What about recycling...?

Millions of monitors and flat-screen TVs will be soon at the end of their useful life or maybe they will become obsolete, so they would become a threat to the environment. This situation brings a very serious problem to the world, because we already have mountains and mountains of technological waste in the world. However, there is a group of researchers that are developing a set of tools to help recycling these devices in an efficient way. The LCDs that were created before 2009 use fluorescent lighting cold cathode bulbs to light the screens. These screens also contain mercury, and that is why it is so difficult to incinerate them or just throw them to a rubbish dump. During the following years, is estimated that billions of these screens will be retired of service every year. A professor at the Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana in the United States, called Fu Zhao, who is also one of the researchers, warns that if those screens are not properly treated, they may cause a serious damage in the environment. Furthermore, Fu Zhao and some of his students are elaborating a system to help the recycling industry to provide an appropriate treatment to these screens. The objective is to produce the tools and the equipment specially designed to disassemble LCDs within an acceptable labor cost and, at the same time, to recover the most expensive materials included in the screens to reduce the environmental risks.

When I knew about this research and the tools that are being created to reduce the environmental damage that these screens produce, I was very surprised to know that these screens have a useful life of only 4 or 5 years. This is something that we are not told of when we are buying them. I also think that this kind of technology should not be allowed to be created, because we have to take care of the environment and of course these TV are not helping to protect it. Do you have one of these TVs? If so, what will you do with it when it becomes useless?