Thanks everyone. The guy who says he'll take the CRT tvs will also thaek everything else electronic, AC or battery, and I'm going to use what I find in this thread and decide how much other stuff to take to him and how much to dispose of elsewhere.
I've arranged to borrow a pickup to deliver to him, and there's a hamfest the Sunday before that where I can just give some of the lighter stuff to any vendor who might want to sell it and keep what little he gets money.
(One year I had my own "booth" (tarp) for two days at the Gaithersburg hamfest, and I did pretty well. Over night, I just left evefrything there, with prices marked and a couple things were sold, with the money put under the tarp. Nothing expensive.
I guess IIUC UPS would wrap things for shipping if I sold on ebay, but I'm not ready for that yet.
CRTs are solid waste. The local hazmat place will take them. Routers are what they will sell for on Ebay (or similar place). There are people who can use a non-WiFi router. I have one separating my family LAN from my private one.
Here in Norway, everything is regulated to the bone. E-waste is no exception.
Vendors who sell electronics are required by law to accept e-waste for free. It does not matter where it was bought or how old it is.
Then, there is, of course, a tax: Vendors who collect less then what they sell, measured by weight, must pay a tax for the amount of weight they are "short". This means that the e-waste has actual value to the vendors, so they lock their e-waste into steel containers to keep it from getting stolen.
Fixers and tinkerers who just need a thermostat or a capacitor or whatever, have no choice but to buy a brand new one. Probably from China.
They will pick that stuff up at the curb here but you set it out separately and the regular trash guys red tag it. Then a different truck comes for it. (white goods, electronics etc)
And do they actually recycle it? Take it apart and save resusable minerals?
Wow.
But what happens to it? If they just put in a landfill, that would be no better than here.
Baltimore County no longer has what was called Bulk Collection, so if you have something big to get rid of you have to have your own truck or hire someone and they charge a minimum of over $100. That might be worth it if you have a lot of things, but when there was free collection, once a month, I think it was, you could just put out one thing. You didn't have to save up your bulk trask for months until you have $100 worth. So unlike other money-saving measures by the government, this is a tremendous inconvenience.
There are 3 places in Baltimore County that accept recycling and trash and it says they recycle electronics except TVs and monitors, which they do take as trash. Which makes it all the more surprising that this place I mentioned says it recycles them. (And not only that, it's the only place within 50 miles that does so and it's only 3 miles from here. It doesn't look big enough on satellite view but I talked to the guy on the phone and he seemed sane and business-like. I'll have more details in a couple weeks after I've been there.)
**Some things are only accepted at one of the three. I think I had dirty kerosene that at the time only one place would take. They took car batteries and other things, and I'm sure thy recycled them.
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This led to another one I coudln't find before, erevival.com that says "Unlike other electronics and computer recycling companies, eRevival Computer and Electronics Recycling offers the highest value for retired/obsolete computers, monitors, hardware components, networking equipment, media tapes, phone, fax and copier systems. eRevival Electronics and Computer Recycling also have a competitive advantage when it may become necessary to dispose of your equipment when it exceeds the marketable value."
When I was a schoolboy in the UK back in the 1950s, local kids would carry CRTs over a girder bridge across a town river in order to drop them some distance to the water where they would implode.
I averted my eyes as I walked past (to school) in case one got cracked on the girders while still being held by the child...
The official story is yes. There are companies that are approved for collecting (from the vendors) and recycling. Here's how one of them presents itself:
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(Don't worry about not understanding the Norwegian text. It is just as pretentious as the video and music.)
Over the years, there have been a few incidents where nosy journalists have found hundreds of tons of Norwegian e-waste in remote African villages. Let's hope that's no longer happening.
A guy rang my doorbell a few weeks ago having spotted a few car batteries (well 1 car battery and 4 sealed ones from a UPS) lying at the side of my garage (17m from the pavement) and asked if I wanted rid of them. I think you can get a fiver each in bulk, I know someone pays £2 each to a local garage to take dead ones from there, and presumably he makes a profit.
Has to be a fair price to bother with that. Ebay take 10%, then you pay shipping. If it's not going to make a profit, put it on freecycle, there will be someone who wants to play with old stuff, and you don't have to bother packing it, they come and collect it.
I would not litter but I have broken open a couple CRT tvs, one to see the shadow screen (is that what it's called?) that color tvs had with one hole for every 3 dots. The other was a 6 or 8" tv and I broke away enough of the neck and adjoining glass to plant a plant in it. The thing grew really well, and I wonder if the phosphorus was responsible.
No drainage at the screen end, so I had to be carfeful not to overwater.
The freecycle here is dying away. Get far fewer emails from them than 5 years ago. Though someone did take my gas lawnmower on Monday, and I got a small stack of Handyman magazines yesterday.
But those are exceptions.
Ebay reaches more people. Those here who read Freecycle, or NextDoor, or a community webpage I could use, don't know how to fiddle with any of my old stuff.
I think that is mostly hysteria. The lead in the glass is very well sequestered in the glass. The amount that could leach out is infinitesimal and not significant in what we throw in landfills.
I'm trying to set up video surveillance - testing some USB cameras, might go for IP cameras over an ethernet cable. But WiFi is nowhere near fast enough for several 4K video streams.
I only use tech that I need or want, you use it for the sake of it.
Silly way of looking at it. When I buy I look at the whole price. Item + postage, or item + fuel for me to drive there. If something is worth £10 to Mr Smith, but it costs £8 to get it to him, you can only extract £2 from Mr Smith.
Maybe they do over there, but here Gumtree and Freecycle work best. I went on a Facebook group and it had about 20 times less stuff. I put a cooker on Gumtree and was phoned in 2 minutes.
People with enough space that just want a crappy screen for a Linux server do.
I've never found anyone on Ebay to come and collect. Ebay buyers seem to expect postage. Gumtree works best here for come get it stuff that's too big to post. Freecycle is fairly good too.
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