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Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

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Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#231

Post by C1sc0cat »

EmpirePhoenix wrote: post #223
flamtap wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do ethical strategies to accomplish that exist?

Sure, depends only on your ethic. E.G (note devils advocate) A utilitarist might argue, that killing of a larger amount of humans that are not worth it might be for the greater good of all A extremist fascist even has a pretty clear definition of worth added to that Asimovs concept of being killed instead of retirement Various concepts in fiction of adding globally some additions to drinking water to lower fertility…

You mean the Sixty in time enough for love - don't think he was propsing it as a good thing

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#232

Post by pfdietz »

noobermin wrote: post #187
mikeash wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s pretty common to see arguments that the net lifecycle impact of a hybrid outweighs that of a traditional car, because it has more impact in manufacturing. It’s not true (there is more impact in manufacturing, but the breakeven point is fairly early) but it’s an attractive notion to people with a contrarian bent, especially those who like to think that environmentalists are stupid. Incidentally, the same thing ex…

Solar panels are tricky because they rely on certain elements which are rather rare actually. I feel like there needs to be a serious study into whether increased mining/production of solar panels is a net gain or loss. It does feel however than reckoning with climate change will require more on the consumption/behavior side than technology side unfortunately.

> Solar panels are tricky because they rely on certain elements which are rather rare actually

Which elements are you thinking of? The vast majority of PV being made today is silicon. The only rare element used in PV is silver for front contact wires, and that can be substituted for with proper design (copper wires can be used if a diffusion barrier layer of nickel or molybdenum is used to prevent its reaction with silicon.)

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#233

Post by pfdietz »

Tagbert wrote: post #151
Skunkleton wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea was that hybrid cars are a sort of local maxima that has stalled real progress (alternative energy cars).

No, the real progress has been stalled by low fuel prices. Most people would only buy EV (or Hybrids) if they could see a clear short term lower cost. The current high upfront cost of EVs completely outweighs the longer term savings (or other less tangible benefits) for most people. Hybrids were a good bridge solution with only a small incremental cost and significant savings but they are currently not in vogue with…

When my ordinary gasoline car gets nearly 40 mpg on the highway, and not much lower in city, I don't have much incentive to go electric. Thank you, variable valve timing engine.

What really reducd my gas consumption was moving to a place just a few miles from where I work.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#234

Post by pfdietz »

dehrmann wrote: post #60
guitarbill wrote: post #5

> Plastics come from oil, which we are gradually running out of, though not quickly. I guess it depends on your definition of "quickly", or it would be good to see a citation on this one. Personally, I believe that if we encourage recycling more, that creates an opportunity for companies to innovate in that space and come up with better recycling methods. So in that respect, I'd prefer to over-recycle than under-recy…

Plastics are a negligible use of oil (compared to transportation), oil can be synthesized, and I assume methane feedstock is adequate for making plastics.

It's more ethane than methane, but ethylene can be made from methane.

http://siluria.com/Technology/Oxidative_Coupling_of_Methane

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#235

Post by jacobush »

Aloha wrote: post #203
jl2718 wrote: post #142

Just want to say that my grandfather, while working at Hughes, was one of the earliest proponents of aluminum recycling, but everybody was mad at him because they had to pay CRV (which is a terribly-designed incentive actually). Then he was one of the earliest opponents of recycling plastics, and he received nearly universal excoriation, including from my own family. Now the facts are slowly trickling out of the cult…

I think if we only used two kinds of plastic for food or consumer packaging, plastic recycling would make more sense, we unfortunately use like 10, which means s high labor cost for sorting.

Plus a myriad of additives in the plastic, plus various contaminants. Which makes it kind of hard of to recycle without seriously degrading the end product, even if we had everything nailed to spec and not the chaos we are in now.

I my book, we need to make energy production seriously cheap (renewables, plus maybe nuclear) and put some of the energy excess into transporting heavier but inert packaging such as glass, metal and carton. And by decree lock down the types of plastic and additives which are allowed to use.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#236

Post by AmericanChopper »

Firadeoclus wrote: post #226
AmericanChopper wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> first step realize that happiness is not automatically linked to consumption I’ve always thought that framing the issue like this is both smug and dishonest. Smug because you’re essentially saying that people are wrong about the things they believe bring them satisfaction and comfort. Dishonest because reduce in this context will always mean a reduction in quality of life. Aside from being an ineffective way to con…

How would you frame it? People saying this are frequently those who would also admit that they were wrong about the things they believed to bring them satisfaction and comfort. From their own experience they know that it did not mean a reduction in quality of life for them. That doesn't mean it works that way for everyone, but it's not dishonest.

Well, honestly...

If you believe that the future of the world depends on reducing consumption, a presupposition which is not necessarily true, then you are asking people to reduce their quality of life. That’s not to say that people cannot be satisfied by a reduced quality of life, but asking people to sacrifice things that bring them comfort, convenience or satisfaction is by definition asking them to reduce their quality of life.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#237

Post by ethagnawl »

henrikschroder wrote: post #89
throwaway3627 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's problems and solutions that need policy and political will to implement: - consumer-sorted recycling is a BandAid virtue-signal and ineffective because it gets mixed up, under-sorted and contaminated - post-consumer waste-stream separation works. Stanford does it because five bins was ridiculous - all trash should be recycled, composted at-scale to reach near zero landfill stream - Structural waste reduction…

Single-use plastics are perfectly fine if: 1) You already have oil-powered power plants, and 2) You have efficient, modern trash incinerators that can recover 90%+ of the energy in plastics, and 3) You make sure that all plastic garbage actually ends up incinerated. Because the utility you get out of making plastics out of oil, using the plastics for something, and then burning it, is higher than just straight up bur…

> You make sure that all plastic garbage actually ends up incinerated.

Oddly, this seems to be the most difficult part of the equation here in NYC. Containerization needs to be adopted in order to make the system more efficient and sanitary. Containerization would prevent refuse from spilling into the street, into the storm drains, etc. The current system (curbside pickup of plastic bags) falls over (literally and figuratively) in too many ways and the sanitation workers aren't interested in picking up the slack -- they ignore anything not secured in a plastic bag.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#238

Post by AmericanChopper »

m0zg wrote: post #219
AmericanChopper wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> first step realize that happiness is not automatically linked to consumption I’ve always thought that framing the issue like this is both smug and dishonest. Smug because you’re essentially saying that people are wrong about the things they believe bring them satisfaction and comfort. Dishonest because reduce in this context will always mean a reduction in quality of life. Aside from being an ineffective way to con…

This is a profoundly consumerist point of view, IMO. It presupposes that buying more stuff necessarily brings more satisfaction and comfort (which is not true in general once one's basic needs for security, food, shelter, and healthcare are met), and that having less stuff means "a reduction in quality of life" (also not true, having less stuff leads to an increase in quality of life for many people). There are demon…

This position erroneously presupposes that life satisfaction and quality of life are the same thing. Many people are satisfied with a lower quality of life, and are more than happy to invest tremendous effort into things that others may expect to be more convenient. But the point of view in the parent comment is essentially “if you do not derive satisfaction in life from the same things that I do, then you are wrong”, which is remarkably arrogant and closed minded.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#239

Post by nsb1 »

Honest question: From a climate change point of view, burying anything that contains carbon is basically the definition of sequestering that carbon. Why is it bad to bury anything that contains carbon?

The obvious response, I think, would be that if we consume and bury 'stuff', then we'll just make more 'stuff', but what's wrong with that? Is it the energy required (presumably from burning fossil fuels) to produce more 'stuff' that's really the problem? It doesn't seem like we have the whole picture on how much energy is actually spent preparing recycled materials for re-use to make an accurate comparison.

Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

#240

Post by JoeAltmaier »

contactlight11 wrote: post #154

How about this information from CT's DEEP which quotes the EPA for the majority of it's information? Compared to virgin materials, using recycled materials more efficient by: - 40% for paper - 60-74% for steel and tin cans - 33% for plastics - 30% for glass - 5% for aluminum cans These numbers appear to be referencing the generation of new products using recycled vs new materials, but do they fail to take in to accou…

There's the in-home cost. My mother-in-law would run the cans and bottles through the dishwasher before putting them in the rcycle bin. The energy, hot water, soap constituted a catastrophic reversal of any possible gain from the recycling.

Just driving the truck around the neighborhood to pick up the bins is a cost in diesel, human resources (which translate to carbon at some level).

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