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The Engineering of Landfills

practical.engineering

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Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#261

Post by ZeroGravitas »

scoofy wrote: post #99
bko wrote: post #2

I found this interesting: > Another option is to put it to beneficial use to create heat or even electricity. The Puente Hills landfill I showed earlier has a gas-to-energy facility that’s been running since 1987, and even though the landfill is now closed, it currently provides enough electricity to power around 70,000 homes. And towards the end > Landfills seem like an environmental blight, but really, properly des…

I genuinely use landfills, especially with plastic waste, as shibboleth to know whether I'm talking to somebody who is an environmentalist or somebody who is an "environmentalist." Anyone who thinks recycling plastic is some sort of normative good because "waste is bad" clearly hasn't put any thought into what environmental issues need to be focused on right now.

Ironically, just from this comment I get the impression that you are misinformed about environmental issues.

Good job taking down that "waste is bad" straw person.

But what about the EU or the EPAs (or a range of other relevant institutions) waste management hierarchy?

It would appear you've just placed almost the entire waste management industry, its regulators, and related academia in the "don't know what they are talking about" pile, which seems somewhat bold.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#262

Post by seb1204 »

sofixa wrote: post #244
acec wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waste is inherently problematic, regardless of how we manage it. While burning plastic for energy might seem like a solution, it's not ideal. We can generate clean electricity through other means that are cheaper and less polluting. Burning waste still releases harmful toxins into the environment and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions – even if it reduces landfill methane, which is a potent contributor to climat…

> Burning waste still releases harmful toxins into the environment and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions – even if it reduces landfill methane, which is a potent contributor to climate change This is not axiomatic. The gases from the incineration can be put into productive use (cf. Vienna heating and providing hot water off of their incinerator), and the harmful stuff can be filtered (cf. Vienna where the incin…

Yes they exist and they work. However to build them requires stringent regulations to make them a viable cost solution. If it is ok to blow out the toxic smoke the high end solution will not be built. The best thing is still avoiding waste.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#263

Post by rd »

actionfromafar wrote: post #248
Sammi wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seem like we are producing an unnecessarily large amount of waste, but the last sentence does not come of as constructive to me, because it doesn't offer any concrete action we can take towards a goal of reducing waste. Instead if comes of as sidestepping the issue of dealing with the waste we have.

I'll pitch in. Standardize on a strict set of allowed mixtures of plastics (and possibly even colors!). Not just "PP", "ABS" and so on, but exact formulas. Also, keep the set of allowed formules small. This will serve two purposes, first, allow plastics to be actually recycled to a greater extent. Now, plastics are very much "mystery" items. Second, it will reduce the amount of harmful and toxic additives in plastics…

How do you make China adhere?

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#264

Post by actionfromafar »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #178
raisedbyninjas wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PepsiCo did the same thing. Custodians dumped everything into the same bags. Leadership confirmed it all went to the dump. Still had a personal recycle bin crammed under every desk.

This is just corporate virtue signaling.

And/or ass-covering. There might be contracts in place etc.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#265

Post by sofixa »

aziaziazi wrote: post #252
sofixa wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only. If you go to a developing country in Asia, more likely than not you'll see that locals have no issues throwing thrash everywhere in nature because they're not conscient of the problems it causes.

True, but for now Asia is far from the biggest consumer. https://tappwater.co/blogs/blog/how-many-people-consume-bott... . https://www.statista.com/statistics/505794/cds-per-capita-co...

Considering that in some Asian countries the only way to acquire drinkable water is to buy it bottled, I'm somewhat doubtful of those "estimates".

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#266

Post by seb1204 »

Goonbaggins wrote: post #175
Mistletoe wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/03/13/fix-recycling-a...

Yep, I've worked in recycling for 6 years and am well aware that there's a lot of broken parts. My point was that if a PET bottle goes into a single stream system, the recycling industry is pretty good at capturing it, baling it, and selling it to a plastics processor. That processor will clean it, pellet it, and sell it as rPET. 85% of PET bottles that end up in curbside single stream end up getting recycled. I'd li…

In Australia the whole hard VS soft plastic blew up recently. The REDcycle brand by mayor supermarkets was shown to just collect and store the soft plastic in large warehouses. For bottles there is a refund scheme.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#267

Post by seb1204 »

ropable wrote: post #230
gregmac wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in an office with recycling bins where everything was just gathered up and thrown in the dumpster with the rest of the garbage. It wasn't just our cleaning people, either: from my desk I could see the only two parking lot entrances and while the garbage truck came weekly, never once did I see a recycling truck.

You might not be seeing what you think you're seeing, WRT everything going into the same truck. Lots of municipalities (e.g. mine) undertake resource extraction from commingled waste & recycling streams. It isn't the same everywhere, but sometimes it's more efficient to just put the entire waste stream through the same extraction process to recover recyclable materials. The separate receptacles at the client side are…

I heard this as well. There is a recycling plant that you need to run anyway to separate the waste/rubbish so you might as well use it to get the plastics and cans out. I think there is an argument that while the machine can do it well avoiding the machine does have benefits. This also doesn't work for paper or cardboard as it would get soiled from what I understand.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#268

Post by aDyslecticCrow »

eru wrote: post #217
alexanderchr wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So would most of us, but somewhat impractically, Sweden tends to be at its coldest when it’s dark and windless.

Investments in long range, high wattage cabling to connect grids might be useful. There's plenty of sun light further south. Of course, you need to run the numbers to make sure it actually makes sense. Both economically and from a resource point of view. Cables ain't free to build nor maintain. But there's probably a trade to be made with the carbon capture people to sell them trash plastic to bury (or to have them p…

> long-range, high-wattage cabling to connect grids

As the parent comment is on Sweden... That's a major discussion in our current politics and energy development landscape.

Not south, though... but north. 60% of Sweden's energy production is from hydroelectric dams far in the north, but most populations are down south. So, expanding this connection is the most imminently useful infrastructure investment that could be made. But that wouldn't be enough if we also use that power for heating.

The problem is that Sweden's largest energy demand is heating cold, windless winters, while the rest of Europe is also cold. Burning stuff to be warm can only really be replaced by nuclear power, which Sweden has been politically opposed to. Burning trash instead of coal is a pretty decent upgrade from that perspective.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#269

Post by lillecarl »

ArnoVW wrote: post #243
Sammi wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seem like we are producing an unnecessarily large amount of waste, but the last sentence does not come of as constructive to me, because it doesn't offer any concrete action we can take towards a goal of reducing waste. Instead if comes of as sidestepping the issue of dealing with the waste we have.

That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it, is that your vision is not constructive, because you wave away the real solution as "not actionable". Parent does not propose concrete action, but neither do you. We can have meaningful discussion without everything having to be accompanied by a five-step plan. For actionable reduction of waste, just look at how Europe has a comparable life style as the U…

Many if not all "large" (50k) cities in Sweden burn their trash for district heating, we filter most bad stuff out with filters, it still releases CO2, but burning it means it won't start producing methane, which is a worse greenhouse gas.

Europe also doesn't tax "light trucks" as if they were bicycles nor force people into cars to survive.

The American mindset "I do what I do and you do what you do" worked in the 60s and 70s when people were unaware they're fucking the planet (as hard as they are), but I can't help but look down on wasteful people, they're subsidized by people doing their part (or continents doing their part)

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#270

Post by flavius29663 »

gruez wrote: post #113
flavius29663 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was viable only because we were shipping "recyclables" that had to be "recycled" by contract, not pure garbage that could have just been buried. Sorting through that whole mess of "recyclables" was more expensive than shipping it to China and letting them just burn or bury it.

>Sorting through that whole mess of "recyclables" was more expensive than shipping it to China and letting them just burn or bury it. I thought they didn't bother and just buried it if it wasn't profitable. >GONZALEZ: Whoa. Oh, I've been doing that one wrong. So the city of Nogales went around to everyone's house this morning and picked up their recyclables. [...] And they brought them here. And where is all this goi…

> I thought they didn't bother and just buried it if it wasn't profitable.

In my county, they are obliged by the contract to NOT bury the mixed recyclables. So they used to offload it to some companies that would then also promise not to bury them (pinky promise), and ship them to China. Contracts in China are then not so easy to follow and enforce and voila, problem is now somewhere else.

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