As the television death toll rises on the eve of digital switchover there is one TV graveyard with a flicker of life

They were switched off and tossed aside in favour of something sharper or flatter – or something that actually works.

But there is a flicker of life in these screens yet.

The piles of discarded televisions and computers are at an electrical recycling centre in the North-West, where they will be ripped apart, crunched up and then reborn.

PIC BRUCE ADAMS / COPY M

On the scrapheap: As the digital TV switchover takes hold thousands of televisions and computer monitors have been chucked out and wait to be recycled - like at this site in St Helens, Merseyside

Around five million like them are thrown away in Britain each year, three-quarters of which must be recycled, under EU laws.

The pile will continue to grow as the switch to digital broadcasting gathers pace, with an estimated four million sets scrapped by 2012 – enough to fill 100 Olympic swimming pools.

Viridor Waste Management in St Helens, Merseyside, is already recycling between 150,000 and 200,000 televisions every year, along with computer monitors and almost every other type of electrical device including freezers and mobile phones.

There are 170 centres like it around the UK.

A spokesman for Viridor said that more than 96 per cent of a relatively modern TV can be recycled.

First of all the circuit board is removed, the copper cable is taken out and any plastic is shredded for recycling.

Ferguson 20G3 television set from 1985.

Out: Older televisions are set for the scrapheap as the switch to digital looms

A special process is then used to cut the two different types of glass in the set – the non-leaded panel at the front and the layer of leaded glass behind.

Using a hot wire, an electrical current is sent through the glass to heat it up.

It is then tapped with a cold hammer which creates a 'thermal shock' separating the layers.

Then staff use a device known as a Cullett machine, with a large cylindrical drum, to shake the glass, removing any coatings, before it is shot into one-ton bags and sent off to be made into new television screens.

Even very old televisions, which are less easily recycled, can have their valuable copper coils melted down and sold for scrap.

Recycling centres will soon begin to feel the pressure from the digital switchover, as the roll-out begins in the Border TV region this month.

The area will go completely digital by June next year.

The fashion for flat-screen televisions is also contributing to the mountain of discarded sets.

Many of those shown here, for instance, are still working and were replaced by owners eager to buy the latest LCD or plasma model. But we are all bearing the cost of such extravagance.

Under the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive, the electronics industry has to pay for all televisions to be recycled.

This cost is then passed back to the consumer.

Plummeting commodity prices have added to the expense for producers, who now spend around £50million breaking down and reusing circuit boards, metal and plastics.

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