Well, I work in a library and I can tell you what people tried to do with them. During most of the 1990s, I would get one or two phone calls a month from people wanting to donate all of their LPs to our library. They would usually blather on about how “most of this stuff has never come out on CD” (not true in most cases) and then say that all they wanted in return was a statement of the collection’s dollar value typed on library letterhead, so they could get a nice fat tax deduction. When I explained that (a) the IRS didn’t allow me to appraise donations and (b) we weren’t collecting LPs anymore, they’d get mad and hang up on me. So I guess they ended up in landfills.
Nah, they got sold at yard sales to people who drone on all night about how much better vinyl is than CDs and make you listen to 2 notes out of a song and then do the same thing with another album, then another.
What he said - word for word. I’m involved with the geomembrane part of the landfill, and we test the holy hell out of it as well BEFORE it goes to site.
Shmoozing hat [on / robby, which firm do you work for? I may actually know you ! /off]
I used to feel very guilty about my trash going into landfills (I live in a college town where recycling is very popular). That was until the Waste Management corporation started complaining that our county landfill was “underperforming” and was threatening to close it! Now I don’t worry so much about it.
I’m well aware that CDs and DVDs would be a mere drop in the ocean compared to the general waste of our information society. I’ve seen the pictures of those computer dumps in China (no cite, unfortunately).
I was simply curious if there was a proper procedure or indeed if anyone had even thought about what to do with the waste discs - it seems like we’re going to have a lot more of them to throw away than we did vinyl LPs or cassettes. It was something I’d never considered, myself. Sadly it seems like burying them is still the best way to deal with it.
I had hundreds of thousands of CDs to recycle (350,000 or so) and I can tell you that it’s a mighty big heap of plastic - over 5500lbs, enough to cover most of a long flatbed truck to a depth of 3-4 feet (I’ve got photos). In my life I have undoubtedly generated/tossed out more garbage than that but nowadays I recognize that just because I’m doing “X” damage to the environment that doesn’t mean that “2X” is acceptable.
The only thing this planet has too much of is people. Solve that problem and waste management is fixed too, along with much more stuff that is killing humans as a species and the planet as a carrier of life.