Dan Kallins's quotation of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts pitch for CRT
recycling is a classic example of what I have been talking about - what we
used to call in college "handwaving" in support of the practice.
Interestingly, it does not mention EPA rules, even though the state has been
having a feud with EPA on the subject for years. This is policy driven by
ideology, not reason.
*       A statement of amount of waste in tons and not in percent, so no way
to gauge the magnitude of the situation
*       An unsubstantiated estimate of huge future increases - no way to
determine the accuracy
*       Implications that of course the refuse has to be incinerated or go
into a landfill in Massachusetts and not be hauled out (even though it was
imported into the state from somewhere else), and that there's no room for
any more landfills in the state
*       Unsubstantiated claim of potential risk (in this case, contaminated
incinerator ash cannot be used for asphalt; we're not told why), even though
the ground has lots of lead in it (no mention of contaminating the water
supply - maybe because only four percent gets landfilled)
*       Recycling will reduce the need for strip mining and acid mining (by
an insignificant amount); no mention of the waste of resources by taxpayer
or consumer subsidy to make this happen.
In a part of the web page that Dan did not quote, it states that the cost
for recycling is coming down. The page implies that recycling might pay for
itself some day. However, it hasn't been updated since 1999, so maybe they
were too optimistic and didn't want to give us the latest numbers. It states
that they plan to spend $300K just on collecting CRTs from half the state in
2000. It states that in the first six months of 1999 they collected 12,000
CRTs and monitors (again no comparison to, say, the number of TV's and
monitors sold during that time, so no basis for comparison). That sounds
like quite a few dollars per CRT to me.
Perhaps this lack of rigor is in part due to lack of anyone challenging them
to do a better job in making their case.

Note to Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection: I'd be happy
to post to the IPC Leadfree forum any response you might have to this
critique.

Gordon Davy
Baltimore, MD
[log in to unmask]
410-993-7399

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