Dive Brief:

• Analysis from Resource Recycling has found the volume of CRT screens is down in two West Coast states as more flat-panel displays and other lightweight devices are received instead. Yet CRT volume remains the same elsewhere, with no clear reason why.
• In Washington, the overall volume of electronics collected fell from a peak of 45.2 million pounds in 2013 to 42.6 million pounds in 2015, and 2016 is on pace to be even lower. In California, about 103 million pounds of CRT glass were received in 2014 and that dropped to 90 million in 2015. Numbers for 2016 are down 26% so far.
• In North Carolina, however, about 93% of the TVs collected during the 2014-2015 program year were CRTs and that figure is expected to stay the same for 2015-2016.

Dive Insight:

While the full reason behind these opposite trends is unknown, officials think it has something to do with the amount of material that residents are bringing in overall. For example, North Carolina's program collected an average of 3.84 pounds per person as compared to Washington's 6 pounds per person.

"Essentially, more of the backlog has come out in states like Washington. And we're still clearly working through the backlog of legacy TVs in particular," said Rob Taylor, local government assistance team leader at the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, to Resource Recycling. "We've been slower to recover them."

Based on this logic, and similar figures of declining CRT volumes in Ontario as well, it would seem that CRT volumes may just take longer to drop in some places than others depending on when residents get around to bringing their old TVs in. With a number of collection centers closing, and special drop-off days unable to handle the volume of material in some cases, it's not always simple to get rid of e-waste depending on a person's location.