Noranda's roots in recycling electronics and other materials go back to 1976, when the company began looking for alternative feed to fill its underutilized Horne smelter in northern Quebec. Over the years Noranda has processed an oddball assortment of material in order to recycle contained metal -- including photographic material containing silver from Eastman Kodak Co., antiquated phones sent from East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell, and Mexican coins replaced during the devaluation of the country's currency.

The Horne smelter burns at a scorching 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit, and because Noranda has invested in special equipment to recover metals found in electronics, gear from all over North America and Europe finds its way via boat, rail and truck to the northern site.

Old electronic equipment, however, must be properly dissected before it is sent to the smelter. At the Roseville, Calif., facility, equipment with reusable parts is taken apart by hand and the plastic is removed. Remaining parts and other equipment are dropped into a series of powerful shredding machines that grind the equipment into pieces the size of quarters at the rate of three tons an hour. "You could put a Coke machine in there," Mr. Sippel says.

Magnets and electromagnetic currents are used to separate steel and aluminum from the shredded material before it is sent to the Horne smelter to be refined along with mined ore.

Write to Mark Heinzl at mark.heinzl@wsj.com

August 13, 2001

As Flat Screen Gains Admirers, Old Cathode Ray Tubes Pile Up

Associated Press

NEW YORK -- For a device so key to the high-tech boom, the computer monitor's core technology is pretty darn old. The monitor's funnel-shaped cathode ray tube has evolved little since Germany's Karl Ferdinand Braun invented it in 1897.

Sales of the boxy tube monitors are giving way to slimmed-down flat-panel monitors that use liquid crystal display technology. But environmentalists warn that adoption of LCD screens will send truckloads of old CRT monitors whose glass tubes contain phosphorous and between four and eight pounds of lead into landfills.

Users generally agree a flat LCD panel is easier on the eyes than the incessant flicker of a tube monitor. The sleek screen saves desk space and runs cooler with less electricity. With prices dropping, at least two companies, South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. and NEC/Mitsubishi, a joint venture of Japan's NEC Corp. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. now offer 15-inch LCDs under $400. The psychological price barrier of $350 is within smashing distance.

The switch to LCDs is further exacerbated by the computer's ultrashort life span. The National Safety Council estimates the U.S. will be awash in 500 million defunct computers and monitors by 2007.

For now, probably no more than 10% of America's obsolete monitors make it to a reputable recycler for disposal, said Ted Smith, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Commission, San Jose, Calif. Most get stuffed into attics, shipped to scrap yards in developing countries, or tossed into the trash and buried in municipal dumps, he said.

Things are different in Japan and Western Europe. Manufacturers are often forced by law to accept trade-ins of old monitors, which usually get sent to a recycler who disassembles them and sells the raw materials. The European Union is also close to adopting legislation that forces makers to phase out toxic materials like lead and mercury in electronic devices.

Mr. Smith's nonprofit group lobbies for similar restrictions in the U.S. Currently, only Massachusetts and California prohibit dumping CRTs in household waste and landfilling or incinerating them. The restrictions seek to prevent lead from crushed tubes leaching into groundwater, or dioxin from incinerated monitors from fouling the air.

A handful of companies, with Hewlett-Packard Co. and International Business Machines Corp. among them, take back old computer equipment for disposal. Most don't. "Right now, producers have no responsibility after they produce the product," said Mr. Smith. "If they have to take it back, it'll give them incentive to redesign it."

To the trash handlers who deal with electronic waste, the switch in monitor technology translates into towering piles of scrap.

"Flat screens are going to push millions of TVs and monitors out of the homes," said Dan Schimenti of HMR USA Inc., a computer-recycling concern in San Francisco whose warehouse accepts 60,000 pounds of monitors a week from regional dumps. "It's already occurring. We've got 18-wheelers coming in every day, full of old monitors and TVs."

California's new dumping restrictions divert the devices to HMR, where employees dismantle the machines into raw plastic, glass and metals. HMR sells the scrap for pennies a pound, said Mr. Schimenti. He added that HMR now plans to enlarge its 100,000 square-foot waterfront warehouse, gearing up "to handle a huge influx of TVs and monitors directly related to flat screens."

LCD sales predictions dovetail with HMR's building plans. Flat-panel monitor sales increased 88% last year, and will more than double this year to 13 million units, according to technology-research firm IDC.

Major PC manufacturers such as IBM, Toshiba Corp. and Compaq Computer Corp. offer their own brand of LCD monitors. Electronics makers -- like NEC, Sharp Corp. and LG Electronics Inc. -- also sell them.

Some companies, including Apple Computer Inc., are dropping tube monitors for most products. Sharp says it will phase out its CRT televisions by 2005, and sell only flat-panel TVs. Hitachi Ltd. announced last month that it would stop manufacturing cathode ray tubes.

Even so, the tube monitor faces no imminent doom. Flat-panels cost more to make than CRTs, and will command higher prices for the next few years, analysts say. As the developed world embraces LCD displays, cheap tube monitors that now cost about $150 for a 15-inch screen will find new markets in poorer countries.

Although world-wide sales of tube monitors fell slightly last year, IDC's Eric Haruki predicts they will inch upward until 2005 or 2006. By then, the flat panel display may be close to eclipsing the 109-year-old cathode ray tube.

In 2000, CRT sales dwarfed those of LCDs, by 97 million to 6.3 million, according to IDC. By 2005, IDC predicts sales of 42 million LCDs and 120 million CRTs.

Compared with a CRT, the raw material of a flat-panel monitor is a breath of fresh air. Their screens illuminate with a simple fluorescent light, eliminating the tube monitor's radiation and lead shielding.

The manufacturing of flat panel screens does involve caustic chemicals, however, and some LCD brands contain mercury in their switches, Mr. Smith said.

Perhaps most significantly, flat panels demand a fraction of the CRTs' power. Because they run cooler, a roomful of LCD monitors require less air conditioning. These advantages contrast with the oncoming glut of obsolete tube monitors.

"It really is a public-health disaster waiting to happen," Mr. Smith said.

Copyright © 2001 Associated Press

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