Madison, WI recently enacted the $25 disposal fee and by doing so wrecked my TV curbshopping hobby (although my $150 working 42" plasma made up for a long drought). The local TV repair shop that used to drop all their abandonded sets on the curb now probably does like my uncle and smashes the sets into tiny pieces and does a midnight dump at a friend's apartment. Illegal as hell though.

This is what usually happens when these types of laws get passed. Follow the money... I'll bet part of that $25 fee goes to the government, and a larger portion goes to whatever Mob-owned garbage company picks up the trash. This is the great scam of recycling... Most of these contractors are allowed to add the "recycled" items to the regular wastestream if the market prices of plastic/paper/glass/tin/etc. will not allow the recycler to make a profit.

Now the justification for these laws, as they relate to TVs, is the lead contained in the glass. Somebody educate me how the lead leaves the glass and enters the groundwater? I hope your explaination is good, because turning nuclear waste into glass is the process used to make it "safe". If the lead was contained in the wood, capacitors, or even as an alloy in the steel, you could make a case. Thousands of years from now, glass will still be glass... It doesn't breakdown.

..And since we are talking about Detroit-area trash, I might add that although I can think of no other place in the world with a higher concentration of heavy manufacturing, refining, forging, smelting, etc., we have some of the best tap-water quality in the nation.

This is non-sence, and I wouldn't feel a moments guilt tossing a TV in the trash... At least a new one!

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