When I first started out as a COB LED display supplier 12 years ago, most conversations with clients focused on brightness, pixel pitch, and how a display could stand out in a crowded retail space or a busy conference hall. Recycling was rarely more than a footnote—something someone would ask about if a project ran late, or if they’d heard a vague stat about e-waste piling up in a local landfill. Over the years, though, that small footnote has turned into one of the most common questions I get: Can a COB LED display actually be recycled? It’s not a simple yes or no, and it’s not a question we can avoid anymore, not when 53.6 million metric tons of e-waste were generated globally in 2019 alone, per the United Nations’ Global E-Waste Monitor. As someone who’s spent thousands of hours testing, installing, and repairing COB LED displays, I’ve dug into every part of that answer, from the tiny diodes on a module to the metal frames that hold them in place. COB LED Display
First, let’s get on the same page about what a COB LED display is, because that’s where a lot of the confusion starts. COB stands for Chip-on-Board, a process where individual LED diodes are mounted directly onto a circuit board and covered in a protective epoxy or silicone layer—instead of being soldered separately on a surface-mount (SMD) display. That structure makes COB displays way more durable than SMD ones: the diodes are less likely to be knocked loose, the image is brighter, and the display is protected from dust, moisture, and minor impacts. But that same dense, integrated design is what makes people wonder if it can be recycled. When a display hits the end of its life—say, after 10 years of use in a stadium, or after a client upgrades to a larger model—what do you do with all those tightly packed diodes, circuit boards, and metal parts?
For a long time, the answer was “not easily.” Most e-waste recycling centers are set up for small electronics: phones, laptops, tablets. COB LED displays are bulky, often 10 to 15 feet wide for a single unit, and their components are mixed together in a way that makes them hard to process. The epoxy covering the diodes, for example, was designed to be tough—meant to last a decade outdoors—so it doesn’t break down easily in standard recycling processes. Early on, I’d tell clients that COB displays could only be disposed of in a municipal e-waste stream, but even that had gaps. In some areas, e-waste is sorted and shredded without separating the valuable metals from the plastic and epoxy, so all that copper, aluminum, and gold gets buried, or burned, releasing small amounts of toxic fumes. That felt like a failure, not just for the environment, but for the work we do as suppliers. We build products to last, only to have them contribute to waste when they’re done.
That’s when we started testing new recycling processes, first with a local e-waste partner, and later with a specialized LED recycling facility in the Netherlands. What we learned was that COB displays are actually far more recyclable than their reputation suggests—if you take the right steps, and work with a facility that knows how to handle them. The first step is pre-processing: before a display is even sent to the recycler, it needs to be deconstructed. Unlike older displays, where parts are glued together permanently, most modern COB displays are built with modular, screw-together frames and modules. That’s intentional, for repairs and upgrades, but it’s also perfect for recycling. We trained our team to take apart a display in 10 minutes, separating each component manually: the aluminum frames, the copper wiring, the individual circuit boards (called PCBs), and the COB LED modules themselves, each wrapped in that protective epoxy.
Once separated, each component can be processed individually. The aluminum frames and copper wiring go through standard metal recycling: melted down, purified, and turned into new metal for car parts or construction materials. That’s straightforward—most metal recycling facilities can handle these, no special equipment needed. The PCBs are a bit trickier, because they have small amounts of gold, silver, and palladium in them, plus plastic and fiberglass. Specialized recyclers use a process called hydrometallurgy here: they grind the PCBs into a fine powder, then use chemical solutions to leach out the precious metals, which are then refined and reused. Even the plastic and fiberglass from PCBs can be turned into construction materials like insulation, as long as the chemicals are properly contained.
The COB modules, though, are the make-or-break part for LED-specific recycling. That epoxy layer that protects the diodes? For years, it was a problem. But new thermal recycling processes have changed that. Instead of melting the modules, recyclers heat them in an oxygen-controlled oven at around 500 degrees Celsius. That burns off the epoxy and the organic binders without releasing toxic fumes, leaving behind just the LED diodes and the small amount of PCB material attached to them. Once cooled, the remaining material is ground into a fine powder, and the LED diodes—each a tiny chip of indium gallium nitride—are separated from the other metals using density sorting. Those diodes can then be refined to pull out gallium, indium, and even small amounts of gold, which are reused to make new LEDs. We’ve been testing this process for three years now, and our partners at the Dutch recycling facility report that they can recover 92% of the metal content from COB modules, and 85% of the gallium, which is a rare earth metal. That’s better than the recovery rate for most standard PCBs, which is around 80% total for precious metals.
But here’s the thing: recycling COB displays isn’t just about the end-of-life process—it’s also about designing for recycling, something we’ve adopted as a core part of our business over the last five years. Early COB displays were built with permanent adhesive on modules and non-standard wiring, which made deconstruction almost impossible. Now, every COB display we manufacture uses modular, screw-together frames, standardized wiring that fits most recycling deconstruction tools, and epoxy layers that are compatible with thermal recycling. We also add a QR code to every display that links to a deconstruction guide—so if a client no longer needs the display, they can pull it apart themselves in 10 minutes, separating the valuable metal parts from the rest, before sending them to a recycler. That small change has cut down on processing time at our partner facilities by 30%, because we don’t have to pay workers to take apart units that could be easily handled by a trained client or a local recycler.
Of course, there are still gaps, and I’m not here to pretend that recycling COB displays is 100% perfect yet. For one thing, not every community has access to specialized LED recycling facilities. In the United States, for example, only 12 states have facilities that can process COB displays, and most small towns have to send their e-waste hundreds of miles to the nearest one. That means a lot of COB displays still end up in standard municipal landfills, where the epoxy and LED diodes can leach small amounts of heavy metals into soil and groundwater, especially if the display is left outdoors in rain or snow. Another gap is cost: it’s about 15% more expensive to send a COB display to a specialized recycler than it is to send it to a standard e-waste center, because of the extra processing steps. For small businesses that only use one or two displays for a trade show, that extra cost can feel prohibitive.
That’s why we’ve built a take-back program for our clients, regardless of where they bought their COB displays. It’s not a required program—if a client is using their display for its full 10-year lifespan, they don’t have to do anything—but when they’re ready to upgrade or replace, we pick up the old unit for free, then send it to our partner recyclers. We cover the cost of the specialized processing, so our clients don’t have to. Last year, we took back 127 COB displays from clients across North America and Europe, and recycled 98% of their components. One of those clients was a small hotel chain in Toronto that had installed four 8-foot COB displays in their lobby in 2015; they upgraded to larger units last year, and when they asked about recycling, we were able to not only pick up the old displays, but also give them a 10% discount on their new purchase as a thank-you for choosing to recycle.
Another part of the conversation that most people miss is reuse, not just recycling. A lot of COB displays that are “end-of-life” aren’t actually broken—they just have outdated pixel pitch, or a client wants a larger size. Those displays can be refurbished, repaired, and resold to smaller businesses or nonprofits that don’t need the latest, largest units. Last year, we worked with a youth sports league in Chicago that couldn’t afford a new display for their stadium; we took three refurbished COB displays that were being replaced by a local retail store, repaired minor damage to two of them, and sold them to the league for 40% of the cost of a new unit. That’s way better for the environment than recycling, because it keeps the product in use for another 5 to 7 years. We now have a whole division of our company focused on COB display refurbishment, and it’s become one of our fastest-growing services.
I also work with a team of engineers to test new materials that make COB displays even more recyclable. For example, we’re testing a new type of epoxy that dissolves in mild, non-toxic chemical solutions, instead of needing high-temperature ovens to remove. That would cut the energy used to recycle COB modules by 60%, and eliminate the need for controlled heating, which reduces operating costs for recyclers. We’re also working on using more biobased plastics for the frame parts, so even if a small part of a display can’t be recycled, it will break down in a landfill without releasing toxic chemicals. It’s small changes, but they add up—over the next three years, we’re aiming to make every part of our COB displays either recyclable, reusable, or compostable, no exceptions.
At the end of the day, the question “Can a COB LED display be recycled?” used to get a shrug from me, back when I was just a supplier focused on getting displays installed on time and on budget. Now, it’s one of the most important questions I get, because it ties directly to the kind of business I want to run: a business that doesn’t just build products, but thinks about what happens to them when they’re done. It’s not a perfect process, but it’s getting better every year. We’ve come a long way from the early days, when most COB displays were either trashed or sent to recycling centers that couldn’t handle them. Now, with the right design, the right partners, and the right take-back programs, COB displays are some of the most recyclable parts of the LED display market.
If you’re a business owner, event planner, or facilities manager with COB displays that are nearing the end of their life, or if you’re looking to install new displays and want to build sustainability into your project, I’m here to help. We’ve spent 12 years learning how to make COB displays that last, and how to recycle them when they’re ready. Reach out to our team to discuss your project, get a quote, or learn more about our take-back and refurbishment programs. Together, we can build displays that work for your business and for the planet.
LED Video Wall Display References
Global E-Waste Monitor 2020, United Nations Institute for Training and Research
LED Recycling: Technologies, Challenges, and Opportunities, Journal of Cleaner Production, 2021
COB LED Display Design for Circularity, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 2022
LiKYLIN (Chongqing) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd.
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