I have never personally bought a television but I am not one of those anti-TV zealots. I know a guy who is a strident crusader against television. He even has one of those little remotes that are designed to turn off any television model within its range. My overzealous plasticless tip of the day is stop buying remote controls. Many of the electronic devices that have a remote control feature also have perfectly good non-remote controls. You just have to get off of the couch and walk those three or four steps over to your entertainment center. Can you imagine what our great grandparents would think of the idea that every household has to have its own entertainment center?
But I digress… The main thing that I wanted to talk about in this post is the looming threat to the environment of millions of television sets that are about to become obsolete when the USA goes digital only in about 70 days. Here is a widget from TakeBackMyTV.com, a site that is pressuring electronics companies to establish responsible recycling programs.
The plastic parts of a television set are arguably less hazardous than the heavy metals like lead, mercury, and cadmium. There is a lot of PVC in a TV and here is what TakeBackMyTV has to say about it:
Hazardous chemical additives (like phthalates) can leach when PVC components of electronic products are landfilled, and burning PVC produces dioxins, a group of the most potent synthetic chemicals ever tested, which can harm the immune and reproductive systems, and some of which are known to cause cancer. The U.S. EPA estimates that levels of dioxin contamination in the general population is at or near the level at which adverse health effects can be observed in both humans and animals. PVC manufacture and disposal adds to both the phthalate and dioxin body burden in all of us.
My suggestion to avoid plastic consumption as it relates to this planned obsolescence of televisions is to not bother replacing your old television. If you are reading this blog, you must have internet access. Television-like experiences are still increasing in quantity and quality on the internet. You can leave your old television where it is, maybe your cat likes to lay on top of it.
