David Nebenzahl wrote:

On 8/26/2009 3:06 PM Don Klipstein spake thus:

In m, David Nebenzahl
wrote:

I'm also curious what usable stuff they're able to extract from all
those bulbs. I can't imagine that anyone wants to reuse any of the
transistors, capacitors, etc., so they must get ground up and somehow
turned into feedstock for ... something.

I would think that the mercury gets recovered and everything else gets
landfilled, especially if they are using lead-free solder.

That's certainly at odds with at least the impression one gets from the
reports one sees on TV from time to time, touting how "responsible"
recyclers are now recovering the materials from such things as discarded
electronics, rather than shipping them overseas and letting 7-year-old
barefoot children pick them apart in a junkyard.

I would have thought that the electronics would get ground up and then
reclaimed, at least to some extent. Wouldn't it be just wasteful to put
all those metals back into the landfill?

Then again, maybe I was being naive.

I expect it depends on where the lamps are being recycled. There are
certainly some very sophisticated recycling operations that grind
everything up and then do an automated sort of the different component
materials.

Whether a particular lamp dropped off for recycling makes it to one of
those operations, probably depends on location. Of course most people
just dispose of the lamps in the regular garbage stream, so then it
depends on what post collection sorting operation is in place.

On that last part, yes it is naive to think that much of any of these
recycling efforts makes any real difference. Some of the stuff we have
been recycling for the longest time such as glass is a net negative
environmentally to recycle, but it makes folks who don't look at the
details feel better.