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How do you recycle a TV?

Remember videocassettes? Yeah, it’s been a while, but without TiVo one sometimes wants to record TV.

We have a little TV/VCR all-in-one, where the VCR was built in directly under the screen. The VCR has been unreliable for a while, but A tested it on Friday evening by putting a tape in. No dice; it wouldn’t play, and when it tried to eject the tape, it got stuck in this odd loop where it couldn’t eject the tape, detected that it was stuck, and shut off. When you turned it back on, it tried ejecting the tape again, failed, and shut off, etc.

I found the four screws that took the back cover off, then unhooked the internal bottom plate which held a lot of circuit board and the mechanics of the cassette-handling device. After removing a few screws, I managed a relatively successful cassette-ectomy, reconstructed the patient… and discovered that it was still trying, unsuccessfully, to eject a tape which wasn’t there.

If you’ve already thought, “Time to open it up again,” you think like me.

This time, I hoped I would find whatever connections existed between the cassette handler and the circuit boards, unplug them, and leave a functioning TV with no VCR. I was able to detach the cassette handler, but then when I powered it up again, it performed the same five-second shutdown stunt.

Then I started looking for things I could unplug. Being relatively cautious (as far as that can apply to someone with a VCR in pieces on the living room floor) I started by unplugging one cable, then trying to power up. This time, it wouldn’t power up at all. I plugged that cable back in… and it still wouldn’t power up.

At that point, I decided the patient had died, and it was time to stop spending time on it. I put the pieces back in roughly the right locations, bagged the spare screws, and put the back cover on. It went out for the Saturday morning trash pick-up.

Except it didn’t get picked up. I suppose it’s a “large item” or maybe hazardous waste, what with the tube and circuit boards.

So what’s the responsible, environmentally-friendly way to dispose of a TV?

Now Playing: Shining in the Moonlight from Nuclear Furniture by Jefferson Starship

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Posted by pjm on April 24, 2007 12:30 PM |

Comments

I suppose it depends on the town you live in. In my town, we have a recycling center where we can drop off the usual suspects like newspapers, cans, and bottles, but also electronics like TVs and computers, used oil, and batteries.

Now if I could just figure out what to do with my old broken lawn mower….

Posted by: ralph | April 24, 2007 10:30 PM

The way to get rid of an old lawn mower is to give it to your brother-in-law.

Posted by: Betsey Morse | April 25, 2007 10:00 AM

At least here in Medford, the answer turns out to be relatively easy to find on the redesigned city website. You pick up a $20 recycling sticker at city hall, then call Waste Management to schedule a CRT pick-up. They then dispose of things responsibly (I hope).

Posted by: pjm | May 16, 2007 10:20 AM

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