China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere • Hacker News Board

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#201

Post by JohnSully » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 5:20 AM UTC

joecot wrote: post #124

dghughes wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We often don't need those nice properties in single use products, yet we use it anyway because we don't pay due respect to the long term consequences. Those properties are also used in place of other materials. Gears in devices that were once metal are now plastic which works OK for w while but it's not even close to the durability of metal. The result is the device with plastic gears fails and a new one is made to…

> How many vacuum cleaners, washers, dryers, microwave ovens from the 1970s and 1980s are still in use versus the same devices from the 1990s/2000s? I don't doubt that metal is more durable than plastic, but there's some survivor's bias in that statement. We usually think of 70s and 80s appliances being more durable because we see people still using them. The truth is that we've always had a mix of cheaply made vs du…

Older stuff generally had poorer tolerances and in some cases barely worked. However when it did it was easy to fix and was generally designed with a large margin.

Nowadays we make things with a lot more precision and the mechanics will go a lot longer without needing repair. However if anything goes wrong the whole thing needs replacement as it's not designed for repair.

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#202

Post by dang » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 5:24 AM UTC

628C6l0 wrote: post #140

contactanother wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You literally said you're Chinese, in one of the comment a month ago.

Nuke us, dominate us with your big white cock.

I can't fathom how you could post this or the other comments you dropped in this thread. They're obviously bannable offenses, but since you've mostly posted fine comments to HN otherwise, I'm going to assume you went on tilt for some reason and not ban you. Please don't do it again though.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#203

Post by p3llin0r3 » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 5:29 AM UTC

JulianMorrison wrote: post #7

We need to stop making things out of plastic, where any alternative exists. The stuff is going to be the asbestos of the 21st century. Microplastic has been vastly, vastly underrated as a problem. All my lifetime the attitude has been that plastic takes eons to degrade and pulverize, but when it does, the problem of unsightly or dangerous litter is presumably finished. Now we're seeing the opposite: plastic dust is a…

That would require anyone but a modern nation taking the blame for something bad on this Earth and we all know that is not going to happen.

Forget it's the Asian countries that produce the plastic. White people did everything didn't your hear?

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#204

Post by dang » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 5:39 AM UTC

DmenshunlAnlsis wrote: post #184

coss wrote: post #183

Why not just rocket it to space? Sounds like a good business to be in for SpaceX.

Seriously? I’m going to have to follow the rules and charitably assume that you’re serious. Rocket fuel is expensive, the process of launching and recovering the vehicle is expensive, and every kg lifted is incredibly expensive. You would also need to launch it somewhere, or you’d just be launching garbage into a decaying orbit. You might as well dispose of garbage by burning it on a pile of diamonds.

You've crossed into incivility repeatedly in your comments. Could you please stop doing this? Re-reading the site guidelines might help: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#205

Post by sametmax » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 7:02 AM UTC

chris_va wrote: post #175

Grazester wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes with the glass bottles please. In the Caribbean Soda use to come in glass bottle with a $0.50 deposit. You would never find a bottle on the side of the street, kids lamented losing their deposit if they broke a bottle(also ran the risk of getting yourself cut if you did) so they made sure to hold on to those bottles with both hands. Now soda comes in a plastic bottle with no deposit on it and isn't recycled on th…

If what you care about is pollution, just tax the pollution instead mandating a specific solution. In this case, it seems easier to add a $0.50 deposit to the plastic bottles.

Money is not a solution for poor culture.

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#206

Post by solatic » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 7:36 AM UTC

dflock wrote: post #134

murderfs wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recycling glass is essentially pointless. It costs the same amount of energy to recycle glass (possibly even more, due to transport) as it does to just make new glass, and we're never going to run out of sand.

We actually _are_ running out of sand, btw.

Pristine, beach-quality sand in the right, profitable resort areas and industrial-quality sand harvested off somewhere where it's freezing cold are very different animals.

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#207

Post by agumonkey » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 11:49 AM UTC

heurist wrote: post #61

agumonkey wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while I've been scavenging devices. So I have my eyes on people's waste quite regularly.. I'm thinking of starting a recycling factory. If people just threw all their waste in my yard I'd be rich. - Tons of cardboard - Tons of batteries - Tons of partially working devices - etc etc The thing is, 'you' buy the packaging most of the time. People are stupid, they just follow the stream of 'nice' from nice looking…

In my area there's a market around finding used items at Goodwill outlets, fixing them up, and reselling through Craigslist/Offer Up/neighbors/etc. My wife and her mother find a lot of useful, inexpensive things at Goodwill outlets, including nice furniture, kitchen utensils, decoration, and electronics I now use daily. As someone who used to shop by hunting down brand name products in big box stores when I needed an…

That's exactly my conclusion. With a bit of time, friends/family (the more the merrier in a way), you can have a shit ton of things for a few bucks.

Another thing is that after a while I started to realize that sometimes I spend more hours on fixing than buying a new one. Also I felt I could just be a customer for someone invested into a whatever store (social feelings) and I could find my own spot to make more use of my time.

/me back repurposing 'dead' laptop batteries with a 1$ li-ion charging pcb :)

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#208

Post by agumonkey » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 12:14 PM UTC

rwallace wrote: post #149

agumonkey wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while I've been scavenging devices. So I have my eyes on people's waste quite regularly.. I'm thinking of starting a recycling factory. If people just threw all their waste in my yard I'd be rich. - Tons of cardboard - Tons of batteries - Tons of partially working devices - etc etc The thing is, 'you' buy the packaging most of the time. People are stupid, they just follow the stream of 'nice' from nice looking…

> I'm sure if you made everything in thin cardboard with minimal markings, they'd be angry. If only some things had minimal packaging, those vendors would be a competitive disadvantage, but if everything had minimal packaging, maybe consumers would be angry for five minutes, but then they'd get used to it. In other words, this is exactly the kind of coordination problem that governments were invented to solve.

Green and politics rarely go well together methinks, this will never be seen as a valueable politician time (and I'm sure they'll despise having less shiny on shelves).

You'd need some economical model to make packaging too costly and thus explain why a law reducing them interesting.

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#209

Post by eli » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 1:26 PM UTC

cdolan wrote: post #193

eli wrote: post #39

I feel like this is one of the most important underreported stories today. It's a massive, sudden change that is having ripple affects on the entire global supply chain. We've written quite a bit about it on Waste Dive: https://www.wastedive.com/news/what-chinese-import-policies-... California is particularly hard hit and is likely to relax laws about how much recyclable material is allowed to be sent to landfills. T…

As a fellow member of the waste and recycling industry, thank you for your work. I love Smart City and Waste Dives.

Thanks! Feel free to reach out if you ever have any ideas or suggestions.

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#210

Post by chris_va » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

sametmax wrote: post #205

chris_va wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you care about is pollution, just tax the pollution instead mandating a specific solution. In this case, it seems easier to add a $0.50 deposit to the plastic bottles.

Money is not a solution for poor culture.

Technically it is a solution, but it sounds like you don't like it for cultural reasons.

This gets into the purpose of governments in general. Culturally, let's say you don't want pollution. How do you solve that? You can try and convince your neighbors piecemeal, or you can create a governmental solution. Governments have a relatively limited set of options for creating change. Taxes are one of the least invasive options, and significantly lighter weight than regulation and police enforcement.