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A comment on EU agrees on total ban of bee-harming pesticides. Parent comment

Re:EU agrees on total ban of bee-harming pesticides by samstave on Friday April 27, 2018 @03:14PM (#16943477)
How much [toxic stuff] goes into making LEDs? If any?

We shall, in short order respectively have trillions of LEDs in landfill.

Old LEDs were a dollop of glass/plastic over the device, but sme/rgb LEDs are a bit more complex than the old LEDs of the past.

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Re:EU agrees on total ban of bee-harming pesticides by DubiousPusher on Friday April 27, 2018 @05:14PM (#16944382)
Due to their long life, they probably won't enter into landfills in the same quantities as other bulbs. However, I believe many of the newer bulbs have silicoln chips in them and there's trouble with runoff from the metals on those chips if I recall. Don't take my word for it though, this is old creaky info from deep in the recesses of my brain that I'm too lazy to validate right now.
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Re:EU agrees on total ban of bee-harming pesticides by toomuchtodo on Friday April 27, 2018 @05:24PM (#16944455)
LED lighting can be recycled the same as e-waste. The challenge there is to ensure you have a proper e-waste stream recycling system setup, but it's a solved problem on the technical side.

Luckily, due to LED longevity, we have a decade or two to get better at recycling e-waste for the majority of bulbs out there.

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Re:EU agrees on total ban of bee-harming pesticides by userbinator on Friday April 27, 2018 @11:55PM (#16945988)
due to LED longevity

The Phoebus cartel may be long gone but planned obolescence is a stronger force than ever before.

Low-power indicator LEDs do have extremely high longevity, but the type used for illumination certainly don't, because they are operated far closer to their limits; plus they need special driver circuitry which also limits lifespan. Components like electrolytic capacitors have lifetimes far shorter than the LED itself in typical LED lamp applications.

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Re:EU agrees on total ban of bee-harming pesticides by TeMPOraL on Saturday April 28, 2018 @08:17AM (#16947303)
Yup. I've had several el Cheapo LED bulbs fail on me, and it always seem to be a problem of the electronics driving the bulbs. I wouldn't be surprised if, in China, people were actually recycling the bulbs, because it probably only involves replacing the right capacitor or driving IC.
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