Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy • Hacker News Board

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#131

Post by tialaramex » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 8:21 PM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #116

pjmorris wrote: post #96

Someone I know posted a picture of an empty rolodex today, saying that they'd moved their friends to 'the cloud.' I'm sure you can look at your phone apps and see other things that would've been physical objects ten or twenty years ago. So, that's one way material use has, at least, shifted. There are two other trends that worry me more. One is visible in the freezer section at the grocery store; a "half-gallon" of i…

In the EU, shops are required to display the price per , i. e. all coffees have a (usually smaller, but readable) Euro/500g price. There used to be an even more drastic law proscribing certain sizes and disallowing all others. Flour would only be available in 500g and 1kg bags, for example. They got rid of it, possibly because they got sick of people making fun of EU regulations (that's what happened with the famous…

Is coffee really per 500g? That's a weird quantity. I'd expect kilo or 100g.

The UK used to require bread to be 400g or multiples (so a regular sized loaf of bread is 800g) but it eventually got rid of that rule. Obviously years ago (this rule was hundreds of years old) it will have been some amount in an obsolete unit rather than grams, but once metrication happened the bakers picked 400g as the replacement size. I'm told it got rid of this law a few years back, but certainly last time I bought a loaf of bread it was still 800 grams.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#132

Post by r00fus » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 8:22 PM UTC

breakbread wrote: post #129

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the EU, shops are required to display the price per , i. e. all coffees have a (usually smaller, but readable) Euro/500g price. There used to be an even more drastic law proscribing certain sizes and disallowing all others. Flour would only be available in 500g and 1kg bags, for example. They got rid of it, possibly because they got sick of people making fun of EU regulations (that's what happened with the famous…

>In the EU, shops are required to display the price per , i. e. all coffees have a (usually smaller, but readable) Euro/500g price. Grocery stores in the US do this, but it's not something you necessarily see in food service shops.

It's not consistent. Sometimes they $/lb sometimes they price $/item - for the same class of item.

It's as often design to mislead and prevent comparison as it is to inform you that "store brand is definitely cheaper than name brand".

Since none of it is mandated, they do only what benefits their bottom line or they are publicly pressured to.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#133

Post by AnimalMuppet » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 8:23 PM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #32

Wages have been mostly flat, so consumers have no extra money to engage in additional buying. Since the Great Recession of 2008, the top 1% of the income distribution have absorbed 125% of productivity gains. This is the reverse of what we saw in the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s when strong labor unions were able to win 110% of productivity for workers, so that the share of national income going to labor increased. Now…

Well... just last night, I was planning a trip. There was a place I could see on Google Maps (satellite view) that looked interesting, but it wasn't clear that I could turn onto it (there might be a barrier or an elevation difference). But Google Street View made it clear that I could turn onto this little dirt road in the middle of nowhere. For free.

That isn't wage growth. And yet, I am better off for being able to do that - not better off in terms of dollars, but better off in terms of being able to more easily do the things that I want to do.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#134

Post by Cybiote » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 8:23 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #53

From the article: It suggests that economic growth in a mature economy does not necessarily increase the pressure on the world's reserves of natural resources and on its physical environment. Jesse Asubel has been looking at "dematerialization" for a long time[1] but it has only been relatively recently, now with a couple of decades of additional data to look at, that it is getting the attention I think it deserves.…

Buckminster Fuller made a similar observation or prediction even earlier, in the late 1930s. He called it ephemeralization, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeralization, the idea that increasing technological efficiency will allow us to do evermore with less.

A possible counter-acting force is Jevon's paradox (a generalized economic form of Wirth's Law) but the linked empirical result suggests ephemeralization is the stronger force. Although, it is likely true we can do much more to counteract Jevon's Paradox like phenomena.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#135

Post by Scoundreller » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 8:24 PM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #116

pjmorris wrote: post #96

Someone I know posted a picture of an empty rolodex today, saying that they'd moved their friends to 'the cloud.' I'm sure you can look at your phone apps and see other things that would've been physical objects ten or twenty years ago. So, that's one way material use has, at least, shifted. There are two other trends that worry me more. One is visible in the freezer section at the grocery store; a "half-gallon" of i…

In the EU, shops are required to display the price per , i. e. all coffees have a (usually smaller, but readable) Euro/500g price. There used to be an even more drastic law proscribing certain sizes and disallowing all others. Flour would only be available in 500g and 1kg bags, for example. They got rid of it, possibly because they got sick of people making fun of EU regulations (that's what happened with the famous…

Even if the price per unit didn’t change, when the pack size gets smaller, there’s more packaging per litre/kg.

Although packaging could be thinner, a lot of packaging is to protect from external impact/environment, and remains just as thick, but the surface area to volume ratio has increased.

If I need 3L, it’s annoying to buy 4x 750 instead of 3x 1L like I could in the past.

But the opposite can be true too: a 12 pack of soap may be 12 boxes inside a box...

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#136

Post by r00fus » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 8:26 PM UTC

anon1m0us wrote: post #97

pjmorris wrote: post #96

Someone I know posted a picture of an empty rolodex today, saying that they'd moved their friends to 'the cloud.' I'm sure you can look at your phone apps and see other things that would've been physical objects ten or twenty years ago. So, that's one way material use has, at least, shifted. There are two other trends that worry me more. One is visible in the freezer section at the grocery store; a "half-gallon" of i…

The same is true of coffee. A 1 pound coffee can is the same size it always was but now has 10 or 11 ounces of coffee in it.

This is why I prefer buying bulk when I can (with reusable containers/bags [1]). Bulk Coffee + airtight/cool storage hasn't resulted in bad coffee for me.

Why put up with deceptive packaging?

[1] Yes I know that most of that product came arrived in even more packaging, but doing what I can for now.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#137

Post by anon1m0us » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 8:26 PM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #128

munk-a wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still seems purely disingenuous to package them deceptively to appear to be the same quantity.

Up to some value of volumeDelta * productCount it actually makes sense to use the same container due to sourcing/manufacturing cost from the variance so I wouldn't say purely disingenuous, there is real reasoning behind some of it... it's just marketing gets in the way of when you should actually add that second container size i.e. it's costing you more to always use the bigger container but the marketing department…

So then why not just keep putting the same amount of coffee in the can?

It's on us though. They're lying to us to get our money, our labor, our consent. We let them.

Why?

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#138

Post by vannevar » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 8:27 PM UTC

twoslide wrote: post #119

It really only makes sense to understand the world economy as a whole. On this scale, consumption (e.g. steel production or oil consumption) continue to grow [1,2]. Americans are in the fortunate position of selling services (e.g. finance, advertising, information management) and consuming finished products from the rest of the world, but the American economy should not be considered a closed system. [1] https://en.w…

Yes, leaving out the consumption of materials in the form of goods manufactured elsewhere is such a giant, glaring hole in the logic that it strains credibility to believe it's mere oversight. It looks like deliberate misinformation.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#139

Post by bluGill » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 8:28 PM UTC

testuser454 wrote: post #67

doctorpangloss wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it occur to you that, like ordinary consumer products, industrial products also oversell their efficacy? There was just a paper released about a widely used pesticide that did not appear to actually increase yields. If the question is, how does crop tonnage go up without water and fertilizer use, maybe the answer really is a computer helped people plan better and be less wasteful. Or all the least efficient farme…

"There was just a paper released about a widely used pesticide that did not appear to actually increase yields." When my father was in a university geology department in an Agriculturally intensive midwestern state in the 80's, he worked on a few projects with farmers related to water use. One thing he looked into (unrelated to the main research project) was the cost/benefit of ferilizer use. The gist of it was that…

If nothing else a large farm gains more from efficiency. $10/acre when you have 80 acres is $800. If you have 3,000 acres that is $30,000 - which means you can afford to pay for more efficiency.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#140

Post by tialaramex » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 8:29 PM UTC

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #121

LoSboccacc wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its nice to see this reality (of how extrapolating is bad because things change) ...but when they do that same thing on earth temperature everyone loses his mind

The heat-trapping behaviour of CO_2 was first accurately measured in the 19th century, and all climate change models do actually predict convergence, not linear rise. It's just that the point of convergence is not one compatible with civilisation as we know it.

Exactly. If global warming said the typical outside temperature in Seattle doubles to almost 600K then it'd be fair to argue that's crazy people extrapolating - water isn't even liquid at that temperature, no model we have could make sense. But actually the model says it will go up say 2 or 3K. Much less like a wild extrapolation, and unfortunately still completely terrifying because that is already far too much.