Audiovisual Archives - An Environmental Problem?

When an audiovisual archive faces the need to transfer parts of its collections - whether it is on film or videotape or another magnetic media - they tend to regard it only from the preservation point of view. This includes, of course, all the technical, logistical, selectional, documentational and economical implications that are linked to it. But, there is at least one more important aspect of it, an often neglected one: what happens with the film and magnetic media waste? I fear that many audiovisual archives are not aware of the hazardous environmental effects it can have. And since this is an operation going on right now world wide - especially the transfer of big two-inch collections, but also of soon obsolete cassette formats - it could be of interest to know what happens when the material has left the archive.

Sveriges Television (SVT), Sweden's public service broadcaster and the station where I happen to work at the TV-archive, last year decided to start the process of making all aspects of its production environmentally friendly, according to approved standards. Since SVT have a programme going on for the transfer of old two inch tapes to a new digital format, I decided to interview the corporate environmental co-ordinator Gunnar Vagerstam on the matter of what happens after the transfer.

- Last fall we made an investigation about this, not only one and two inch tapes, but also VHS and other cassette formats. We found out that after degaussing the tapes have been taken to a place outside Stockholm just to be dumped! And this have been going on since the early sixties!

Flag throwing at the Villa Corsini

But that was of course not the only "discovery". As an answer to the following question I had on why this was so very serious, he gave me the figures of an analysis of the content of different tapes.

- All the tapes contain flame retardant toxins, polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDE) of some kind. They are similar to the chemical structure of PCBs, that we now know stay in the environment for a long time and tend to accumulate in animal and human fat tissue. And today we know that these flame retardants can travel from electronic devices to human tissue and blood with the risk of damaging everyone who is in frequent close contact with computers, fax and photocopying machines and televisions.

- Our analysis showed that a one-inch videotape contains one kilo of flame retardants, 1.5 kilos of PVC and 0.9 kilos of aluminium. The figures for a two-inch tape was 0.1 kilos of flame retardants, 3.5 kilos of PVC and 1.4 kilos of aluminium. Even a small beta cassette contains more than 0.1 kilos of PVC. It's bad enough there are tons of this waste in the dumps. More worrying is the fact that you today trace these toxins in the milk of Swedish breast feeding women, in polar bears in the arctic and in whales. The problems with vinyl (PVC) is that it often contains dangerous levels of additives like phthalates, lead and cadmium to make the plastic soft and to add colour. And a valuable metal like aluminium should be recycled, not put in a dump.

Then I asked Gunnar about the programme for taking care of the tape waste today.

- The bigger tapes like one- and two-inch are suitable for taking to pieces and recycling. Aluminium is a too valuable metal to be left in the dump. But still a lot of material is only suitable for energy recycling in incinerators with a very high degree of purification of the smoke.

About the number of tapes and the amount of flame retardants and PVC in the SVT archives today he says: -We have about 50.000 one- and two-inch tapes that sooner or later we will have to transfer to some other media. Add to that a number of VHS and Beta cassettes that will have to be taken care of. And I know from discussions with other broadcasters that they are facing the same situation. There are two aspects of this: environmental and economical, and they are closely linked. We can't continue to dump it for environmental reasons, it's a waste not to take care of metals that could be recyclable and the costs for unsorted waste will be soaring in the very near future.

My last question to Gunnar was about how to avoid these problems and costs in the future.

- Already in the process of planning and purchasing we have to make clear to manufacturers and vendors that we expect them to offer environmental friendlier products in line with other demands. As a result of this, there are examples of manufacturers that also recycle their tapes. Not to mention computer manufacturers.

If you want to ask Gunnar anything about these matters, you can mail him at:
gunnar.vagerstam@svt.se

Lasse Nilsson
Production Manager
SVT, Tevearkivet, Stockholm
lasse.nilsson@svt.se