SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) – This story came to us from an ABC 4 viewer, who wrote, “The Red Lion Salt Lake City Hotel is disposing of their old crt TV’s in a Waste Management dumpster instead of recycling or e-cycling the sets."
We took action to see if this is really happening and how to get those old TV's disposed of properly.
When ABC 4 got word TV's were being dumped improperly by the Red Lion Hotel we took action to see for ourselves. Sure enough at least a dozen old Phillips TV’s filled a Waste Management dumpster in the hotel's parking lot.
We took pictures to show the hotel manager but he was gone for the day, so we got on the phone with Waste Management to let them know what was happening. We then talked to Scott Anderson with the Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste who told us dumping old appliances like this can be very dangerous. Anderson says, “The concern with the cathode ray tubes in TV’s is that they can contain what we call heavy metals or chemical constituents that potentially can get out into the environment if they're placed in a landfill and they're crushed.”
If Red Lion's old televisions end up where they're not supposed to, Anderson says the hotel can face a potential violation of the law and receive an enforcement action.
24 hours later we checked back. Nine of the TV’s have been taken out of the dumpster. This time the manager Mark Mundel was available and says the rest will be taken out Wednesday. Mundel explains, “If we were trying to hide them we'd put them in our dumpster back in the back that's a compactor so we're not trying to hide anything. Of course we're trying to be great citizens here as well.”
Mundel says it was all a miscommunication with Waste Management, “We assumed that they were doing some sorting out of those types of products before so they were intermixed with some stuff and based on some clarification we have now separated those.”
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, televisions with cathode ray tubes - or crts - contain between 4-7 pounds of lead. So whether it's a business or a home, anyone who doesn't need their old electronics should e-cycle them. For more information on how to do that visit
http://www.deq.utah.gov/Pollution_Prevention/electronics.htm.
