Disposal of CFL's - was: 3.3V/5V level shifting (was Re: 4000 Series CMOS Parts?)

--- On Thu, 11/10/11, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: Yes, but of course. This is human nature. There is a similar problem with old tires around here. The garbage man won't take them, and disposal costs a few dollars. Therefore, it's quite common to see them discarded into woods, tossed into the median on highways, or in the river. An acquaintance of mine, a couple years ago, faced with problems disposing of a massive pile of Compaq Deskpro Pentium 1's, was not about to pay the ten bucks apiece the "recycling" company wanted. The trash men where he lived wouldn't take them, and nobody else wanted them. Therefore, there are now three Ford Taurus loads of old PC's at the bottom of the river, deposited there under cover of darkness. While I don't approve of his methods, I can understand the problem. Disposal of some things is difficult. Old refrigerators, tires, computers, batteries - they have to go somewhere. And nobody wants to pay to get rid of something. I think it's getting better, but it still has a long way to go. And unfortunately, these new CFL's and other "greeny" devices aren't helping. For years we have thrown our burned out incandescent light bulbs in the trash. They're harmless and inert - glass and metal. But CFL's contain mercury and other chemicals. Probably not much of them, so it's likely not as big an issue now... but it could be in the future. In my experience, CFL's really don't last too long - about the same as a normal incandescent - and when they do go, they tend to burn and melt the base. Nobody is going to bother hanging onto them, waiting for some kind of option for recycling. They go in the trash. Of course, the real problem is that we have a society that produces massive amounts of electronics with a very short usable life. Rather than addressing the symptoms, they really need to focus on the cause - and produce devices that don't *need* to be replaced every six months. With every step towards being "green", we take two steps back, by creating more and more broken or unusable stuff. RoHS regulations have introduced unreliable lead-free solder, and that's introduced massive piles of junk laptop computers and game consoles into the garbage. I can't count the number of machines I've seen rendered irreparable due to faulty solder joints on large BGA chips. They're starting to get the hang of it, and newer machines seem to be slightly better, but still. It's all politics, and very little of it actually has anything to do with realistically being efficient or polluting less. Another side effect.. as they remove more and more materials from the computers, they get less reliable. They ALSO get less attractive to recycle, because there isn't enough material to extract to make it worthwhile. -Ian