Associations Join Forces to Help Recycle Cathode Ray Tubes

You may have a giant flat-screen TV in your den these days, but what happened to the old CRT that you replaced?

More than likely, it’s in a dumpster, but two trade groups are joining forces to help change that.

On Monday, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) launched the latest version of their CRT Challenge  (opens in a new tab), the first since 2011. The groups are offering $10,000 for the best proposal that helps reuse and recycle CRT (cathode ray tube) glass in environmentally friendly ways.

“The CRT Challenge is a crowdsourced technical competition to find new uses for old CRT glass,” said Walter Alcorn, CEA vice president of environmental affairs and industry sustainability, in a press release  (opens in a new tab). “The consumer electronics industry is fully committed to eCycling, and this CRT Challenge has the potential to uncover new, innovative electronics recycling.”

The associations are using InnoCentive  (opens in a new tab), a crowdsourcing site, to field proposals. Forty-five had been submitted by midweek.

Cathode ray tubes include lead and other dangerous substances and, if broken, can be labeled as hazardous waste under some circumstances. In recent years the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has worked to create and refine regulations  (opens in a new tab) to handle devices no longer in use. With fewer facilities accepting such displays for end-use purposes, it’s becoming more difficult to recycle outdated monitors. CEA and ISRI estimate that more than a million tons of CRT TVs and monitors will enter the recycling stream in the next few years.

The EPA praised the initiative, saying “the reduced number of facilities that accept processed CRT glass is posing challenges for recycling this material.”

CEA and ISRI will share the winning solutions with members and other interested parties, such as retailers and recyclers.

(iStockphoto/Thinkstock)