This year alone US $105m of new liquid crystal display (LCD) units will be sold on a global scale, with Europe accounting for over 35m of these.1 Materials contained within LCD screens hold significant financial value and recycling organisations actively tender for the opportunity to recycle screens. Under the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive (2002/96/EC) "as a minimum the following components have to be removed" from LCD WEEE. These are mercury-containing components, such as backlighting lamps; and liquid crystal displays of a surface area greater than 100 square centimetres. Thus before the full value content can be realised these regulated components have to be removed from waste LCDs. Currently this is undertaken manually on a one-by-one basis and is, in essence, creating a restrictive bottleneck.
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