Teen Decomposes Plastic Bag In 3 Months

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Jul 31, 2009, 11:56 AM UTC

wizard_2 wrote: post #44

warfangle wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of plastic recycling isn't recycling - it's downcycling. Plastic bottles become carpet becomes landfill fodder. It just delays the inevitable. A lot of this has to do with the dyes used in plastics manufacturing. It also has to do with the limited mutability of most plastics - the quality of the plastic after one cycle of recycling (in this example, plastic bottle -> carpet) is reduced. Once it's turned to carp…

This reminds me of a ted talk by Ray Anderson on "the business logic of sustainability". http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/547 He founded and is CEO of a world wide carpet company. He figured out how to effectively recycle his carpets and how to reduce the amount of petroleum in the production. He now controls almost the entire life cycle of his carpets and manages to keep a tremendous amount of waste out of the landf…

Post by jff » Fri, Jul 31, 2009, 4:42 PM UTC

euroclydon wrote: post #22

edw519 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That the parent has been moderated down so much is troubling." It's only troubling until you understand why. No one would reasonably argue against the idea of producing something other than plastic in the first place. The downmodding was most likely in response to the word "Western". Bash the U.S. (or anyone else, for that matter) and get downmodded. What's so troubling about that? You can make a logical point on hn…

Well, I questioned whether it's a Western phenomenon. I'm not trying to bash the U.S. I like being a citizen. I was actually trying to make an analogy to diet, health and medicine, where Western lifestyles have traditionally been found to be inferior to Eastern ones, because we, on average, eat crappy food, get diseases, then spend a bunch of money trying to fix the symptoms of those diseases.