E-SCRAP 2003: Through the Looking Glass

Fewer Americans are looking through leaded glass when they watch TV or use their computers, making for a difficult recycling market.

The erosion of the glass screen market in favor of flatter liquid crystal display (LCD) screens is adding to the challenges facing recyclers of computer monitors, televisions and the cathode ray tubes (CRTs) within.

As some states have banned the disposal of CRTs in landfills, recycling of the materials has become more desirable from a solid waste management standpoint. Unfortunately, the need for recycled CRT glass as a feedstock is diminishing along with the overall market, according to presenters at the E-Scrap 2003 show, which took place last week in Orlando.

Two of the largest CRT glass recyclers offered their views of the North American market, and they were equally gloomy on the consuming end. Herb Schall of Dlubak Glass, Upper Sandusky, Ohio, says the company has developed a good closed-loop process for recycling CRTs, but that loop requires some CRT manufacturing to remain in North America.

Both Schall and Greg Voorhees of Envirocycle, Hallstead, Pa., noted that as of two years ago, there were only a handful of CRT glassmaking plants in the U.S. and Canada, with most of these concentrated in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Now, even this small collection of plants is dwindling, while the remaining CRT glass and tube glass (another potential cullet consumer) factories make capacity cuts. Voorhees says there are currently just four CRT glass plants left in the U.S., with two each in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Both companies are looking at alternative markets for cullet made from recycled CRT units. Schall says Dlubak has developed a “popcorn glass” product that has the qualities of a plastic composite, and the company is also looking at other composite possibilities. He notes, though, that the lead content in CRT glass prohibits it from being used in many applications.

Voorhees says Envirocycle is, like Dlubak, developing alternative materials and products and has also investigated the export market. In most instances, selling processed glass cullet as feedstock to a glassmaker’s furnace remains the highest value market attainable.

Louis Magdits of the Doe Run Co., Boss, Mo., offered a look at another CRT glass recycling option: Its shipment to a primary lead smelter to be used as a fluxing agent.