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A laptop stand made from a single sheet of recycled paper

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Re: A laptop stand made from a single sheet of recycled paper

#151

Post by askvictor »

yoavm wrote: post #90
bko wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often see "recycled" or similar as a signal for more expensive. My favorite was when I saw a jam that touted "upcycled" strawberries. When I looked into it, it basically meant that it was made from beat up ugly strawberries that would have been used for animal feed. Surely there would be cost savings in using reject fruit, right? No, an 8oz jar retails for over $8 compared to about half that to an organic no sugar…

Sometimes it's a marketing stunt, but often recycling is more expensive. I mean, recycling a plastic bag is probably more expensive than making one. The unfortunate reality of our financial system is that it often rewards people for doing the wrong thing.

> Sometimes it's a marketing stunt, but often recycling is more expensive. I mean, recycling a plastic bag is probably more expensive than making one.

Depends on the price of oil. Metal recycling is far more cost effective that extracting from ore. Glass, too, is very economical to recycle.

Plastic recycling was never about recycling, it was to convince people to use plastics.

Re: A laptop stand made from a single sheet of recycled paper

#152

Post by forinti »

latexr wrote: post #47

The article is seemingly outdated. The cheapest one I could find in the store was 29 USD. In Euros, it’s 36.37. And of course, you still have to pay for shipping. From Korea. This seems quite absurd. Whatever good you do the planet by using something out of recycled paper (thumbs up on the idea) will surely be offset by all the logistics of the shipping. This should have been a tutorial, not a product.

> This should have been a tutorial, not a product.

It doesn't seem too difficult to make something similar.

Re: A laptop stand made from a single sheet of recycled paper

#153

Post by dylan604 »

borski wrote: post #67
dylan604 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is actually more common place than you might expect. just like wearing tube socks vs ankle socks has become some sort of age delineation, owning books is as well.

This makes me so sad.

I have no books that have any value other than I already own them. After moving across the country a couple of times with them plus all of the other various moves, I have thought about getting rid of them numerous times. The only reason I have not is just sheer laziness on taking them some place. My most recent move left them in boxes and just stored.

Re: A laptop stand made from a single sheet of recycled paper

#154

Post by thfuran »

askvictor wrote: post #151
yoavm wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it's a marketing stunt, but often recycling is more expensive. I mean, recycling a plastic bag is probably more expensive than making one. The unfortunate reality of our financial system is that it often rewards people for doing the wrong thing.

> Sometimes it's a marketing stunt, but often recycling is more expensive. I mean, recycling a plastic bag is probably more expensive than making one. Depends on the price of oil. Metal recycling is far more cost effective that extracting from ore. Glass, too, is very economical to recycle. Plastic recycling was never about recycling, it was to convince people to use plastics.

Glass can be economical to re-use, but I thought recycling it uses nearly as much energy as producing it in the first place.

Re: A laptop stand made from a single sheet of recycled paper

#157

Post by borski »

dylan604 wrote: post #153
borski wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me so sad.

I have no books that have any value other than I already own them. After moving across the country a couple of times with them plus all of the other various moves, I have thought about getting rid of them numerous times. The only reason I have not is just sheer laziness on taking them some place. My most recent move left them in boxes and just stored.

https://x.com/paulg/status/1860692810279559283

Re: A laptop stand made from a single sheet of recycled paper

#159

Post by pomian »

radlad wrote: post #87
calmbonsai wrote: post #78

I'm reminded of similarly useless "sustainable cardboard furniture" that came out about a decade ago. On the positive side, kudos to whomever in marketing/pr at the design firm got this useless product so much press. This is just the sort of "win" that a design consulting shop loves to have for actual briefs that lead to real moving-the-needle revenue. One example would be SmartDesign's modular slip-on "S-Grips" that…

This is a bit of a random place to mention it, but while I very much like OXO goods, IKEA makes the best (in my opinion) potato peeler for $5 - cheaper than anything OXO makes: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/ikea-365-vaerdefull-potato-peel...

Brilliant write up. I remember using the old ones, and only last year found the oxo model. truly amazing. Many important lessons in product design in that article; with the most important in the last sentence - it has to work!

Re: A laptop stand made from a single sheet of recycled paper

#160

Post by xp84 »

bko wrote: post #96
yoavm wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it's a marketing stunt, but often recycling is more expensive. I mean, recycling a plastic bag is probably more expensive than making one. The unfortunate reality of our financial system is that it often rewards people for doing the wrong thing.

If recycling is more expensive, isn't recycling the wrong thing? The price isn't some random number attached to an activity. It captures the various costs associated with it and is helpful in directing behaviors for this very reason. Recycling is more expensive, it likely means that there are associated costs (e.g. transportation, sorting, cleaning, processing, etc) that make it less economical than just throwing it…

In terms of something like paper, you're likely right. There's a weird popular perception that when you go to the grocery store and get 4 paper bags, somewhere a logger fells a beautiful 1000-year-old sequoia to grind into paper pulp, when the reality is that the same managed forest land is replanted over and over with fast-growing trees and harvested and replanted as soon as they're ready. The more demand for paper, the more tree farms there will be, and i can think of much worse things than taking up more of our land with CO2-slurping trees. If the paper ends up in a landfill, that's fine. It's not toxic.

Or we could use a ton of energy and chemicals to recycle paper (and also to clean it since all consumer recycling in the US is "mixed stream" meaning someone's used dirty yogurt container and beer bottles are all over the paper), and produce much worse paper.

But all "recycling" is too valuable to helping people feel good about consumption, for us to be honest with ourselves about how pointless most of it is besides aluminum and glass, and maybe steel.

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