Can CDs Be Recycled? 29
Cencini asks: "After spending a nice rainy afternoon backing up files and music onto several CD's, and being aware of the decreasing price of recordable CD media (and increasing general popularity), I can only imagine how many recordable CD's are produced each year, how many are thrown out, and how much in the way of raw materials goes into their production. Has anyone looked into the possibility (creative or industrial) of recycling these CD's, or even the environmental impact of their mass disposal (when Something Better comes down the line)? Given the fact that it's hard to throw away computer monitors in some places nowadays, I wonder where this issue is going, if anywhere..." Despite the fact that data on CDRs may last a long time, there are still situations when CDs and CDRs will be sent to the trash-bins in large numbers (bad burns for example), is there any process that we can use to recycle the used media, or are they destined to end up with audio cassettes,VHS and BETA tapes in the landfills?
It is probably to late. (Score:1)
My walls. (Score:1)
Magic way to return goods? (Score:2)
"creative" (Score:3)
or, for a semi-serious suggestion, you might check the art departments at local schools to see if they need lots of raw material to make lovely centerpieces and mother's day cards.
if you'd have seen A View to a Kill ... (Score:1)
Here's a wall of CD's (Score:2)
The wall is in the office of the appropriately named UK Mirror service.
Baz
They are recyclable, apparently (Score:1)
A friend of mine work in a plastic recycling shop. He told me they recently received a whole shipment of CD, including wrapping and jewel case, to be recycled. Apparently, the plastic is mecanically shredded to fine piece and then separated from the metal through decantation (plastic float, metal sink). The heat from the melting took care of the paper insert.
Beside bad burn, Linux itself is great waster of CD ! Right here, I have a few CD of Red hat 6.0 and 6.1 that are going to the garbage pretty soon ... MSFT, not resting on his laurel, is also a great waster of CD, considering the amount they send to MSDN subscriber. At work, we have a few crate of obsolete MS software on CD, like Windows 3.1 Croat version, VC++ v4.0 kanji Japanese edition or Direct X 2.0 from august 1996. A year worth of coaster for a busy pub !
Yes, they can be (and are) recycled (Score:2)
The CDR will be cut up into very little piece and then the metallic components and the plastic components will be seperated. The plastic is used for various new products (i don't know if they even can produce new CDRs from it); for the metallic part i have forgotten what they use it for (but afair it is reused 100% too).
Re:Yes, they can be (and are) recycled (Score:1)
A steady supply is easily assured by asking the employees of the recycling plant to bring to work their unwanted AOL CD-ROMs.
Re:My walls. (Score:2)
You can see some of them on my webcam at
http://alignment.net
-Restil
Re:Yes, they can be recycled (VHS tapes too) (Score:2)
When geeks get bored... (Score:2)
Don't make the washers too thin or surface tension will hold onto the water between the discs.
You can also use the aluminum evaporated ones as a variable capacitor by scraping a hunk of the labelling plastic off, clamping to the aluminum,and then placing two of these back to back. Change the overlap and fasten together when you reach the right value. Note: Given the coating thicknesses, I might be leary about how much voltage I would put down this.
I prefer (Score:1)
various other choice phrases on my old CDRs, then
I shove them under the door crack of some kid
down teh hall who I know is a homophobe. Fun
stuff. Also try throwing them WAY up on the highway and if you do it just right they shatter EVERYWHERE its cool as shit.
Creative uses for CDs... (Score:2)
My mother makes CDs into ancient wool spinning devices called (curiously) "Spindles" ... Apparently they are from before the spinning wheel was invented hundres of years go ... basically its a dowel with the cds affixed at one end, with a hook into that end of the dowel to guide the wool ...
You spin the whole thing and with a flick of the wrist you've just spun a tiny tiny bit of wool ... musta sucked back in the day
The old ladies dig it cuz its "high-tech" ... :)
Re:if you'd have seen A View to a Kill ... (Score:2)
I can see him, watching Bond, smoking some $3 crack, and then he sees an AOL CD and thinks- Hmm, how would an insane super-genius try to threaten the world with CDs. The obvious answer is by blowing up the moon. Jeez. I wonder what they'd call the new Bond chick...
Miss E.C. Laye?
Miss Bea Jaye?
Miss Shae Ven Pussie?
Re:Yes, they can be (and are) recycled (Score:4)
Information about optical polycarbonate recycling [prostudio.com].
Molly.
Re:CD should not be recycled (Score:1)
CD should not be recycled (Score:3)
They will also preserve information about all we did in the 20th. Think about it! Looking through our garbage is the only way to see a honest representation of a people. CDs will be better than newspapers to tell the people of the future, what the hell happened back in the 90s!
We should fill them up with our daily journals and pack them in the garbage. Nude pics of our girlfriends, scans of receipts, email archives, ICQ logs, anything you can think of. Pack them with all of the things TV and Newspapers will not record about our time.
Re:"creative" (Score:1)
A Byrd in hand... (Score:1)
Pico for life...
If I were stuck on a desert island with only
one person, one book, and one record, I'd
probably die of exposure.
--The Kids In The Hall
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Re:They are recyclable, apparently (Score:1)
Re:When geeks get bored... (Score:2)
Love the idea for the Tesla turbine. Sounds like it would make a really cool science-fair project.
"
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Reuse (Score:1)
Re:Magic way to return goods? (Score:2)
Yet Germany has managed to do precisely that - with packaging, anyway. As of January 1, 1993, distributors must accept at their cost all packaging used to contain retail goods.
Consumers are required to place these items in special bags (separate from organic waste, and certain categories of generic recyclables such as glass and aluminum), which are picked up at curbside and centrally sorted. They are returned to the producing company which must recycle at least 60% of the material.
This responsibility is transferrable, so many companies have cooperated to achieve economies of scale by forming joint ventures to collectively handle classes of recyclable and/or disposable materials. The largest is a pan-industry cooperative called Duales System Deutschland which owns and licenses the right to the Grune Punkt logo that travelers to Germany have no doubt seen everywhere.
The effect has been that producers of retail goods in Germany have drastically improved their packaging, eliminating the insane crap you see in the USA (cookies in their own little plastic shells, single-serve crackers-and-cheese, etc.). Once consumers were faced with paying the actual passed-on costs of these shockingly wasteful products (rather than transferring the costs to their perhaps more responsible neighbors and fellow taxpayers), the demand dried up.
While the sorting and recycling process may be more expensive than dumping the stuff in a landfill or sending it off on a barge to Russia, the net cost may actually go down due to the decrease in wasteful material production. In any case the mitigation of environmental externalities is priceless.
A logical next step, and one that is being considered in Germany and elsewhere, is a similar requirement for goods themselves. The infrastructure is in place; it's a matter of working out the numbers.
Re:Here's a wall of CD's (Score:1)
Real Link [lancs.ac.uk]
Even though I tested it, here is a plain text version in case it gets screwed up:\
http://iain.lancs.ac.uk/html/gallery-misc1.html
Re:CD should not be recycled (Score:1)
The Future will probably have some machine that automagically reads and decodes anything. I just wonder what they'll think about the fact that there are 10,000 AOL CDs for each living person on Earth . . .
Re:Magic way to return goods? (Score:1)
So where do they get the resources to move the stuff back from whence it came? Maybe from the same place they get the resources to transport it to a landfill and bury it. Maybe a well-designed product ought to continue to have inherent value even after it its "useful" life is over, so that someone will find it worth while to transport it. Think about the effort it takes to collect cans, or junk cars. It is obviously worth it to someone. The good thing about such a system is that it doesn't mandate specific procedures or technologies on the manufacturer, as does a law such as requiring all the plastic in a product be of the same type. You just tell them to make the product have a green life-cyle, but let them engineer any solution they want to the problem, including throwing the product in the trash--at their expense. And their customer's expense. But not the competition's customer's expense.
Is that explanation enough?
Re:"creative" (Score:1)
Wow... I don't remember that one... course, I haven't watched it in a bunch of years. I do remember that in I Come In Peace there was an interplanetary drug dealer who had a gun that shot homing CDs that sliced through people's throats.
Re:Who the hell cares? (Score:1)