Vertatique has been covering the Green ICT implications of America's conversion to digital television (DTV) for the past three years: consumer e-waste, broadcaster e-waste, and consumer energy consumption*. We noted in 2008 the EPA estimate of 99.1 million (analog) TVs in storage at the end of 2007. This number is likely to have been significantly altered by the DTV conversion completed in June 2009.

The e-waste implication of the DTV conversion was not well considered during America's DTV planning. One can anticipate that energy/environmental impact will become a consideration in future e-infrastructure policy deliberations and countries' DTV transition experiences can provide valuable data.

(In a bizarre twist on this issue, death by analog TV appeared to be on the rise in the United States toward the end of 2009. Apparently, older, heavier analog CRTs are being relegated to children's rooms and other places where the support furniture is inadequate.)

The National Center for Electronics Recycling (NCER) offers the Per Capita Collection Index (PCCI) "designed to measure changes in the amount of used electronic equipment, such as computers, televisions and monitors collected in representative programs across the United States." It reports that recycling by weight increased 8% in 2009 over 2008. Is this a positive or negative indicator in the year tens of millions of heavy analog TVs were rendered obsolete by the DTV conversion?

The NCER cautions against an extrapolation of its e-waste weight numbers, but some back-of-the-envelope calculations were not reassuring about the fate of those analog TVs. In fact, an absolute increase in recycling poundage does not imply an increase in the recycling rate if the amount of TVs disposed increased proportionally. The EPA estimated that back in 2007 only 18% of TVs by weight were recycled; the rest were landfilled.

The 2009 EPA initiative described in the comment below is no more reassuring. If we assume an average weight of 50 lbs. per TV, it accounted for only 0.16 million units.

Of course, there will soon be a reason to scrap that new DTV: 3DTV. Bloomberg reported about John Shegerian, Chairman and CEO of Electronic Recyclers International (ERI):

"after speaking recently with numerous television manufacturers, he believes that the already hotly anticipated 3D Television technology, set to sell significantly faster than initially anticipated, will follow suit in terms of bringing new opportunities for the electronic waste recycling industry."

(Earlier in the article, Shegerian had praised the iPad as an e-waste generator.)

Please comment below if you have insight into what has happened to all the analog TVs. Click on the "recycle" tag under this post's title to learn more about e-waste/cyberwaste, including dramatic photos.

* Two consumer energy issues are the millions of analog-to-digital converter boxes being attached to older TVs and increased power consumptions from displays. While an LCD display of the same screen area and resolution as the CRT it replaces will consume less energy, many replacements are actually upgrades requiring increased energy consumption for higher pixel counts (HDTV vs. SDTV), increased screen area, and/or more power-intensive technologies (plasma vs. LCD). California is considering display power regulations that may effectively ban sales of large plasma displays in the state.