131–140 of 344 posts
Eventually, robots will go through all of the landfills and recover a lot of the materials in it. And they might get all the energy they need to do it from the garbage itself. Hey, if insects can do it, robots will eventually be able to do it.
Isn't this what Wall-E was all about?
Wall-E was solar powered and was just supposed to compact trash for incineration.
Reducing is strategic. Reusing and recycling are tactical. If your strategy is in place, use all the tactics that contribute to it. But if you don't have your strategy in place, tactics can do nothing or even move you backward. Corporations like recycling because it promotes growth -- the opposite of reduction. We are stepping on the gas, thinking we're stepping on the brake. Covered in episode 183 of Leadership and…
> Corporations like recycling because it promotes growth -- the opposite of reduction. What do you mean by "promotes growth" here? You pay for your recycling just like your trash. Why would any company like it more than reducing overall waste?
“Reusable straws and bags are often more resource intensive than single-use ones. Ever noticed that plastic bags and straws are both incredibly thin and incredibly cheap? Almost no resources go into making each one — it’s kind of amazing.“ I’m confused by these new plastic bag rules in some cities. What is the underlying reasoning that was used to advocate for them?
Roughly, plastic bags are bad for wildlife and enough of them don't make it into the landfill that it's a problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shipping by rail and sea is incredibly efficient. Some googling tells me rail is 471 ton-miles per gallon. The average American produces 1600 lbs of trash per year, so you can ship one person's trash for a year almost 600 miles with one gallon of fuel. Even long-distance trash transportation is a negligible contributor to someone's oil use.
Could you not extract the methane, and run the train on it, and transport it for free? Poopetual motion? (sorry for the shit jokes)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>when you really go shopping you should and can easily bring a bag when you go shopping. There's a Danish study[1] that concluded that reusable bags require 50+ uses before breaking even with disposable plastic bags. And that's for one use. If you reuse the disposable bag once (to line your garbage bin, for example), the break even point is now 100+ uses. If you factor in cleaning costs for the reusable bags, I'd be…
That study only looked at resource usage, and not the consequences of carelessly discarded shopping bags clogging up rivers and beaches. The best shopping bag to use is still an upcycled bag made from otherwise discarded material, as you are not creating demand for the production of new bags. Sail cloth is a good sturdy fabric, and a bag made from it will literally last you a lifetime.
1. plastic garbage winding up in rivers is largely a developing country problem. I don't see many plastic bags (if at all) in my local waterways.
2. why not just responsibly dispose of those bags? It's not hard. They're not going to get lost when you're using them. After that, you're probably home, or at least some place with a garbage bin.
>The best shopping bag to use is still an upcycled bag made from otherwise discarded material, as you are not creating demand for the production of new bags. Sail cloth is a good sturdy fabric, and a bag made from it will literally last you a lifetime.
Are you suggesting people to make DIY cotton bags from scrap fabric they find themselves? You might be able to avoid the high costs of cotton (break even of 7000+ uses), but if you're not into arts and crafts, I suspect the opportunity cost will eat up any savings (if any).
three main issues: 1) yes the Earth is huge but cities really don't have easy access to landfill, and many are in fact running out of it because transporting garbage is expensive. 2) podcasts aren't convincing sources for a debate. 3) the real debate is "how do we reduce waste", not "landfill vs recycling".
How expensive is transporting garbage?
“Reusable straws and bags are often more resource intensive than single-use ones. Ever noticed that plastic bags and straws are both incredibly thin and incredibly cheap? Almost no resources go into making each one — it’s kind of amazing.“ I’m confused by these new plastic bag rules in some cities. What is the underlying reasoning that was used to advocate for them?
Wikipedia covers this pretty well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_lightweight_pla... Roughly, plastic bags are bad for wildlife and enough of them don't make it into the landfill that it's a problem.
“The problem of rubbish polluting the sea, rivers and land can be most cheaply addressed by improving rubbish collection and making sure everything gets to landfill.
Almost all of the litter that escapes into nature, especially the sea, comes from poorer riverine countries with bad rubbish collection practices, such as China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Rich countries like the UK or US have rubbish collection rates approaching 100% and are responsible for almost no new waste reaching the oceans.
Focussing on recycling is a distraction from making sure everything gets collected and cheaply buried underground — something which many countries already do successfully.”
Reducing is strategic. Reusing and recycling are tactical. If your strategy is in place, use all the tactics that contribute to it. But if you don't have your strategy in place, tactics can do nothing or even move you backward. Corporations like recycling because it promotes growth -- the opposite of reduction. We are stepping on the gas, thinking we're stepping on the brake. Covered in episode 183 of Leadership and…
> Corporations like recycling because it promotes growth -- the opposite of reduction. What do you mean by "promotes growth" here? You pay for your recycling just like your trash. Why would any company like it more than reducing overall waste?
The other is a raw materials subsidy for manufacturing paid by the taxpayer.
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…
> The convenience of throwing something away is a triumph of modern civilization ... I think you got it backwards. Throwing stuff away was the normal way of life before modern civilization arrived, just like defecating wherever you find convenient, hunting animals for dinner, or riding hoses on whatever side of road you like. The wonder of modern civilization gave us so much power to produce stuff that it's no longer…
i'd like to see some evidence to that.
most of what we throw away is packaging. in the past there was little packaging. and most packaging was reusable, a cloth, a bag or a chest for example.
if it wasn't for packaging, in my daily life i would hardly have any trash at all. almost everything i am able to reuse, and i buy with re-usability in mind.
this is not something i learned in school, or from somehow environmentally conscious parents. i am actually not sure where this came from. we did it out of habit. waste not, want not. maybe it came from not being able to afford to keep buying new stuff. it wasn't really conscious.
reusing vs throwing away is more likely split along rich vs poor. and on the past more people were not rich. they were not necessarily poor in the sense of struggling to survive but the average population created everything they needed for themselves or bartered it. there was no space for trash.
buying new things is a sign of wealth. this is especially visible in china where second hand markets are practically non-existent. people pride themselves that they can afford to buy new stuff.
note that reusing is different from recycling. reusing happens at home or on the second hand market. recycling comes from collecting trash and transforming it.
so in that sense recycling is very new. but reusing is old.