Out Go All the CRTs

I think that by now just about everybody has unplugged their last CRT (cathode-ray tube) television. If it has not been thrown out in the roadside rubbish collection then it is sitting in the ‘junk’ room waiting to be thrown out in the next roadside rubbish collection.

For those people in country towns I understand that there are many local rubbish tips where there are hundreds of dumped CRT TVs to be seen—even though in many localities it is illegal to dump CRTs at the local tip.

If the statistics we keep seeing published are correct then, over the last eight years, not only have we in the western world unplugged all our CRT TVs but we have:

• plugged in twice as many flat panel TVs (either plasma or LCD) per household than we previously had CRT TVs, and
• within that eight years we have already upgraded a third of them with a bigger and better flat panel TV, and a tenth of them are on their second round of being upgraded.

Why have people upgraded a third of their almost brand new flat panel TVs already within eight years when the CRT it replaced was—on average—15 years old?

The main reason given was to get a bigger TV as the prices came down in the last three years or so.

The secondary reason given was to upgrade their initial purchase from what was marketed as a ‘high definition’ TV to the ‘full high definition’ TV.

The tertiary reason was to get a 3D TV (but for myself, having checked out a number of 3D TVs, I fail to understand why anyone would do this).

But to get back to my original point; those CRTs that were once our pride and joy and sat at the centre of our indoor world in the ‘main’ living room have now become rubbish.

Here are some snaps I took of the local “chuck out your dead” (a.k.a. roadside rubbish collection) in my area late last year (2011).