9 ms·

Modern dumps can be very environmentally friendly. The bottom can be clay sealed with leak monitoring to protect the ground water. With a little extra effort th

Modern dumps can be very environmentally friendly. The bottom can be clay sealed with leak monitoring to protect the ground water. With a little extra effort they can designed for methane capture to prevent problematic off gassing. Maybe aluminum and other purish metal scrap gets taken out of the waste stream and the rest goes back to the Earth. Some carbon capture happens and the site can be mined in the future if it seems worthwhile. Add video monitoring of what goes in for future prospectors to evaluate the ore body and call it a day. Recycling does not make much environmental sense and considering it is sort of like a little ritual that washes away your consumption sins, maybe a net negative on getting people to consume less. Even mass compost is a problem, potentially spreading plant diseases and, in the Bay Area, getting poison oak in your mulch is a real downside. Oakland is now charging more for compost disposal than for garbage, so some kind of problem is going on with it. Plus one one truck zooming around waking people up in the morning instead of the current three.

Aloha 9y ago
Shipping your garbage half way around the world does indeed make little sense. But Recycling itself is a good idea - we used to do this, AT&T did it with everything they made, milk and soda came in reusable bottles, other products like instant coffee, creamer, ovaltine, and others also came in glass instead of plastic - yes, reuse does cost the manufacturer more, but right now, those costs are still present, they're just being passed down to an unknown party, at an unknown point in the future. We should be trying reduce plastic use to places where really nothing else can do the job - and use more glass, metal, , and paper instead.
- pishpash 9y ago
  Manufacturers should be the ones forced to take their products back. That way they (the only ones who can) will take the cost into account and design differently. No more greedy planned obsolescence, no more flimsy crap that breaks in 10 days, no more cries about right to repair. The right incentive solves all the problems.
  - Aloha 9y ago
    Does that apply to the guy selling a gallon of milk? Figure that consumer packaging for food, and products generates a ton more volume than a TV set does.
    - erichurkman 9y ago
      You can buy milk in reusable glass milk bottles. Usually it's a buck deposit on the glass bottle. Return it to the store and you get the deposit back. When the milk company drops off a new shipment, they pick up crates of the empty glass bottles. It works well if you always remember to bring the bottles back.
      - djsumdog 9y ago
        Works in much of Europe. In Germany, every store that sells glass has to take it back. You see bottle machines at all the Aldis with scanners. It's mostly automated, and you can tell how old a beer bottle is by how deep the rings are (where the machine rolls it around to scan it).
        BoorishBears 9y ago
        Just about everywhere in the US does this too (down to rolling the fan around, it’s actually a little fun to watch), but it’s not the same as what the parent is describing since those machines crush the glass to be recycled. I’m pretty sure the parent is describing reusing the bottles after reconditioning, which requires taking the bottles intact.
        dfcowell 9y ago
        >and you can tell how old a beer bottle is by how deep the rings are (where the machine rolls it around to scan it). That's what the person you replied to is talking about. Here in Vietnam, like Germany, they refill used beer bottles. You can tell a new bottle from old based on the scuff marks the machinery leaves on the glass, which build up over time. These are the "rings" the GP is referring to.
- Cyphase 9y ago
  > ... Recycling itself is a good idea ... milk and soda came in reusable bottles, other products like instant coffee, creamer, ovaltine, and others also came in glass instead of plastic - yes, reuse does cost the manufacturer more ... As you say at the end of my quote, that's reuse, not recycling. Plus you're really only talking about using glass bottles instead of plastic bottles. None of that means that "Recycling itself is a good idea".
  - Aloha 9y ago
    Arguably, Glass, and Metal are easier to recycle - but more energy intensive to do so - its much easier to sort glass and metal than the 9000 kinda of plastic. I'd argue that reuse and recycling are in many cases, functionally semantics.
    - ars 9y ago
      There's no reason to recycle glass. The planet is made of it. Almost every rock you see around you can be melted into glass. And it's completely harmless if thrown out. At most crush it first. The only thing worth recycling is metal.
      - throwaway5752 9y ago
        This is dated but really interesting: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/5703.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/5703.pdf It's worthwhile to recycle glass.
        yorwba 9y ago
        First paragraph of the conclusion section: Recycling of glass containers saves some energy, but not a signifcant quantity compared to reuse. The primary energy saved is about 2.2 x 10^6 Btu/ton, or 13% of the energy required to make glass containers from virgin raw materials. This estimate includes energy required for the entire product life cycle, starting with raw materials in the ground and ending with either final waste disposition in a landfill or recycled materal collection, processing, and return to the primary manufacturing process. The actual savings depend on local factors, including population density; locations of landfills, recovery facilities, and glass plants; and process efficiencies at the specifc facilities available. The savings increase if wastes must be transported long distances to a landfill or if the containers are made in an inefficient furnace. They decrease if there is no local MRF or glass plant, or if material losses in the recycling loop are high. If the MRF is as much as 100 mi away, savings from recycling are negated.
- mc32 9y ago
  RE-usable bottles have a finite usable cycle count. Typically around 20 to 30-cycles[1]. They are better than disposable containers, but like anything else they wear, break down, etc. [1]http://www.o-i.com/Sustainability/Refillables/ http://www.o-i.com/Sustainability/Refillables/
- intrasight 9y ago
  >Shipping your garbage half way around the world does indeed make little sense But it did make sense as long as China accepted the garbage. Remember the ships that bring stuff here will go back to China. No sense in them going back empty.
bcherny 9y ago
This is an unusual view I have not heard before. Could you link to a good article or study so I can learn more about the argument and data behind it?
- csallen 9y ago
  I remember watching an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit ages ago that railed against recycling. This seems to be it: https://vimeo.com/216389085 https://vimeo.com/216389085
  - mrpopo 9y ago
    The core message of that video seems to be some libertarian wet dream, that it costs more money to recycle X than to build X from scratch, and that instead of government subsidies, we should just throw it all away in a landfill, until natural resources are depleted enough that we will be willing to pick up that trash for money.
    - milesvp 9y ago
      Wet dream or not, my marginal billable hour is in the triple digits, as is my wife's. In my household, recycling is hugely expensive. There is no way it's cheaper for me to sort my garbage into piles of garbage, so that someone might be able to turn it into something usable. It's a huge tax on the populations where it's legally required, and worse, is no municipality even benefits from this tax.
      - namelost 9y ago
        Then employ someone to do it for you?
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - njarboe 9y ago
        It is amazing people think it is worth spending 5 minutes washing out a jelly jar to save 1 cent in glass. I'll wash out cans and glass that clean in one rinsing, but even that is probably not an economical use of time.
FooHentai 9y ago
>Modern dumps can be very environmentally friendly. I'd agree with 'less environmentally damaging' but not as you've put it.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rdtsc 9y ago
> Recycling does not make much environmental sense and considering it is sort of like a little ritual that washes away your consumption sins This reminded me of something Slavoj Zizek was talking about. How people need rituals like that to feel like they are saving the environment. So municipalities indulge them and let them read the triangles under each plastic piece of trash and they put it in one of 5 recycling bins, then the trucks pick them up and dump them all in a large dump.
rsj_hn 9y ago
There is a virtuous fervor to recycling -- it's a type of middle class moral purification ritual, something that counterbalances high levels of consumption, even when it wastes more scarce resources than putting trash in a landfill. This is a great article: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-... Certainly recycling some things makes a lot of sense. For example, scrap metal. But the push to recycle everything has lead to exploding costs and mounting subsidies. For example, the article cites New York spending $300 million on subsidizing recycling, about half the park department budget, rather than what it would cost to put waste into landfills. By lowering recycling costs, China has played the role of enabler, allowing many middle class households to continue to obtain consumption indulgences at below market rates. If China stops subsidizing this stuff, I hope there is some pushback from communities, or at least from most communities, because we've gone full crazy on recycling.
skrause 9y ago
> Modern dumps can be very environmentally friendly. Why use dumps at all? Here in Germany dumps are not allowed anymore, instead everything that can not be recycled is being burned; the energy is converted into electricity. Yes, burning the trash releases CO2 into the atmosphere, but prevents release of the much worse Methane and also protects the ground water.
- rlkf 9y ago
  Not even that: The Norwegian government plans to connect the garbage incinerator at Klementsrud to a CO2 capture station, pressurize it, and ship it to an abandoned gas field for storage. And since the capacity of the storage site is so much bigger than the Norwegian domestic production, some of Germany's CO2 will eventually be included as well :-)
- evgen 9y ago
  As the comment you were responding to noted, new landfills protect the groundwater by completely lining the dumping area and then capture this methane and use it to produce energy. Cleaner burning and less CO2 than simply burning the waste stream because anaerobic bacteria capture a lot of the carbon and the parts of the waste stream that would produce nasty combustion byproducts are contained underground.

Aloha 9y ago

Shipping your garbage half way around the world does indeed make little sense. But Recycling itself is a good idea - we used to do this, AT&T did it with everything they made, milk and soda came in reusable bottles, other products like instant coffee, creamer, ovaltine, and others also came in glass instead of plastic - yes, reuse does cost the manufacturer more, but right now, those costs are still present, they're just being passed down to an unknown party, at an unknown point in the future. We should be trying reduce plastic use to places where really nothing else can do the job - and use more glass, metal, , and paper instead.

pishpash 9y ago
Manufacturers should be the ones forced to take their products back. That way they (the only ones who can) will take the cost into account and design differently. No more greedy planned obsolescence, no more flimsy crap that breaks in 10 days, no more cries about right to repair. The right incentive solves all the problems.
- Aloha 9y ago
  Does that apply to the guy selling a gallon of milk? Figure that consumer packaging for food, and products generates a ton more volume than a TV set does.
  - erichurkman 9y ago
    You can buy milk in reusable glass milk bottles. Usually it's a buck deposit on the glass bottle. Return it to the store and you get the deposit back. When the milk company drops off a new shipment, they pick up crates of the empty glass bottles. It works well if you always remember to bring the bottles back.
    - djsumdog 9y ago
      Works in much of Europe. In Germany, every store that sells glass has to take it back. You see bottle machines at all the Aldis with scanners. It's mostly automated, and you can tell how old a beer bottle is by how deep the rings are (where the machine rolls it around to scan it).
      - BoorishBears 9y ago
        Just about everywhere in the US does this too (down to rolling the fan around, it’s actually a little fun to watch), but it’s not the same as what the parent is describing since those machines crush the glass to be recycled. I’m pretty sure the parent is describing reusing the bottles after reconditioning, which requires taking the bottles intact.
        dfcowell 9y ago
        >and you can tell how old a beer bottle is by how deep the rings are (where the machine rolls it around to scan it). That's what the person you replied to is talking about. Here in Vietnam, like Germany, they refill used beer bottles. You can tell a new bottle from old based on the scuff marks the machinery leaves on the glass, which build up over time. These are the "rings" the GP is referring to.
Cyphase 9y ago
> ... Recycling itself is a good idea ... milk and soda came in reusable bottles, other products like instant coffee, creamer, ovaltine, and others also came in glass instead of plastic - yes, reuse does cost the manufacturer more ... As you say at the end of my quote, that's reuse, not recycling. Plus you're really only talking about using glass bottles instead of plastic bottles. None of that means that "Recycling itself is a good idea".
- Aloha 9y ago
  Arguably, Glass, and Metal are easier to recycle - but more energy intensive to do so - its much easier to sort glass and metal than the 9000 kinda of plastic. I'd argue that reuse and recycling are in many cases, functionally semantics.
  - ars 9y ago
    There's no reason to recycle glass. The planet is made of it. Almost every rock you see around you can be melted into glass. And it's completely harmless if thrown out. At most crush it first. The only thing worth recycling is metal.
    - throwaway5752 9y ago
      This is dated but really interesting: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/5703.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/5703.pdf It's worthwhile to recycle glass.
      - yorwba 9y ago
        First paragraph of the conclusion section: Recycling of glass containers saves some energy, but not a signifcant quantity compared to reuse. The primary energy saved is about 2.2 x 10^6 Btu/ton, or 13% of the energy required to make glass containers from virgin raw materials. This estimate includes energy required for the entire product life cycle, starting with raw materials in the ground and ending with either final waste disposition in a landfill or recycled materal collection, processing, and return to the primary manufacturing process. The actual savings depend on local factors, including population density; locations of landfills, recovery facilities, and glass plants; and process efficiencies at the specifc facilities available. The savings increase if wastes must be transported long distances to a landfill or if the containers are made in an inefficient furnace. They decrease if there is no local MRF or glass plant, or if material losses in the recycling loop are high. If the MRF is as much as 100 mi away, savings from recycling are negated.
mc32 9y ago
RE-usable bottles have a finite usable cycle count. Typically around 20 to 30-cycles[1]. They are better than disposable containers, but like anything else they wear, break down, etc. [1]http://www.o-i.com/Sustainability/Refillables/ http://www.o-i.com/Sustainability/Refillables/
intrasight 9y ago
>Shipping your garbage half way around the world does indeed make little sense But it did make sense as long as China accepted the garbage. Remember the ships that bring stuff here will go back to China. No sense in them going back empty.

bcherny 9y ago

This is an unusual view I have not heard before. Could you link to a good article or study so I can learn more about the argument and data behind it?

csallen 9y ago
I remember watching an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit ages ago that railed against recycling. This seems to be it: https://vimeo.com/216389085 https://vimeo.com/216389085
- mrpopo 9y ago
  The core message of that video seems to be some libertarian wet dream, that it costs more money to recycle X than to build X from scratch, and that instead of government subsidies, we should just throw it all away in a landfill, until natural resources are depleted enough that we will be willing to pick up that trash for money.
  - milesvp 9y ago
    Wet dream or not, my marginal billable hour is in the triple digits, as is my wife's. In my household, recycling is hugely expensive. There is no way it's cheaper for me to sort my garbage into piles of garbage, so that someone might be able to turn it into something usable. It's a huge tax on the populations where it's legally required, and worse, is no municipality even benefits from this tax.
    - namelost 9y ago
      Then employ someone to do it for you?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - njarboe 9y ago
      It is amazing people think it is worth spending 5 minutes washing out a jelly jar to save 1 cent in glass. I'll wash out cans and glass that clean in one rinsing, but even that is probably not an economical use of time.

FooHentai 9y ago

>Modern dumps can be very environmentally friendly. I'd agree with 'less environmentally damaging' but not as you've put it.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

rdtsc 9y ago

> Recycling does not make much environmental sense and considering it is sort of like a little ritual that washes away your consumption sins This reminded me of something Slavoj Zizek was talking about. How people need rituals like that to feel like they are saving the environment. So municipalities indulge them and let them read the triangles under each plastic piece of trash and they put it in one of 5 recycling bins, then the trucks pick them up and dump them all in a large dump.

rsj_hn 9y ago

There is a virtuous fervor to recycling -- it's a type of middle class moral purification ritual, something that counterbalances high levels of consumption, even when it wastes more scarce resources than putting trash in a landfill. This is a great article: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-... Certainly recycling some things makes a lot of sense. For example, scrap metal. But the push to recycle everything has lead to exploding costs and mounting subsidies. For example, the article cites New York spending $300 million on subsidizing recycling, about half the park department budget, rather than what it would cost to put waste into landfills. By lowering recycling costs, China has played the role of enabler, allowing many middle class households to continue to obtain consumption indulgences at below market rates. If China stops subsidizing this stuff, I hope there is some pushback from communities, or at least from most communities, because we've gone full crazy on recycling.

skrause 9y ago

> Modern dumps can be very environmentally friendly. Why use dumps at all? Here in Germany dumps are not allowed anymore, instead everything that can not be recycled is being burned; the energy is converted into electricity. Yes, burning the trash releases CO2 into the atmosphere, but prevents release of the much worse Methane and also protects the ground water.

rlkf 9y ago
Not even that: The Norwegian government plans to connect the garbage incinerator at Klementsrud to a CO2 capture station, pressurize it, and ship it to an abandoned gas field for storage. And since the capacity of the storage site is so much bigger than the Norwegian domestic production, some of Germany's CO2 will eventually be included as well :-)
evgen 9y ago
As the comment you were responding to noted, new landfills protect the groundwater by completely lining the dumping area and then capture this methane and use it to produce energy. Cleaner burning and less CO2 than simply burning the waste stream because anaerobic bacteria capture a lot of the carbon and the parts of the waste stream that would produce nasty combustion byproducts are contained underground.