Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd established the schemes to reclaim the plastic used in the chassis of CRT-based television sets and reuse it for the parts of flat-screen TV "Viera."
The schemes will be adopted for the new models that will hit the Japanese market in 2008. Sony has already announced that it will introduce the same kind of schemes for LCD TV "Bravia," which will be released in spring 2008.
The plastic used in CRT-based TVs often contains specific bromine fire retardants and coating materials regulated by the RoHS directive. Therefore, it has been difficult to reuse the plastic for the parts of new products.
Matsushita paved the way for the recycle by establishing the following three schemes.
(1) The company enabled to quickly check the types of fire retardants and the existence of coating materials with accuracy by using "Plasector," a self-developed identification device for plastic. By cross-checking the results of this check and the data of the materials used that have been collected for some time, recyclable plastic is efficiently identified.
(2) The company newly developed a technology to modify recycled plastic in collaboration with a plastic manufacturer. The new technology enabled to achieve the properties such as fire retardancy and strength that are same or better than those of the plastics used for existing flat-screen TVs.
(3) The company introduced a hazardous chemical identification system in every process of plastic recycling to comply with the RoHS directive.
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