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November 22, 2005
Throwing the VHS out with the bathwater: what to do with all that tape?
Casey Dolan of LA Times writes about the fate of all those bulky VHS tapes. "Consumer discards... are just the tip of the tape-waste iceberg. Film studios, postproduction facilities, video- duplication companies and other industry enterprises are dumping tapes more quickly than Disney can shed Miramax movies... The tapes, which are not biodegradable, arrive 5,000 to 10,000 a day at Tropical Media in Burbank, Calif. Tropical and similar companies hire independent recycling companies to break down the cassettes in Mexico by stripping the plastic and screws off the tapes... Given that it takes one-sixth of a gallon of petroleum to produce a single half-inch VHS tape, the more tapes can be reused, the less they strain the world's energy sources..." One spokesman "points out that such processes fall short of... "recycling," of turning the products into something new. "It's actually reconditioning. The tape shell is made from engineering resin that can't be reused." Yet Sony announced in August that it has found a way to do just that. The solid polystyrene cases are chemically modified to create a water-soluble liquid polymer that can then be used to pull pollutants from industrial wastewater. A single cassette shell can treat 65 barrels of wastewater, according to the company's Web site."
Posted by pride at November 22, 2005 12:01 AM
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