On January 24th 2013, the Pennsylvania Department of
Environmental Protection made it illegal to dispose of televisions via
municipal waste disposal sites (in other words they cannot wind up in landfills
because they are bad for the environment).
What this meant is that most trash pickup companies stopped taking them
from customers, even for an additional fee.
This small historical detail is going to become more significant as
this story goes on...
Recently Ted and I acquired a shiny newfangled flat screen HD television. We got it as an unexpected blessing,
secondhand and for free. After hooking
it up, we were duly impressed by the difference that HD really does make in
picture quality.
The downside was, we now had to find a new home for a 36” old fashioned
CRT television which works just fine, but weighs roughly the same amount as an
NFL Linebacker in box form.
Not wanting to throw away an item that works (and not yet knowing that
throwing these things away has recently become impossible in my state) I posted
the Albatross on Facebook a week ago with the attached picture, offering it
free to a good home.
A friend of mine suggested I try Freecycle, so I quickly investigated
and just as quickly signed up. I had no
idea this awesome service existed with the sole purpose of getting rid of items
for people who no longer want or need them and getting them to people who
do. No money, no strings attached, just
people getting rid of stuff and people getting what they need. Within an hour I had an ad posted and was
ready to find a new home for Albatross.
Before any of the Freecyclers had a chance to react, however, an old
acquaintance popped up on Facebook offering to take the set off my hands. Delighted by how easy that turned out to be,
I took the Freecycle ad back down immediately.
I then spent last weekend trying unsuccessfully to arrange a pickup
time with my acquaintance, who I finally found out on Sunday evening was too
busy to come get it. I figured that was
okay though since I didn’t really need Albatross out of my house until the
following Saturday the 26th, also known as Tedmas: the annual
observance of the celebration of Ted’s day of birth.
After pestering and pestering and… pestering this entire past week I
found out at 4PM on Tedmas Eve that my acquaintance was not, in fact, going to
come get Albatross from us. After having
not run the Freecycle ad for it all week, I now had about twelve hours to
somehow dispose of a CRT television so heavy that it generally takes three adults
of Herculean strength to move it around.
Panic mode – ENGAGED.
I spent the next solid hour calling everybody: my trash company, other
people’s trash companies, thrift stores, and every recycling center listed in
the yellow pages for my town and the three towns around me. The only people remotely willing to entertain
so much as the possibility of taking this thing was Best Buy, who would even
come get it from me… for a hundred bucks, but only if it was a few inches
smaller than 36”.
Near tears, I inquired of the sympathetic lady at Waste Management just
what exactly a responsible citizen was supposed to do to get rid of one of
these things legally and within the boundaries of the new Pennsylvania
laws? Dismantling it myself and hiding
it piecemeal in the trash was starting to seem like the only way out.
Finally, she directed me toward the Environmental Protection
Agency. Call me a paranoid Libertarian
if you want, but going for help to the United States Government who had enacted
the law that was busting my butt in the first place just hadn’t really occurred
to me.
Turns out, that’s exactly the right place to go. Since they’ve made it completely impossible
to legally dispose of these things in the trash, they now have arranged community
pickup days where you can take them and drop them off, free of charge. Had I only called the County in the first
place I’d have saved myself quite a bit of trouble.
The thing is, why did I have to make forty phone calls to find that
out? Shouldn’t the very first recycling
center who refused me have known about it?
Each and every time I was refused, I immediately asked the Customer
Service Rep if they knew who I should call instead to solve my problem. Usually they said they had no idea, but occasionally
they’d suggest a different recycling center.
One suggested I call the TV manufacturer and ask them, so I called
Zenith and did just that. They directed
me toward three different repair centers in my area who, “should be able to
help.” Could they dispose of a CRT
TV? Nope, nope and nope. Did they know of someone who could? Nope again.
Why don’t people in this industry, who know immediately and with harsh
finality that they absolutely cannot help, know who people should go to
instead? The collection events are
fantastic but if people are clueless to their existence it’s not going to do
anybody very much good.
It also turns out that there was one of these collection events at the
library at the end of my street just last weekend, but we missed the boat on
that one and will now have to take the Albatross for one final car ride (not to
mention figuring out how to lift it into the car) on Tedmas morning. Definitely not the way we were expecting to
start the celebration, but hey – at least it won’t be in residence in my dining
room any longer.
So the takeaways here are this:
1)
Freecycle is very cool and you should use and
support it.
2)
Unless you are aware of the one approved method
for doing so, the government has made it a colossal pain the butt to get rid of
electronic items. Which makes me wonder
if a lot of people, after trying and trying and TRYING to dispose of them
legally aren’t maybe giving up, dismantling them, and hiding them piecemeal in
their trash or dropping them off high cliffs somewhere. The blinding efficiency of the United States
Government at work, as usual.
3)
If you have a CRT television and you need to get
rid of it – call the Environmental Protection Agency. Nobody else will help you. Seriously.
Nobody. I’ve done the legwork.
