The Compact Disc Eraser

Recently we posed the question on what do with old compact discs. It’s a topic we’ve covered before in a Q&A, where we mentioned the British company Polymer Repocessors — as did a reader in the latest post. According to the makers of the Compact Disc Eraser, companies like this prefer to receive old CDs and DVDs in solid condition, not torn into itty bitty pieces by shredders. The Compact Disc Eraser promises to make the data on your discs unreadable and thus secure by swiping a line across the medium, with destroying the form of the disc. We are told that it was rated in the top 30 of one thousand designs shown on American Inventor. But we are dubious of their claims that erased discs can then simply be placed in plastic recycling systems. This seems very simplistic. Compact Discs are made of polycarbonate, (commonly branded Lexan). PC (recyclable no. 7) is not as readily recycled as the likes of PET (1) or HDPE (2), and would likely become more of a contaminate in most residential and/or office recycling systems. Otherwise the basic idea is sound. ::Compact Disc Eraser, via Newswire.