What is the proper way to dispose of old tubes?

Crazy former Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Tim Rossovitch used to eat light bulbs and other forms of glass http://www.badfads.com/pages/events/glasseating.html He'd probably be a good way to dispose of old tubes.

For what it's worth, he used to also drink down quarts of motor oil, in case the subject of how to dispose of your engine fluids comes up...

Macrojack, "If the substance in question is mined, then it is found in nature. Why can't we just return it to nature?"

These substances are NOT found in nature. Nor, do they return to nature in such a benign manner, or they would be labeled "biodegradable". Have you ever seen glass or the metals that form the getters, plate structures, or tube pins in nature? Of course not. Have you ever encountered lead or sulfuric acid in the quantities that exist in an automotive battery in nature? Again, the answer is, no. These are the products of synthesizing compounds from other compounds in an industrial laboratory or production plant setting.

You see the ores or other mother materials, which are quite different from the end product, and normally come from a very different place than where your local landfill resides. There's a lot of work involved in getting them to the concentrated and "pure" state you see, which is often dirty work that the producing site is required/able to deal with.

It's the ethical and legal responsibility of everyone to dispose of things in the proper manner so that we don't have the various compounds we encounter in our daily lives come back to harm us later or create the need for unnecessary and expensive means to protect us from them.

Rodman99999, your post perfectly illustrates the old saying, "a LITTLE knowledge is dangerous".

Again, NO, YOU DON'T FIND ANY OF THESE THINGS IN NATURE. I don't know how much clearer I can say that.

The elements on your list are not found in the forms you seems to think they are. Metals like copper are found not as metallic copper, but in different mineral configurations (such as malachite, azurite, and so on), along with things like carbon, oxygen, sulfur, other metals, etc. Steel, used in tube pins, plate structures, component chassis, etc. exists nowhere in the natural, it is an alloy created by man of varying elements, including iron, carbon, and other materials depending on what it is to be used for.

Go down your list, and each item does not exist as itself, but as something else. During the last few thousand years, we have attained the ability to process compounds that we find in nature into countless other compounds which can be used to make life better, easier, or longer. However, it is the height of naivete and arrogance to believe that we can discard these things we have created in a cavalier way, as the potential of many of them is to make life worse, more difficult, or shorter.

The overarching truth is that there is an order to our environment and the entire universe. Man's inherent ignorance, which ranges from the way many organizations and countries conduct business to some of the posts you see in this thread to even some of the most powerful (and, supposedly, knowledgeable) scientists, is that we have somehow conquered this understanding to the level where we can act in whatever manner suits us at the moment. Instead, we need to recognize and accept our position as stewards of the environment so that ourselves and our children do not suffer the consequences of what that ignorance will inevitably bring.

A final note, not to hit you over the head with the chemistry, but the glass you mention is made of "silicon", not "silicone"; two distinct and very different substances. In truth, "glass" is simply any composition of ceramic (a metal bonded to a nonmetal) compounds, which in the proper proportions combined with specific processing, do not form a crystal structure, which is the reason light can pass through it. I've literaly made hundreds of glass compositions, some of which had silicon, and many of which did not. Oh, and yes, I brushed my teeth this morning, and the toothpaste I use contains silica - put into the formulation to provide tartar control and polishing.

It's obvious that it smarts when someone takes you apart in the way I did, Rodman9999.

What exactly did I take apart? Just as you didn't (hopefully, wikipedia has since cleared it up for you) know the difference between silicon, silicone, and silica, you haven't yet grasped it, but it's YOU! Give it a little more time, it'll eventually sink in.

You screwed up again by calling me a liberal, but it won't be the first (or second) time you've been wrong in this thread.

Rodman99999, we're going to name your posts in this thread "dumb and dumber". Despite all of your thrashing, you still have almost ZERO idea what you're talking about. As I said, you've provided a perfect example of how having a little, and I do mean little, knowledge is dangerous.

Sand is not "silica" and oxygen. It's SILICA. Silicon dioxide - silicon AND oxygen. Simple, yes? Let's keep it that way - KISS - keep it simple, stupid. That should work out fine for you. Let's not even get into the term you threw out there, "synthetic" yet. That's in the intermediate class.

After we get these two, silicon and silica, down, maybe we'll tackle silicone if we're feeling ambitious and you've had a big enough breakfast.

Don't worry, at some point, with proper coaching and a bit more work on your part, you'll get it right...

Rodman99999, I need to jump off of this thread, as I'm about to leave out for RMAF2008, and am in a relatedly ebullient mood. At any rate, I appreciate your sense of humor!

Yes, you're right, there is sulfuric acid on Venus. I was ignoring that and discounting Venus as "nature", as we do not live on Venus, nor does it support life as we know it, and couldn't because of that. With your permission, I'll revise my statement to mean nature in this case, being earth, specifically. But, considering nature as the universe, things like sulfuric acid, methane, ammonia and other things we could never tolerate in more than small quantities exist on other planets in high concentration. Anyway, as they say, women are from Venus, men are from Mars...

If one of my tubes physically broke, came apart from its base, or whatever, what would I do? I'd simply throw it in the trash. Apart from all of the back and forth in this thread, there really isn't much to worry about with a tube.

Now, as for me, how do I actually dispose of my vacuum tubes? In fact, I don't. Instead, I take a bit of string, tie it around the base or pins of the tube, and use them for Christmas tree decorations. I kid you not. People inevitably ask about them, and always think they're cool. One of these years, I should wire a couple of tube sockets into my string lights, and actually up the wacky factor by setting the tubes on glow.