Protecting the environment is a major issue nowadays, especially for the major manufacturers of consumer electronics, who are among the most important parties responsible for its degradation and pollution. And while some such companies are just sitting back and doing pretty much nothing, there are others which are taking some active steps in this direction, the latest being none other than Panasonic's parent company, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd.

Thus, as Takuya Otani from TechOn informs us, it would seem that the Japanese has established an industrial process for reclaiming the plastic material used in old CRT monitors and using it within its own plasma displays, included in the the famous Viera series.

The whole process is pretty much based on a device called "Plasector," which identifies the types of fire retardants and the existence of coating materials in the recycled plastic. Furthermore, by cross-checking the results of this check and the existing data of the materials used, recyclable plastic is efficiently identified.

However, it seems that Matsushita is not exactly the first to go "green" and decide that recycling is a good thing (both for the environment and as a marketing tool), because Sony did the same earlier this year, when announcing that the Bravia line-up from 2008 will also include recycled materials.

Nevertheless, leaving aside the company's true intentions, the fact of the matter is that this is a win-win situation: the customers get their PDPs (which they would have bought anyway), the companies sell more products (to a larger number of environment-concerned customers), while the environment is protected (less natural resources are used). Let's just hope that the Panasonic and Sony's example will be followed by more companies, thus reducing the overall levels of pollution around the world.


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