Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Spring Cleaning

  Spring cleaning depresses me. It makes me realize how little social liquidity our possessions have. For example, we are throwing away two old large televisions because one has severe color problems and the other won't turn on and it is too expensive to repair them. But they have perfectly good speakers, screens, capa...citors and other electronic parts that could be put to use elsewhere.

March 24 at 3:48pm · ·
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
But will we dissassemble them and harvest the 98% still functional parts? No. For one thing it has warnings against taking them apart. For another there is no reliable after-market for these parts. We weren't trained in high school or college to salvage things and the transaction costs are too high. Where would we store the parts, who could we ... See Moregive them to, how would we organize them, test them for functionality etc. Society makes it easier to "throw things away". I hate spring cleaning; it points out everything that is wrong with our society to me.
March 24 at 3:50pm · 
Jonathan B Aibel
Jonathan B Aibel
Massachusetts restricts the disposal of electronics (don't know how seriously it is enforced). Concord therefore has two drop-off days each year and contracts with an "electronics recycling" company. But I can't tell you how many components are actually recycled and how many end up as scrap.
March 24 at 4:11pm · 
Isabel A. M. Cole
Isabel A. M. Cole
In Washington there is an appliance and electronic recycling program. All of the companies that make the products are partly responsible for recycling. Plus they have determined that it is actually cheaper for the companies to recycle the parts than to make new ones....Too expensive to ship the TVs here though. :)
March 24 at 4:26pm · 
Lara Morrison
Lara Morrison
We need to design for recycling.
March 24 at 4:30pm · 
Erica Fox Zabusky
Erica Fox Zabusky
the other issue is that repair costs are so high (and as th says, parts are often "not available"), so that it's "cheaper" to replace. how can we stop this cycle? ii hate our throw-away society!
March 24 at 5:01pm · 
Elisa Zazzera
Elisa Zazzera
zenith, sony, panasonic etc should take them back & do the recycling as interface global textiles does with their carpeting.
indeed nothing lasts forever, except of course garbage. a hundred years from now archeologists will be digging up fresh kills & the thousands of other landfills in america to see what was in hotdogs! - hey th happy belated- despite the spring cleaning i hope your new year is off to a good start.
March 25 at 3:29am · 
Edwind Suryadi
Edwind Suryadi
I think you should visit www[dot]instructables[dot]com Mr. Culhane, many broken things can be re-used for other purposes there. :)
March 25 at 5:07am · 
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thomas Henry Culhane
Thanks you guys! Your comments are really really appreciated, and helped cure some of the depression (now if only there was an electronics recycling place in our area!)
March 26 at 12:51am ·

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