10 ms·

This idea seems so sensible it's a no-brainer. (I'm almost dreading the comments explaining why I'm wrong!) The human race is producing unprecedented quantities

by J-dawg 10y ago

This idea seems so sensible it's a no-brainer. (I'm almost dreading the comments explaining why I'm wrong!) The human race is producing unprecedented quantities of non-recyclable "stuff". It's pumped out of the ground as oil, converted into plastics, and after a short life, buried in the ground again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if much of it didn't also end up floating in the ocean, being eaten by animals and contaminating the human food chain. The only potential counter-argument I can see with this sort of policy is that the goals of minimising CO2 and minimising waste sometimes seem to be in competition with each other. Anecdotally I've heard of examples where (e.g.) washing china plates has a greater carbon cost than using disposable ones.

semi-extrinsic 10y ago
Non-petroleum based plastics are a thing, but lag behind in many areas like strength, injection molding quality, UV resistance etc. Recently Lego decided on moving to plant-based plastics, but they expect to need more than a decade of R&D by a team of 100 people, costing $150 million, before these materials are up to Lego's quality standards. http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i26/Lego-Replace-Oil-Based-Plastics.html http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i26/Lego-Replace-Oil-Based-Pl...
- ocschwar 10y ago
  If they can figure out how to make the stuff out of bamboo, then we have ourselves a carbon sequestration method. No more global warming.
  - barkbro 10y ago
    Bamboo is made of cellulose, which is not what you would want to use for making plastics. The problem with cellulose is that, because it is fibrous, there aren't really any efficient ways of breaking it down.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - hx87 10y ago
      Wood is also cellulose, but it is an excellent substitute for plastic in many cases (i.e. chopsticks and eating utensils)
  - danans 10y ago
    For silverware at least this is available: https://www.bambuhome.com/products/all-occasion-veneerware-knife-fork-spoon?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=googlepla&variant=18314030593&gclid=CjwKEAjwjqO_BRDribyJpc_mzHgSJABdnsFWqjH1SjDNfYLJ9nxoJNFbLKWff6rsnR568JyeifyElxoCPPTw_wcB https://www.bambuhome.com/products/all-occasion-veneerware-k... Expensive, though, for disposable stuff.
userbinator 10y ago
It's pumped out of the ground as oil, converted into plastics, and after a short life, buried in the ground again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if much of it didn't also end up floating in the ocean, being eaten by animals and contaminating the human food chain. What I think is most sad about this is that we've come up with a material that can last nearly forever and is relatively easy to reuse and recycle (at least for simple thermoplastics like polyethylene which is what most plastic bags are made of), and yet we waste massive quantities of it. Biodegradable plastics just fuel the "disposable culture" and its resource consumption more, because they are deliberately designed to not last long.
- hiisukun 10y ago
  I'm in two minds about biodegradable plastics. Where I'm from, plastic bags are no longer the norm for supermarkets to pack groceries in, and so most people carry their own re-usable bags to the store, or get goods packed in biodegradable plastics. While this is anecdotal, it is common amongst my peers for the biodegradable bags to be used as general household garbage bags. I think this feels much better than using the previous long lasting ones, but knowing what people put inside them - I wonder if it really makes a difference. On the other hand, I can remember when the plastic supermarket bags were phased out, and it was impressive just how quickly people adopted reusable bags. This small change in behaviour must come with at least some increased awareness of resource consumption, surely?
  - avian 10y ago
    > Where I'm from, plastic bags are no longer the norm for supermarkets to pack groceries in, and so most people carry their own re-usable bags to the store This used to be the case here as well (Slovenia), until supermarkets started introducing the self-service check-out machines. Those can't be used with re-usable bags (or sometimes can be, but with significant annoyance to everyone present, since an employee must manually check your bag).
    - vkou 10y ago
      Where I shop (Seattle, US), supermarkets have self-service check-out machines, and I've never had a problem with bringing my own, non-reusable bag.
mseebach 10y ago
The idea is great. The problems will be with the implementation, how it will change incentives, any loopholes introduced, cost of enforcement and unintended consequences. What exactly is a repair? Are parts covered, or only labour? Think ship of Theseus. Is an upgrade a repair, can I put a better compressor, rather than like-for-like in my refrigerator when it's failed? Can I have my TV repaired by replacing all the parts, except the power cord? How broken must something be before it can be repaired? Totally failed, failure imminent, or just worn? (Unintended consequence: people have their things fixed long before it's strictly necessary, leading to greater waste than if they'd just let the thing fail and bought a new one. Another one: appliances are only upgraded to newer, much more energy efficient ones much later than otherwise). And for labour, where is the line drawn? Is the labour cost of diagnosing a problem covered? What if the problem is bigger than expected, and it isn't economical to carry out the repair? What if I have you upgrade the Foo (not a repair), which is trivial, while you've taken the widget apart anyway to fix the Bar (a repair)? What about repairing something, pocketing the tax break, then selling it (perhaps outside of the country)? Once you have considered all of these questions, you either have a lot of loopholes which will make the tax break much more expensive, or have a very long body of legal texts, and some very exited lawyers and auditors which will impose an indirect cost on society broadly. Sure, it's pessimistic, but I'm essentially working backwards from an attempt to impose a tax on dietary fat (for health reasons) in Denmark. Sounds great, right? Hilarity ensued over mixed nuts (the accountants had a field day with that one, and IIRC all kinds of meat being taxed at the same level, and the tax was repealed after only 15 months.
- gutnor 10y ago
  I'm pessimistic too. However, the labour cost is so huge that it will offset some of your points and only give a slight edge to repair and second hand shops. If you don't have a top of the range, almost new fridge or TV, even phone, repair will almost always come close to replacement cost. And replacement give you back a 2 years guarantee with faster turnaround.
  - mikepurvis 10y ago
    Right, but the point of this legislation is to adjust the incentives so that repair becomes possible/economical in a greater number of cases.
brightball 10y ago
If anything, it seems like this might be a reasonably untapped area for innovation: making repairs more efficient. Right now all of the business and efficiency gains seem to be invested in lowering production cost, selling fast and hard to gain market share. It seems like a way to make repairs more efficient could be a solid way of attacking a market slowly with a quality product. Slower growth but you build a brand for resilience and your market share is more defined by customers who aren't looking elsewhere than new acquisitions.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  My school offered a semester course titled "Design for Manufacturability". We looked at things like lowering fastener and part count, to reduce assembly time (and assembly errors, etc.). It was taught by a part time guy who had a lot of experience with it in industry. I may have missed it, but I don't think there was a similar "Design for Service" course. It's not been entirely ignored, there are makes of cars that mechanics hate to work on because service was not particularly accounted for in the design, and there are cars that they like a lot.
  - JsGarage 10y ago
    I'm up against the car issue in a big way. I wanted to change a clutch in my 06 scion xb I'd need to suspend the engine and trans separately to get at the clutch in the middle. That's 2 big lumps of steel hanging over my head while I wrench.. I can't pull the assessmbly out the top because it doesn't fit through the opening! And it's only by a few inches! In my 1973 240z I can practically stand in the enginebay with the engine in place and if I want to pull the motor and trans it's a job a single person could do if they had practice. It's weird
fuzzfactor 10y ago
If you do the math, it can be seen that a large enough software company, with a strong enough anti-recycling ("upgrade") program, could be responsible for more toxic chemicals being wasted compared to the chemcal waste from companies like Dow and DuPont.
- Kadin 10y ago
  And somewhat perversely, while a chemical plant's waste is concentrated in a single place, which makes it straightforward (if expensive) to contain and treat, the "industrial waste" embodied in consumer products gets spread across the entire planet, eventually landing in millions of unlined municipal landfills, bodies of water, and unsafe 'recycling' facilities. The most straightforward solution would be a deposit covering the eventual disposal cost of products, which would then be refunded as the product was responsibly recycled (similar to aluminum cans in some parts of the US), but of course I don't expect to see anything like that in my lifetime. Much easier to pay lobbyists to allow you to continue externalizing your costs on the public.
specialist 10y ago
I'm not so sure. We must consider the whole lifecycle. My buddy, with genuine compassion, recycles used PCs and gifts them to communities in the third world. I've read some pretty strong arguments that it'd better for everyone if they simply received the newest, cheapest PCs. Sweden's efforts could help (symbolically) by influencing the design of future goods, to be more serviceable, upgradeable.
- TDL 10y ago
  Not sure what service your friend uses for gifting his electronics to African countries, but I believe most electronics are sent to Ghana then burned for various metals. http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/ http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/
  - specialist 10y ago
    He and his students are the service. They deliver the PCs personally and then hang out to help set things up and train the locals. Edit: Ah. I probably should have wrote that my friend refurbishes PCs for donation. My bad.
vlehto 10y ago
>This idea seems so sensible it's a no-brainer. I have not heard any "cut VAT" scheme that doesn't sound really sensible. My suggestion would be to cut VAT alltogether so we can save our souls from endless tax cut jungle. But that's not going to happen, because VAT is effectively barrier against foreign goods, important source of government income and can't go progressive. As a result conservatives love it to death.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  The reason governments like it is because it is hard to avoid.
  - vlehto 10y ago
    If cryptocurrency gets big, it's the first tax everybody avoids.
sliverstorm 10y ago
That last bit says to me that we need to: a) figure out how to make washing plates more efficient b) extend the lifetime of plates so their manufacture is amortized over more uses (Or do you specifically call out china plates because they are known for seeing so little use?)
burkemw3 10y ago
> It's pumped out of the ground as oil, converted into plastics, and after a short life, buried in the ground again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if much of it didn't also end up floating in the ocean, being eaten by animals and contaminating the human food chain. Reminds of: "It's pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, turn it into plastic, shape it appropriately, truck it to a store, buy it, and bring it home is considered to be less effort than what it takes to just wash the spoon when you're done with it." https://goo.gl/photos/ccLCuPkvKh99WWvE8 https://goo.gl/photos/ccLCuPkvKh99WWvE8
crpatino 10y ago
> Anecdotally I've heard of examples where (e.g.) washing china plates has a greater carbon cost than using disposable ones. Only if you use a dishwasher. IF you do dishes by hand, the only cost is water and soap. Strictly speaking from an environmental point of view the time you spend doing it would be considered a "gain" instead of a "cost", given that you will be probably not engaging in modern electronic entertainment for the duration of the task. In an industrial environment, such as a restaurant, the cost analysis would be non trivial, given the more complex supply chains that businesses have.
- harmegido 10y ago
  I'm not convinced. Where are you getting that water from? Maybe if you manually drew it from a well...
- jacobr 10y ago
  Water has to be processed and transported to your house, and then heated. A modern dish washer is more efficient than hand washing dishes because it uses less water.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  No. Dishwasher uses less energy, less water and less detergent. [0] Of course things depend on your use case - if you really have just that one cup and spoon, then handwashing may be better, at least if you are happy with some grease left in the dishes. [0] http://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/dishwasher-vs-handwashing-the-winner.html http://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/dishwasher-vs-handw...

by J-dawg 10y ago

semi-extrinsic 10y ago

Non-petroleum based plastics are a thing, but lag behind in many areas like strength, injection molding quality, UV resistance etc. Recently Lego decided on moving to plant-based plastics, but they expect to need more than a decade of R&D by a team of 100 people, costing $150 million, before these materials are up to Lego's quality standards. http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i26/Lego-Replace-Oil-Based-Plastics.html http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i26/Lego-Replace-Oil-Based-Pl...

ocschwar 10y ago
If they can figure out how to make the stuff out of bamboo, then we have ourselves a carbon sequestration method. No more global warming.
- barkbro 10y ago
  Bamboo is made of cellulose, which is not what you would want to use for making plastics. The problem with cellulose is that, because it is fibrous, there aren't really any efficient ways of breaking it down.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - hx87 10y ago
    Wood is also cellulose, but it is an excellent substitute for plastic in many cases (i.e. chopsticks and eating utensils)
- danans 10y ago
  For silverware at least this is available: https://www.bambuhome.com/products/all-occasion-veneerware-knife-fork-spoon?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=googlepla&variant=18314030593&gclid=CjwKEAjwjqO_BRDribyJpc_mzHgSJABdnsFWqjH1SjDNfYLJ9nxoJNFbLKWff6rsnR568JyeifyElxoCPPTw_wcB https://www.bambuhome.com/products/all-occasion-veneerware-k... Expensive, though, for disposable stuff.

userbinator 10y ago

It's pumped out of the ground as oil, converted into plastics, and after a short life, buried in the ground again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if much of it didn't also end up floating in the ocean, being eaten by animals and contaminating the human food chain. What I think is most sad about this is that we've come up with a material that can last nearly forever and is relatively easy to reuse and recycle (at least for simple thermoplastics like polyethylene which is what most plastic bags are made of), and yet we waste massive quantities of it. Biodegradable plastics just fuel the "disposable culture" and its resource consumption more, because they are deliberately designed to not last long.

hiisukun 10y ago
I'm in two minds about biodegradable plastics. Where I'm from, plastic bags are no longer the norm for supermarkets to pack groceries in, and so most people carry their own re-usable bags to the store, or get goods packed in biodegradable plastics. While this is anecdotal, it is common amongst my peers for the biodegradable bags to be used as general household garbage bags. I think this feels much better than using the previous long lasting ones, but knowing what people put inside them - I wonder if it really makes a difference. On the other hand, I can remember when the plastic supermarket bags were phased out, and it was impressive just how quickly people adopted reusable bags. This small change in behaviour must come with at least some increased awareness of resource consumption, surely?
- avian 10y ago
  > Where I'm from, plastic bags are no longer the norm for supermarkets to pack groceries in, and so most people carry their own re-usable bags to the store This used to be the case here as well (Slovenia), until supermarkets started introducing the self-service check-out machines. Those can't be used with re-usable bags (or sometimes can be, but with significant annoyance to everyone present, since an employee must manually check your bag).
  - vkou 10y ago
    Where I shop (Seattle, US), supermarkets have self-service check-out machines, and I've never had a problem with bringing my own, non-reusable bag.

mseebach 10y ago

The idea is great. The problems will be with the implementation, how it will change incentives, any loopholes introduced, cost of enforcement and unintended consequences. What exactly is a repair? Are parts covered, or only labour? Think ship of Theseus. Is an upgrade a repair, can I put a better compressor, rather than like-for-like in my refrigerator when it's failed? Can I have my TV repaired by replacing all the parts, except the power cord? How broken must something be before it can be repaired? Totally failed, failure imminent, or just worn? (Unintended consequence: people have their things fixed long before it's strictly necessary, leading to greater waste than if they'd just let the thing fail and bought a new one. Another one: appliances are only upgraded to newer, much more energy efficient ones much later than otherwise). And for labour, where is the line drawn? Is the labour cost of diagnosing a problem covered? What if the problem is bigger than expected, and it isn't economical to carry out the repair? What if I have you upgrade the Foo (not a repair), which is trivial, while you've taken the widget apart anyway to fix the Bar (a repair)? What about repairing something, pocketing the tax break, then selling it (perhaps outside of the country)? Once you have considered all of these questions, you either have a lot of loopholes which will make the tax break much more expensive, or have a very long body of legal texts, and some very exited lawyers and auditors which will impose an indirect cost on society broadly. Sure, it's pessimistic, but I'm essentially working backwards from an attempt to impose a tax on dietary fat (for health reasons) in Denmark. Sounds great, right? Hilarity ensued over mixed nuts (the accountants had a field day with that one, and IIRC all kinds of meat being taxed at the same level, and the tax was repealed after only 15 months.

gutnor 10y ago
I'm pessimistic too. However, the labour cost is so huge that it will offset some of your points and only give a slight edge to repair and second hand shops. If you don't have a top of the range, almost new fridge or TV, even phone, repair will almost always come close to replacement cost. And replacement give you back a 2 years guarantee with faster turnaround.
- mikepurvis 10y ago
  Right, but the point of this legislation is to adjust the incentives so that repair becomes possible/economical in a greater number of cases.

brightball 10y ago

If anything, it seems like this might be a reasonably untapped area for innovation: making repairs more efficient. Right now all of the business and efficiency gains seem to be invested in lowering production cost, selling fast and hard to gain market share. It seems like a way to make repairs more efficient could be a solid way of attacking a market slowly with a quality product. Slower growth but you build a brand for resilience and your market share is more defined by customers who aren't looking elsewhere than new acquisitions.

maxerickson 10y ago
My school offered a semester course titled "Design for Manufacturability". We looked at things like lowering fastener and part count, to reduce assembly time (and assembly errors, etc.). It was taught by a part time guy who had a lot of experience with it in industry. I may have missed it, but I don't think there was a similar "Design for Service" course. It's not been entirely ignored, there are makes of cars that mechanics hate to work on because service was not particularly accounted for in the design, and there are cars that they like a lot.
- JsGarage 10y ago
  I'm up against the car issue in a big way. I wanted to change a clutch in my 06 scion xb I'd need to suspend the engine and trans separately to get at the clutch in the middle. That's 2 big lumps of steel hanging over my head while I wrench.. I can't pull the assessmbly out the top because it doesn't fit through the opening! And it's only by a few inches! In my 1973 240z I can practically stand in the enginebay with the engine in place and if I want to pull the motor and trans it's a job a single person could do if they had practice. It's weird

fuzzfactor 10y ago

If you do the math, it can be seen that a large enough software company, with a strong enough anti-recycling ("upgrade") program, could be responsible for more toxic chemicals being wasted compared to the chemcal waste from companies like Dow and DuPont.

Kadin 10y ago
And somewhat perversely, while a chemical plant's waste is concentrated in a single place, which makes it straightforward (if expensive) to contain and treat, the "industrial waste" embodied in consumer products gets spread across the entire planet, eventually landing in millions of unlined municipal landfills, bodies of water, and unsafe 'recycling' facilities. The most straightforward solution would be a deposit covering the eventual disposal cost of products, which would then be refunded as the product was responsibly recycled (similar to aluminum cans in some parts of the US), but of course I don't expect to see anything like that in my lifetime. Much easier to pay lobbyists to allow you to continue externalizing your costs on the public.

specialist 10y ago

I'm not so sure. We must consider the whole lifecycle. My buddy, with genuine compassion, recycles used PCs and gifts them to communities in the third world. I've read some pretty strong arguments that it'd better for everyone if they simply received the newest, cheapest PCs. Sweden's efforts could help (symbolically) by influencing the design of future goods, to be more serviceable, upgradeable.

TDL 10y ago
Not sure what service your friend uses for gifting his electronics to African countries, but I believe most electronics are sent to Ghana then burned for various metals. http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/ http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/
- specialist 10y ago
  He and his students are the service. They deliver the PCs personally and then hang out to help set things up and train the locals. Edit: Ah. I probably should have wrote that my friend refurbishes PCs for donation. My bad.

vlehto 10y ago

>This idea seems so sensible it's a no-brainer. I have not heard any "cut VAT" scheme that doesn't sound really sensible. My suggestion would be to cut VAT alltogether so we can save our souls from endless tax cut jungle. But that's not going to happen, because VAT is effectively barrier against foreign goods, important source of government income and can't go progressive. As a result conservatives love it to death.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago
The reason governments like it is because it is hard to avoid.
- vlehto 10y ago
  If cryptocurrency gets big, it's the first tax everybody avoids.

sliverstorm 10y ago

That last bit says to me that we need to: a) figure out how to make washing plates more efficient b) extend the lifetime of plates so their manufacture is amortized over more uses (Or do you specifically call out china plates because they are known for seeing so little use?)

burkemw3 10y ago

> It's pumped out of the ground as oil, converted into plastics, and after a short life, buried in the ground again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if much of it didn't also end up floating in the ocean, being eaten by animals and contaminating the human food chain. Reminds of: "It's pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, turn it into plastic, shape it appropriately, truck it to a store, buy it, and bring it home is considered to be less effort than what it takes to just wash the spoon when you're done with it." https://goo.gl/photos/ccLCuPkvKh99WWvE8 https://goo.gl/photos/ccLCuPkvKh99WWvE8

crpatino 10y ago

> Anecdotally I've heard of examples where (e.g.) washing china plates has a greater carbon cost than using disposable ones. Only if you use a dishwasher. IF you do dishes by hand, the only cost is water and soap. Strictly speaking from an environmental point of view the time you spend doing it would be considered a "gain" instead of a "cost", given that you will be probably not engaging in modern electronic entertainment for the duration of the task. In an industrial environment, such as a restaurant, the cost analysis would be non trivial, given the more complex supply chains that businesses have.

harmegido 10y ago
I'm not convinced. Where are you getting that water from? Maybe if you manually drew it from a well...
jacobr 10y ago
Water has to be processed and transported to your house, and then heated. A modern dish washer is more efficient than hand washing dishes because it uses less water.
ptaipale 10y ago
No. Dishwasher uses less energy, less water and less detergent. [0] Of course things depend on your use case - if you really have just that one cup and spoon, then handwashing may be better, at least if you are happy with some grease left in the dishes. [0] http://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/dishwasher-vs-handwashing-the-winner.html http://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/dishwasher-vs-handw...