Can't Cast You Off, Cathode Ray Tube

Seattlest went to our storage unit to get some snowboarding effects recently, noticed there was really nothing of value in the storage unit and solemnly vowed to dispose of all the contents...except for the TV from the '50s. That, we're keeping. The 15" TV that kinda works, though? The 25" TV that was dropped or something? Gone. That ancient CRT monitor? Garbage. The Mac Classic we were holding onto until a project inspired us enough to do something with it? Right.

There are some other odds and whatnot in our 5'x5' monthly-recurring financial burden, but there are few things in this modern world more difficult to make disappear than television sets and computer monitors. The dump down the street advised us to make a U-turn out of there. The computer recycling center tossed its head back and belly laughed.

Everyone was very generous with a colorful flier enumerating the places that would take our cathode ray tubes on weekdays, between the hours of 9 and 11am, in Everett, and everyone advised us that if someone offered to take them for free they probably wouldn't be disposed of properly. There was actually one place in Seattle that would take our toxic waste on a weekend and after considering the vast array of options available to us we figured a drive to SoDo wasn't the end of the world. And it wasn't, but paying $80 to properly dispose a trunk full of expired electronics equipment nearly was. Not only did we have to pay $25 per TV and $15 per monitor, we were taxed--TAXED!--to dispose of these items. Something's not right. The price and half-life of a TV set is plummeting and someday soon it'll cost more to get rid of it than it did to buy it in the first place. Can this cost be built into the purchase price or something?

Okay, asking for the ability to just dump TVs on the curb with the rest of the recycling is a bit much. Being asked to drive across town, pull up to a pay window obviously designed for trucks so that we have knock to make the person inside aware that our wee little car is below, and then having to hand over a credit card so that we're reasonably sure that the TVs won't end up in a landfill is also a lot to be asked.