Your Old TV : Where It Ends Up As E-waste

Television sets are quickly becoming more and more advanced as the years go by.

Let us quickly look at the figures of the world on how the disposal of old television sets affects our environment, and let us figure out ways on how to be responsible in our disposal of them.

Progress and development have made our lives very convenient. The invention of the television has made it possible for us to obtain information that, in the old days, would take weeks or even months to reach us. Human development is very fast and is so amazing, but the amount of pollution and waste we produce in the wake of all this development is staggering. Development has just gotten faster as technology becomes more and more advanced, and we must expect the waste in the future to increase exponentially as well if we do not do anything about it.

The world is moving so fast today that the window with which we see the world has already changed. In the previous decade, we spent afternoons or nights after work in front of the Television. Today, we spend more time in front of the computer as compared to the TV. This new trend would definitely reduce TV productions as compared to before, but what about the old Television sets in your home? To give you a clue on how many television sets are thrown away, approximately 25 million television sets are taken out of service yearly.

Despite this figure, almost 75% of all old electronics are stuck in storage. This is because a lot of people tend to think that throwing away such a big electronic device is such a waste, but in the end, these old television sets will just end up unused, and will eventually break over time. By then, you will think that it would be better off to just throw away that old television set in your stock room to make space for other things. These thrown away old televisions will add up, and before you know it, we have already put 17 million televisions into a landfill! (This was as of the year 2008).

E-waste is being sent to landfill at three times the rate of general waste, and the amount of television sets recycled is only at a rate of 17%, which means that most of these usable electronics just get wasted and end up contributing to the degradation of our environment. As always, the smartest thing to do is to give these old television sets away as donations before they break, or to sell these to recycling centers for parts for proper treatment, extraction, and disposal. You could even try thinking of using or selling them as “vintage” items if their condition is not too bad. The incinerators and landfills should be the last place that these should end up in.