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Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

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Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#201

Post by remcob »

contactlight11 wrote: post #154

How about this information from CT's DEEP which quotes the EPA for the majority of it's information? Compared to virgin materials, using recycled materials more efficient by: - 40% for paper - 60-74% for steel and tin cans - 33% for plastics - 30% for glass - 5% for aluminum cans These numbers appear to be referencing the generation of new products using recycled vs new materials, but do they fail to take in to accou…

This only looks at energy consumed during production, not at (long term) availability of raw materials. It seems reasonable to assume that long term the cost of energy and recyclables will go down and that of non-renewables such as oils and ores will go up.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#202

Post by emn13 »

contactlight11 wrote: post #154

How about this information from CT's DEEP which quotes the EPA for the majority of it's information? Compared to virgin materials, using recycled materials more efficient by: - 40% for paper - 60-74% for steel and tin cans - 33% for plastics - 30% for glass - 5% for aluminum cans These numbers appear to be referencing the generation of new products using recycled vs new materials, but do they fail to take in to accou…

It's not clear to me from that link whether those savings apply to the whole supply chain or not.

So when they say stuff like... "Producing recycled paper requires about 60 percent of the energy used to make paper from virgin wood pulp."

... does that include costs of reasonably sustainable forestry vs. reasonably sustainable old paper separation & collection?

... does it include non-financial costs made by the end-users of the original paper?

... does it include implicit costs of potentially lower quality paper (or if that's ever the case, the values of higher-quality)?

... does it include the opportunity costs (probably small) of whatever else you might do with that old paper, such as sequester carbon or burn for energy?

... does it consider costs of energy (some joules are cheaper and less damaging than others; so e.g. it may be wood->paper factors run where energy is trivially cheap and simply haven't bothered to try and be energy-efficient)?

... does it consider non-energy resources?

Basically, it's not clear to me whether this is a technical argument about one of the important steps in the respective processes, or an overall assessment about the approaches going forward.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#203

Post by Aloha »

jl2718 wrote: post #142

Just want to say that my grandfather, while working at Hughes, was one of the earliest proponents of aluminum recycling, but everybody was mad at him because they had to pay CRV (which is a terribly-designed incentive actually). Then he was one of the earliest opponents of recycling plastics, and he received nearly universal excoriation, including from my own family. Now the facts are slowly trickling out of the cult…

I think if we only used two kinds of plastic for food or consumer packaging, plastic recycling would make more sense, we unfortunately use like 10, which means s high labor cost for sorting.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#204

Post by Aloha »

Liron wrote: post #30

We really shot ourselves in the foot with this whole pointless "recycling paper and plastic" thing huh? The convenience of throwing something away is a triumph of modern civilization and one of life's little pleasures, and we had to ruin it by acting like it's wrong when it's actually not. When I walk up to some wastebins holding a papery-plasticky object with a bit of food stuck to it, my heart sinks. Now I have to…

I end up putting mist of it in the trash bin, except glass or metal. It's too hard for me to know which goes what, how am I supposed to know what's compostable (I only have a broad understanding what composting is, and how it's done), much less if this plastic widget that came with the thing is a recyclable one, a compostable one, or made of styrene (which is neither). So off into the trash it goes.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#205

Post by noobermin »

bildung wrote: post #195
noobermin wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar panels are tricky because they rely on certain elements which are rather rare actually. I feel like there needs to be a serious study into whether increased mining/production of solar panels is a net gain or loss. It does feel however than reckoning with climate change will require more on the consumption/behavior side than technology side unfortunately.

Actually, PV energy pay back time has been studied to death. See e.g. this presentation from 2012, which says that the whole PV industry is already a net energy producer: https://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/symposium2012/MikDale_Symp201... The energy flow is a bit similar to the cash flow of a SAAS company: As ROI takes a few years, the start of the rapidly growing industry looks like a net negative, but with the installe…

So I did say production, but my main issue isn't mere production but the mining of materials and that mining's impact on the environment. Also, PVs and rechargable batteries do use some rare earths which also sucks because, well they're rare and may eventually be depleted.

Regardless, thanks for the talk, it's interesting. I think someone told me a while back they did an analysis of the difference between gas electricity plants vs solar and they came away with the realization that the only way gas wins is really due to the financing around it, so something totally due to regs and how society is already used to it. I just am not sure solar is going to be the silver bullet and actual reduction of consumption might be the only way to stave off climate change.

Relevant: https://earthjournalism.net/stories/the-dark-side-of-renewab...

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3mavb/we-dont-mine-enoug...

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#206

Post by Aloha »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #59

The real problem is we are using a long term material for short term purposes only because it seems cheap. All plastic will be with us for generations if not forever in terms of human time. We can and should produce an alternative and not poison the environment if we work at it. Yes it's not as bad as we thought but it certainly is bad. Plastic has a place in our daily life but not as a use once and throw away. I'm o…

We used to use glass, which doesn't really break down biologically, just mechanically (you can turn it back to sand) - I think we ought to be using all the plastic we make as some sort of fuel for power generation, it burns quite readily.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#207

Post by rikroots »

cperciva wrote: post #52
rikroots wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happily. Old landfill sites are not built to modern standards and are thus liable to erode, with the potential to contaminate the surrounding areas with a range of interesting toxins. They can also collapse (if they contained a significant amount of biodegradable waste) which is unfortunate if your house is built on top of it. A quick Google search gave me this link to some ongoing research conducted by Queen Mary Co…

Ok, but isn't the answer to "old landfill sites are not built to modern standards" that new landfill sites should be built to modern standards?

There will always be a need for landfill sites. And the current standards for their construction, use and end-of-life maintenance are vastly higher than they were 20 years ago.

Sadly, making sure operational/new landfill sites stick to the standards doesn't fix the problems surrounding old/abandoned landfill sites. If people want to make those sites safe(r), then that's going to cost a lot of money.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#209

Post by rikroots »

01100011 wrote: post #46
rikroots wrote: post #27

As clickbait, I have to applaud the author. tl;dr: As a sustainable (heh!) solution to the current waste crisis, landfilling everything is not a good solution. We tried it for many centuries and are still paying the price for that approach today. The only people who will benefit from a 'landfill everything' strategy will be 23rd century archaeologists. As the UK is mentioned a couple of times in the article, I'll add…

Landfills are highly concentrated stores of resources. Why would future archaeologists be the only ones interested in them?

I went Googling for an answer to refute your statement and came across this article from Science Daily - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180323090958.h... - that supports your argument.

In my view, the key barriers to landfill mining are the same as those faced by today's recycling industry: the costs involved in extracting value from waste (someone has to pay the pickers working in the recycling sheds - possibly one of the worst jobs in the world); and finding viable, stable and sustainable markets for the materials that do get extracted. Volatile recyclate markets were a huge problem for sustainable recycling back in 2000 and I doubt much has changed since then.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#210

Post by reitzensteinm »

bildung wrote: post #198
reitzensteinm wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worrying about how carbon taxes will affect the poor is absolutely legitimate, and that's coming from someone that thinks we need one yesterday . Calling it baseless propaganda probably says more about you than it does the argument in question.

As a more generous interpretation of ZeroGravitas' comment: As the bird-and-windmill example shows, those people "worrying" are thought of as denying the fundamental viability of carbon taxes and only use the poor as a popular argument. Worrying about progressive taxation effects is of course very important, but then again also pretty easy to mitigate. And considering the fact that the parties propagating carbon taxe…

There's a fairly large contingent in tech that leans libertarian while also recognizing the impending climate disaster. A climate tax is simply accounting for the externalities of your actions.

I wouldn't at all assume that somebody on this site advocating for a carbon tax would take care to not make it regressive, and I think parent's lumping it in with bird strikes (a total red herring considering nobody is talking about banning cats or glass windows) and lithium ion mining (a failure to account for opportunity cost) is pretty conclusive.

That said, I'd be happy to learn I'm mistaken.

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