ALPHARETTA, GA.—The hotel industry is failing to educate owners and managers on how to recycle television sets, or often that television sets need to be recycled by state and local requirements. This is the key finding of a new survey conducted by The Refinishing Touch, a specialist in re-upholstery, on-site furniture refinishing and armoire modification services.
The Refinishing Touch polled 103 hotel managers, operators and owners. It found that despite guidance, and in some cases state laws, to reduce e-waste, such as television sets ending up in landfills, two-thirds weren’t aware of what the requirements were for safe disposal. A quarter (26 percent) of respondents were completely unaware of any requirements around television disposal.
Of the respondents, 13 percent were responsible for more than one hotel as part of a chain or brand, and each respondent was responsible for between 15 to 2,000 television sets within their operations, with the average of 176 sets per respondent.
Many Currently Purchasing Flatscreens
When asked if they had recently purchased flatscreen televisions, more than 39 percent said that they had bought televisions in 2009; while a further 24 percent said they had or would buy flatscreen televisions in 2010.
Television disposal has become a problem for the hotel industry as independent and chain hotels look to update bulky cathode ray tube television sets and replace them with modern flatscreen televisions.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the United States currently produces more than three million tons of e-waste every year, including television sets and computer monitors, which hold high levels of toxins as well as containing important recyclable resources: precious metals, plastics and glass.
When asked how they had or would dispose of unwanted television sets, just under a third (30 percent) of respondents realized the need for an approved vendor to remove and recycle unwanted television sets; six percent said they used junkyards; 15 percent advertised them on sites such as CraigsList. The remainder found alternate methods which included donating the sets to local communities, passing them to other smaller hotel operations or selling/offering them to employees.
Many Unaware of Lead Danger
The survey revealed that many respondents were unaware of how toxic the components of a television set are. When asked which product contains more toxins, a pack of 20 cigarettes or a television set, more than a fifth of respondents (22 percent) thought the chemical volume was greater in cigarettes. Old televisions contain between four and eight pounds of lead.
“The television set can seem innocuous,” says Mario Insenga, president and CEO of The Refinishing Touch. “We’re all so familiar with it as a product, at home and at work, that it’s easy to overlook the dangerous toxins that are used in its construction. As more state laws and hopefully federal laws come into force, all organizations and individuals are going to have to review how they recycle TVs, but in the interim it’s crucial to view e-waste from a perspective of responsibility. If you gave someone a box full of lead, cadmium and mercury and asked them to dispose of it, most humans would feel a moral responsibility to do so safely and wouldn’t even consider throwing it away. Yet when disguised as a television set, people are doing just that without even realizing it.
“It’s important that hotels, brands, managers and individuals understand how to ethically and responsibly recycle television sets,” Insenga continued. “Since we launched our television recycling service in May 2010, we’ve worked with hotel chains and independent hotels to remove and recycle televisions with ethical and environmental responsibility.”
Go to The Refinishing Touch.
