What is the proper way to dispose of old tubes?

Some older tubes contain mercury, a number of older Rectifiers did and a few other tubes.

Jim, locally here in town we have an operation called 'Asset Recovery' where we take things that the recycling people won't pick up from the curb. They take hazardous waste like vacuum tubes, and so once a year we take all our bad tubes, circuit boards, old transformer and any other electronics there, where they get dismantled and the various materials are recovered for re-use.

www.assetrecoverycorp.com

You might check and see if such an operation is going in your town; most major metro areas have some sort of operation like this.

A question that has crossed my mind about hazardous materials is this: If the substance in question is mined, then it is found in nature. Why can't we just return it to nature? The only exception I can see would relate to large concentration of certain materials posing a danger.

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.

Trelja- Everything you've mentioned IS found in nature. The materials used in our tubes are in large part are all elements or alloyed elements(in the case of steel). Copper, zinc, nickel, lead, gold, and barium are all metals commonly found in vacuum tubes(and are ALL elements). Sulfuric acid comprises most of the atmosphere of the planet Venus, which(last time I looked) wasn't "synthesized" by anyone on this planet. Ever heard of, "acid Rain"? Guess what "acid" it contains. Glass is made of silicone and oxygen(same chemical composition as quartz), and of course there's plenty of silica on every beach of the world. You probably(hopefully) brushed you teeth with some this morning.