Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated • Hacker News Board

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#331

Post by asdff » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 3:42 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #94

wbraun wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully share this cynicism about recycling things that are not aluminum or glass. It also seems that by making people feel better about generating nominally recyclable waste they are encouraged to consume more. I am at least familiar with arguments against US-style airport security and donating cans of food, but whats wrong with hybrid cars? I don't know of any arguments that they are net neutral / harmful.

It’s pretty common to see arguments that the net lifecycle impact of a hybrid outweighs that of a traditional car, because it has more impact in manufacturing. It’s not true (there is more impact in manufacturing, but the breakeven point is fairly early) but it’s an attractive notion to people with a contrarian bent, especially those who like to think that environmentalists are stupid. Incidentally, the same thing ex…

Brand new traditional car vs. hybrid might be close, but what about hybrid vs. that 2002 honda civic in the used car lot that also gets 45mpg? I think that's the real comparison, because that civic in the lot already exist in your area and works just fine to take you from A to B.

People buy new cars for dumb reasons, usually for nicer seats/better ac/speakers, and they in turn do away with their less shiny but usually still perfectly fine car. The car industry is rampant consumer culture at its worst, sustained by lessees insisting on new car smell.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#332

Post by asdff » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 3:52 PM UTC

harimau777 wrote: post #56

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…

So is recycling plastic and paper not effective? I have some anxiety issue and one of the ways that they manifest is obsessing about recycling so not having to worry about plastic and paper would be a huge improvement in my quality of life. Edit: I should clarify, I realize that the article is saying that recycling plastic and paper isn't worth it, but is that a mainstream opinion?

It is entirely dependent on where you live and local recycling demand. My city barely recycles any plastic despite what the markings on it might be, because it's not profitable to recycle certain plastics right now; supply is too high. Paper is fine though if it isn't greasy.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#333

Post by rsync » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #113

henrikschroder wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Single-use plastics are perfectly fine if: 1) You already have oil-powered power plants, and 2) You have efficient, modern trash incinerators that can recover 90%+ of the energy in plastics, and 3) You make sure that all plastic garbage actually ends up incinerated. Because the utility you get out of making plastics out of oil, using the plastics for something, and then burning it, is higher than just straight up bur…

Can you point out anywhere that's made all of 1..3 work successfully? I'd think that most places have 0 of the 3.

"Can you point out anywhere that's made all of 1..3 work successfully? I'd think that most places have 0 of the 3."

Zurich has a very centrally located incinerator (behind the "viadukt" shopping area) and I believe that they generate electricity from the plant. They also have a very granular sorting regime ... it would appear they are covering all three of the bases.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#334

Post by rsync » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #178

em-bee wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

those people were moving to the west in search for a place to live. they moved because they couldn't live where they were. if they could afford to throw stuff away they probably would not have moved in the first place

To outfit a wagon to go West with all the supplies necessary cost the inflation adjusted equivalent of about $100K. Wagons, livestock, supplies to live on while travelling and when homesteading before the first harvest came in were not cheap. That’s without considering the materiel you’d need to set up a farm when you got to your homestead. North America was labour scarce compared to Europe from 1492 on. There was al…

"To outfit a wagon to go West with all the supplies necessary cost the inflation adjusted equivalent of about $100K. Wagons, livestock, supplies to live on while travelling and when homesteading before the first harvest came in were not cheap. That’s without considering the materiel you’d need to set up a farm when you got to your homestead."

This may be true, generally, but it was not true of the Ingalls family that your grandparent refers to. Their travel and settlement plans were not the most well thought out ...

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#335

Post by rsync » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

Slightly off-topic and irrelevant for many urban people (or suburban with strict association rules) but it's possible to reduce your food waste to literally zero by keeping 2 or 3 or 4 laying hens.

Every bit of leftover food scraps are just thrown at the chickens ... and turned into eggs.

It's so pleasing and efficient that if I am at a function with food scraps and it is simple and unobtrusive to do so, I will bring home the scraps to save them from the landfill (and turn into eggs).

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#336

Post by grayed-down » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #335

Slightly off-topic and irrelevant for many urban people (or suburban with strict association rules) but it's possible to reduce your food waste to literally zero by keeping 2 or 3 or 4 laying hens. Every bit of leftover food scraps are just thrown at the chickens ... and turned into eggs. It's so pleasing and efficient that if I am at a function with food scraps and it is simple and unobtrusive to do so, I will bring…

I thought it was 6 hens a-laying...

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#337

Post by c0vfefe » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #180

spodek wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It promotes their growth -- say packaged good companies like Coca-Cola, Trader Joe's, or Starbucks. Clothing companies like H&M and Zara. Most unnecessary material stuff. A statistic from The Story of Stuff https://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff comes to mind that something like 99% of things Americans buy end up in landfills within one year. Manufacturers slap the word "recyclable" on those products to get p…

> 99% of things Americans buy end up in landfills within one year. What "things" means here? A car is a "thing" and a toothpick is a "thing". I can use the car for 10 years and I use several toothpicks per day. So on average, I throw nearly everything very quickly, but the picture seems to be misleading if we remember we're comparing toothpicks to cars...

How exactly is it misleading? I know that things are things, and include both short- & long-lived things.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#338

Post by runeks » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #335

Slightly off-topic and irrelevant for many urban people (or suburban with strict association rules) but it's possible to reduce your food waste to literally zero by keeping 2 or 3 or 4 laying hens. Every bit of leftover food scraps are just thrown at the chickens ... and turned into eggs. It's so pleasing and efficient that if I am at a function with food scraps and it is simple and unobtrusive to do so, I will bring…

It’s never been a challenge to recycle organic matter like leftovers, as far as I’m aware — regardless of whether you use animals or a compost heap. It’s the plastics and metals that are difficult to handle.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#339

Post by smsm42 » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

c0vfefe wrote: post #337

smsm42 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 99% of things Americans buy end up in landfills within one year. What "things" means here? A car is a "thing" and a toothpick is a "thing". I can use the car for 10 years and I use several toothpicks per day. So on average, I throw nearly everything very quickly, but the picture seems to be misleading if we remember we're comparing toothpicks to cars...

How exactly is it misleading? I know that things are things, and include both short- & long-lived things.

Averaging over categories of wildly distinct things is misleading. It's like taking average temperature of all human bodies in the hospital and judging public health by that measure - ignoring the fact that some of those are dead bodies in the freezer and some are running high fever. Or, another example, if you look at average wealth of people in a pub, and Bill Gates and Warren Buffet walk in to have a pint, the average wealth would jump up, but nobody really became any richer. Conclusions made on this kind of measures make sense only in specific conditions, but when we could a huge expensive car as one thing and 1000 tiny toothpicks as 1000 things and averaging over that, it can not help but being misleading.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#340

Post by C4stor » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 8:50 AM UTC

tomstoms wrote: post #298

C4stor wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't forbid using recycled materials for cheaps products, you just don't advertise it.

In an economic system, a product will be sold at the highest price possible, so if advertising it as using recycled materials nets you higher profit, than you will do that. So even if non-recycled is more expensive to produce, it will be cheaper if people are not willing to pay as much for it.

There a lot of cases of the exact same product being sold at different price tags under different names/brands.

In an economic system, a product tries to be sold at the highest price possible _for each potential buyer_, not as a whole.