass to improve the picture quality and to shield viewers from the radiation created by the electron gun inside. Lead is toxic, and five pounds is enough to pollute a large tract of land or a small lake. CRTs contain so much toxic material that it is inconceivable that we’d simply just throw them in piles outside our cities. CRTs accounted for more than half the waste volume for the first two decades in the e-waste business, which means the CRT was iconic for the recycling industry as well, and a champion to the cause.
The CRT was one of the first material streams to be widely acknowledged as a problem material, a product which forced us to prioritize our values and rethink how we handle our waste, focusing on de-pollution instead of profit. In this way, the CRT not only entertained and informed several generations of people but also made us rethink our waste.
Now that the technology has been eclipsed, we’re (thankfully) seeing fewer CRTs (although they still represent about a third of the overall e-waste volume by weight). By 2020 the stream will be down to a trickle. Our kids will think our old TVs and monitors look more like toaster ovens than screens and turn-style dials are hilarious. By 2030, collectors will have gone mad and CRT fish tanks will be all the retro rage.
Although we’re happy to see them go, we’re grateful for the impact the CRT had on the recycling industry.