11–20 of 74 posts
What I find sad is to see startups here in Switzerland where we already separate and recycle extensively that offer a service where you just toss everything that can be recycled in the same bag. So batteries are mixed with plastic and cans. These bags compete with government collection facilities and are "reprogramming" people to be lazy. Regular trash is very expensive here and people who want to safe are forced to…
What I find sad is to see startups here in Switzerland where we already separate and recycle extensively that offer a service where you just toss everything that can be recycled in the same bag. So batteries are mixed with plastic and cans. These bags compete with government collection facilities and are "reprogramming" people to be lazy. Regular trash is very expensive here and people who want to safe are forced to…
What I find sad is to see startups here in Switzerland where we already separate and recycle extensively that offer a service where you just toss everything that can be recycled in the same bag. So batteries are mixed with plastic and cans. These bags compete with government collection facilities and are "reprogramming" people to be lazy. Regular trash is very expensive here and people who want to safe are forced to…
Does sorting done by the general public count as "free"? It takes time and effort to route garbage to the appropriate bin --- maybe not much, but it adds up over the whole population. The desire to avoid this effort doesn't strike me as "lazy" any more than hiring a housekeeper or landscaper is "lazy". Economies of scale and division of labor make our society more prosperous. Why shouldn't we apply these principles t…
A friend of mine worked at this company, and the bane of his existence was one popular Arizona green tea bottle. The plastic and glass versions looked identical[1], so no way to sort it visually. Great for brand identity, bad downstream. [1] https://www.plasticstoday.com/packaging/arizona-beverages-sw...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code
What I find sad is to see startups here in Switzerland where we already separate and recycle extensively that offer a service where you just toss everything that can be recycled in the same bag. So batteries are mixed with plastic and cans. These bags compete with government collection facilities and are "reprogramming" people to be lazy. Regular trash is very expensive here and people who want to safe are forced to…
Does sorting done by the general public count as "free"? It takes time and effort to route garbage to the appropriate bin --- maybe not much, but it adds up over the whole population. The desire to avoid this effort doesn't strike me as "lazy" any more than hiring a housekeeper or landscaper is "lazy". Economies of scale and division of labor make our society more prosperous. Why shouldn't we apply these principles t…
What I find sad is to see startups here in Switzerland where we already separate and recycle extensively that offer a service where you just toss everything that can be recycled in the same bag. So batteries are mixed with plastic and cans. These bags compete with government collection facilities and are "reprogramming" people to be lazy. Regular trash is very expensive here and people who want to safe are forced to…
Does sorting done by the general public count as "free"? It takes time and effort to route garbage to the appropriate bin --- maybe not much, but it adds up over the whole population. The desire to avoid this effort doesn't strike me as "lazy" any more than hiring a housekeeper or landscaper is "lazy". Economies of scale and division of labor make our society more prosperous. Why shouldn't we apply these principles t…
A friend of mine worked at this company, and the bane of his existence was one popular Arizona green tea bottle. The plastic and glass versions looked identical[1], so no way to sort it visually. Great for brand identity, bad downstream. [1] https://www.plasticstoday.com/packaging/arizona-beverages-sw...
A friend of mine worked at this company, and the bane of his existence was one popular Arizona green tea bottle. The plastic and glass versions looked identical[1], so no way to sort it visually. Great for brand identity, bad downstream. [1] https://www.plasticstoday.com/packaging/arizona-beverages-sw...
I wonder if echolocation could have done the trick
You can also use various densities of liquid, to catch different densities of plastic floating vs. sinking if you've already crushed things up to avoid air bubbles. However, then you need to later separate the liquid from the shredded garbage.
What I find sad is to see startups here in Switzerland where we already separate and recycle extensively that offer a service where you just toss everything that can be recycled in the same bag. So batteries are mixed with plastic and cans. These bags compete with government collection facilities and are "reprogramming" people to be lazy. Regular trash is very expensive here and people who want to safe are forced to…
Sure it does.[1] What doesn't scale is manual sorting. It complicates collection, because there are all those bins to empty,the trucks are more complicated, and humans aren't good at separating the different types of plastics. That's easy with multispectral imaging, but humans lack that capability.
Bulk Handling Systems seems to be the US leader in this. Robots are used but do under 10% of the job. Most of the sorting is done by screens, shakers, drums, DC and AC magnets, and air-jet optical sorters. The robots only do "quality control", pulling out stuff that the heavy machinery mis-sorted.
San Francisco has one of their plants.
Aluminum is easily separated and recycled, and is the only profitable part of the operation. Steel gets separated and melted down, and about 40% of US steel is now recycled. Which is why Nucor, which started as a recycler, is the biggest US steel company. Some kinds of plastic bottles recycle well, but it doesn't really pay. CarbonLite, with three big plants, went bankrupt in 2021. The buyers kept the plants running, but the investors didn't get much. CarbonLite was caught between high fixed costs and not enough market for their product.
There's not much use for mixed paper. Offices used to generate large amounts of good quality paper, and newspapers were a consistent source of uniform product. But now, most paper is discarded packaging, with too much else mixed in.
It's hard to make money at this. Separation, though, is not the problem.