In Strategic CSR, a large part of Chapter 11 is dedicated to a discussion around waste, looking at the consequences of our convenient, high-tech lifestyle from the perspective of the amount of plastic and e-waste that we generate and throw away. The article in the url below adds to that growing pile of detritus, and the sense that we don't know how to deal with it, by highlighting the challenges of recycling old CDs:
"The CD recycling process [involves the discs being] … granulated into raw polycarbonate plastic, resulting in a white and clear powdery material that glints and resembles large snowflake crystals stuck together."
Why is the recycling of CDs important?
"The material, which takes one million years to decompose in a landfill, can eventually be used to mold durable items for cars, home building materials and eyeglasses. But that's assuming anybody buys the raw material."
But, as we know with the markets for several recycled materials, those buyers have disappeared in recent years, and especially since China stopped being willing to act as the recycler of last resort for the rest of the world:
"The polycarbonate granules used to be sold mostly to China, where the United States sent the bulk of its recycling until 2018 before China restricted imports of mixed paper and most plastic. The price that China was willing to pay per pound of granulated polycarbonate began to dip in 2008, … and by 2011 it had plummeted."
In addition to highlighting the importance of recycling CDs, and also spelling out how difficult it is, the article looks at how the CD became such an important part of our lives:
"CDs may seem like a relic, but when they entered consumer homes in the 1980s, they were a revelation in information sharing. 'In the early '80s, information storage was mainly in magnetic tape and magnetic devices,' said Kees Immink, who was one of eight engineers to create the CD in 1979. 'The CD was groundbreaking.'"
Of course, it was the shift from vinyl to CDs that led to this growth:
"CDs became ubiquitous: In the 1990s, AOL sent them to potential internet subscribers. In the mid-'90s, makers of video games began to shift away from cartridges and toward discs. By 2000, more than 900 million music CDs were sold, a record number that was never surpassed again, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. (Eminem, Destiny's Child and Britney Spears were all top sellers.) And then, just a year later, Apple released the first iPod, which allowed users to carry 1,000 CD-quality songs in a six-ounce device in their pocket."
But, in the U.S. at least, it wasn't playing music that caused the rapid expansion of the number of CDs produced, but the emergence of the internet:
"In a recent interview, Janice Brandt, a former senior consultant at AOL and the marketing guru behind the company's 1990s campaign that produced millions of CDs for potential customers, reflected on how much has changed, technologically, in just a few decades. The AOL campaign, which at one point in the late 1990s had a budget of $750 million, was a huge moneymaker for AOL that brought millions of new users to the internet. Ms. Brandt said she thought that probably every other CD in existence is an AOL CD."
For now, however, CDs continue to be replaced by other, more efficient storage technologies:
"This month brings another small blow to CDs as Sony and Microsoft are releasing the latest editions of their game consoles, the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X, without disc drives."
Even though CDs are not as omnipresent as they once were, there are still hundreds of millions of them out there and, at some point, something has to be done with them:
"In a global sense, recycling CDs is not a big environmental priority right now, according to Judith Enck, a former E.P.A. regional administrator, who founded Beyond Plastics, an anti-plastic project based at Bennington College in Vermont. … 'You look at other materials, like cardboard and glass and aluminum, and that's all included in curbside recycling programs because there are businesses that will buy all of that for a reliable market,' Ms. Enck said. 'There just aren't markets for this type of plastic.' So, for now, old CDs languish in basement or attics, or just end up with other plastics -- in the trash."
Take care
David
David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2020
Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler5e
Strategic CSR Simulation: http://www.strategiccsrsim.com/
The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: https://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/
The Uneasy Afterlife of Our Dazzling Trash
By Sandra E. Garcia
November 7, 2020
The New York Times
