Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 344 posts

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#251

Post by dbqpdb »

noobermin wrote: post #184

Point 5 misses a bit of facts. The reason the US and the UK don't seep garbage into the ocean is we export a bit[0] of it to...guess where? Places like China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. This[1] is relevant. Idk, that refutation alone makes one wonder how effective landfills are in the west if we must send our trash to other countries to keep from filling our own landfills. As mentioned elsewhere in this comment s…

One thing to understand here is just how cheap it is for us to send our recycling/garbage overseas. All of those shipping containers coming over here need to get sent back with something and its not like Vietnam is buying an excess of American goods. So we end up paying next to nothing for this.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#252

Post by kilburn »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #238
m0zg wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a profoundly consumerist point of view, IMO. It presupposes that buying more stuff necessarily brings more satisfaction and comfort (which is not true in general once one's basic needs for security, food, shelter, and healthcare are met), and that having less stuff means "a reduction in quality of life" (also not true, having less stuff leads to an increase in quality of life for many people). There are demon…

This position erroneously presupposes that life satisfaction and quality of life are the same thing. Many people are satisfied with a lower quality of life, and are more than happy to invest tremendous effort into things that others may expect to be more convenient. But the point of view in the parent comment is essentially “if you do not derive satisfaction in life from the same things that I do, then you are wrong”…

Quality of life is a subjective issue [1], of which material possesion is just one amongst several dimensions. Therefore, it is perfectly possible for a person to improve their quality of life by consuming less: by the very definition of quality of life, it is enough for said person to feel that their quality of life improved as a result of consuming less for it to be true.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_life

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#253

Post by dwild »

Wohlf wrote: post #245
nsb1 wrote: post #239

Honest question: From a climate change point of view, burying anything that contains carbon is basically the definition of sequestering that carbon. Why is it bad to bury anything that contains carbon? The obvious response, I think, would be that if we consume and bury 'stuff', then we'll just make more 'stuff', but what's wrong with that? Is it the energy required (presumably from burning fossil fuels) to produce mo…

>if we consume and bury 'stuff', then we'll just make more 'stuff' There is also a flawed assumption here that these are connected. We will make more stuff whether or not we bury other stuff.

Recyclable stuff make that connected though. Paper can be recycled a bunch of time, plastic too. Sure we can't reuse 100% of what we waste, but any percent is better than none.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#254

Post by dwild »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #240
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…

There's the in-home cost. My mother-in-law would run the cans and bottles through the dishwasher before putting them in the rcycle bin. The energy, hot water, soap constituted a catastrophic reversal of any possible gain from the recycling. Just driving the truck around the neighborhood to pick up the bins is a cost in diesel, human resources (which translate to carbon at some level).

>My mother-in-law would run the cans and bottles through the dishwasher before putting them in the rcycle bin.

That seems to be the issue, not the recycling program.

> Just driving the truck around the neighborhood to pick up the bins is a cost in diesel, human resources (which translate to carbon at some level).

The same truck would still drive arround though if you didn't have recycling program, it will just be a black truck instead of a green one.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#255

Post by deftturtle »

> I lose them much faster than that, and have better things to do with my attention than remember to bring bags with me everywhere I go, so I just use those old-school plastic bags whenever I can.

And so ultimately people (consumers) get what they want. If you don’t want to commit to taking steps in a more sustainable fashion, then you contribute to the problem of disposable waste.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#256

Post by dwild »

pokeymcsnatch wrote: post #114
cannonedhamster wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's food/greade on the item that can't be removed for one reason or another toss it, it can't be recycled efficiently. There solved your moral dilemma. Generally only clean paper, glass, and metal are recyclable. Plastics depend entirely on the locality and still require it to be clean. Also I work at a food pantry. Donations of canned goods are always welcome, same for razors, toiletries, etc. Anything that c…

> There solved your moral dilemma. Recycling has built up such inertia as the "moral" path, regardless of its inefficiencies for most materials, that it's become an unsustainable clusterfuck that we can't move away. Where I live, it's been codified- municipalities must recycle, and also must discourage landfill-bound waste. The result is that I've been issued a 64-gallon mixed-recycling bin that is picked up once a w…

> There's two people in my household and we both are very conscience of being wasteful

> if we produce more than 2.5 garbage bags of waste in a 2-week period, we have to hold on to it for another garbage pickup

It's pretty easy to have much less than 2.5 garbage bags of waste every 2-week. You should read just a tiny bit of zero waste please, it may help you immensely.

You may believe that recycling isn't working, that's fine, but there's plenty of simple easy ways to reduce waste and have less than 2.5 garbage bags of waste every 2 weeks.

The 4 R rules is simple: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

You still got 3 R to works on.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#257

Post by JoeAltmaier »

dwild wrote: post #254
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the in-home cost. My mother-in-law would run the cans and bottles through the dishwasher before putting them in the rcycle bin. The energy, hot water, soap constituted a catastrophic reversal of any possible gain from the recycling. Just driving the truck around the neighborhood to pick up the bins is a cost in diesel, human resources (which translate to carbon at some level).

>My mother-in-law would run the cans and bottles through the dishwasher before putting them in the rcycle bin. That seems to be the issue, not the recycling program. > Just driving the truck around the neighborhood to pick up the bins is a cost in diesel, human resources (which translate to carbon at some level). The same truck would still drive arround though if you didn't have recycling program, it will just be a b…

How many folks are derailing recycling out of a misconception of the issues involved? Most I would guess.

Not sure what black/green means. We have separate recycling pickup vehicles around here. They wouldn't run at all if there were no recycling.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#258

Post by AmericanChopper »

kilburn wrote: post #252
AmericanChopper wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This position erroneously presupposes that life satisfaction and quality of life are the same thing. Many people are satisfied with a lower quality of life, and are more than happy to invest tremendous effort into things that others may expect to be more convenient. But the point of view in the parent comment is essentially “if you do not derive satisfaction in life from the same things that I do, then you are wrong”…

Quality of life is a subjective issue [1], of which material possesion is just one amongst several dimensions. Therefore, it is perfectly possible for a person to improve their quality of life by consuming less: by the very definition of quality of life, it is enough for said person to feel that their quality of life improved as a result of consuming less for it to be true. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality…

Nearly all of the metrics used to track quality of life relate directly to consumption. Perhaps I would have been better to say ‘standard of living’, which exclusively measures consumption. But none of that changes my point, which is when you say ‘reduce’ in this context, you’re not being honest about what you’re reducing, and basically saying that the only correct way to derive satisfaction from life is the way that you do it (or at least the way you’re proposing it should be done).

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#259

Post by barrkel »

coldtea wrote: post #189
Zarel wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's weird. In my experience, products advertising "made using recycled materials" tend to be more expensive than without (with the exception of aluminum, which tends not to be advertised as recycled at all). Are there costs missing from your efficiency numbers?

> In my experience, products advertising "made using recycled materials" tend to be more expensive than without That's not necessarily because of their higher cost to produce. It's often because they target higher end "environmentally conscious" customers, and use the "made with recycled materials" as a price differentiation / market segmentation strategy (working class Joe? get our $1 notebook. Latte-sipping hipster…

You'd still expect recycled material to be used in preference to virgin materials for cheap products, if recycled material is actually more efficient.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#260

Post by Scoundreller »

NickM wrote: post #248
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of buried carbon is digested by anaerobic bacteria, which produce Methane (also a greenhouse gas), so there's that.

True, but some landfills capture that methane and pump it back into the natural gas grid. I don't know the details of how efficient or widespread this type of capturing scheme is, but it seems to me like this is probably actually more sustainable than using natural gas from drilling and fracking.

Usually they just burn it on-site through generators in containers.

It’s too dirty to put in the natural gas grid.

Post reply on HN