5 ms·

I bet your friend recycles plastic bags to help save the environment.

by yostrovs 8y ago

peteradio 8y ago
Something about this sounds like a really good burn. It's kind of funny. What do you even mean by it?
- sokoloff 8y ago
  The idea is that one would simultaneously studiously separate and recycle plastic bags (at the cost of hours of their time over a period of a decade) to prevent a few pounds of plastic from entering a landfill while not being willing to use a Phillips screwdriver and a hair dryer for 45-90 minutes to save $1950 and 250 pounds of refrigerator from entering a landfill. There might even be more mass of just polystyrene insulation in the fridge he's just trashed than the mass of plastics he keeps out of the landfill. There is certainly more overall plastic in there.
  - varjag 8y ago
    It varies on jurisdiction, but the depth of recycling can be a lot better for electronics and appliances. In Europe an old fridge would typically not go to the landfill but to reprocessing facility first, stripped into metals, plastics and "electronic waste".
  - ccalvert 8y ago
    According to the site linked below, the average American produces about 100 lbs of plastic waste a year: https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/lifestyle/trash-one-person-produces-year/ https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/lifestyle/trash-on... To my mind, that is a significant amount of waste, and definitely worth chasing. * Durable Plastics: 72.9 lbs * Nodurable Plastics: 28 lbs * Plastic Bottles and Jars: 17.7 There is more, but this gives a sense of the statistics they quote on their site. These do not seem unreasonable to me, and they suggest that recycling plastics would save a refrigerator or two in weight per household per year, depending a bit on the size of the household.
- gbrown 8y ago
  They're implying that the friend is "penny-wise and pound-foolish", by making a large effort to recycle small bits of plastic, while making no effort to avoid wasting lots of plastic/steel/coolant/electronics/motors etc.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 8y ago
  That his friend does a token BS gesture towards being 'environmentally friendly" while participating in the same needless consumerism attitude that's responsible for 99% of the cost on the environment.
jyounker 8y ago
The problem with plasic bags isn’t so much that they go to landfills, but rather that they end up going into the wider environment where they pose significant dangers to many kinds of wildlife.
ccalvert 8y ago
I take your point: the trashed refrigerator may be a heavier environmental cost than the plastic bags. It is best if we both recycle and fix the refrigerator. But doing either is better than doing nothing. In other words, arguing that one good is more effective than another good doesn't mean that it isn't admirable to do only the smaller good. Many of us up here on Hacker News are good at fixing things. But some of us might be less skilled in other areas, such as organizing political campaigns or working in the medical field. It's easy to criticize someone for not doing something we find easy, but it is harder to see how they might be skilled in areas where we struggle.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >It is best if we both recycle and fix the refrigerator. It might just be marginally better. If "fixing the refrigerator" (and other such items in our lives, cars, etc) yields 100 e (e = a made-up token measure of environmental benefit) and not using plastic bags for a decade yields 1 e, then it's almost irrelevant.
  - artursapek 8y ago
    I think abstractly in these terms too, probably too much so. Whenever my wife or I purchase something or throw it away, I ask myself how much we just debited from the earth. I wonder how one would actually go about defining this measure?
    - coldtea 8y ago
      One thing is that companies don't help at all at this -- and they wont unless they are forced to (the same way companies were forced to add calorie and nutrition breakdowns). I'd like to see a "CO2/water/etc cost" sticker
- bwoj 8y ago
  In most places I’ve lived in the US it’s takes a lot of work to get an old appliance to a landfill and out of the hands of someone who would repair or recycle it. Somebody buying a $2000 fridge probably had the old one taken away and somebody involved in that process would repair and resell it.

I bet your friend recycles plastic bags to help save the environment.

peteradio 8y ago

Something about this sounds like a really good burn. It's kind of funny. What do you even mean by it?

sokoloff 8y ago
The idea is that one would simultaneously studiously separate and recycle plastic bags (at the cost of hours of their time over a period of a decade) to prevent a few pounds of plastic from entering a landfill while not being willing to use a Phillips screwdriver and a hair dryer for 45-90 minutes to save $1950 and 250 pounds of refrigerator from entering a landfill. There might even be more mass of just polystyrene insulation in the fridge he's just trashed than the mass of plastics he keeps out of the landfill. There is certainly more overall plastic in there.
- varjag 8y ago
  It varies on jurisdiction, but the depth of recycling can be a lot better for electronics and appliances. In Europe an old fridge would typically not go to the landfill but to reprocessing facility first, stripped into metals, plastics and "electronic waste".
- ccalvert 8y ago
  According to the site linked below, the average American produces about 100 lbs of plastic waste a year: https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/lifestyle/trash-one-person-produces-year/ https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/lifestyle/trash-on... To my mind, that is a significant amount of waste, and definitely worth chasing. * Durable Plastics: 72.9 lbs * Nodurable Plastics: 28 lbs * Plastic Bottles and Jars: 17.7 There is more, but this gives a sense of the statistics they quote on their site. These do not seem unreasonable to me, and they suggest that recycling plastics would save a refrigerator or two in weight per household per year, depending a bit on the size of the household.
gbrown 8y ago
They're implying that the friend is "penny-wise and pound-foolish", by making a large effort to recycle small bits of plastic, while making no effort to avoid wasting lots of plastic/steel/coolant/electronics/motors etc.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 8y ago
That his friend does a token BS gesture towards being 'environmentally friendly" while participating in the same needless consumerism attitude that's responsible for 99% of the cost on the environment.

jyounker 8y ago

The problem with plasic bags isn’t so much that they go to landfills, but rather that they end up going into the wider environment where they pose significant dangers to many kinds of wildlife.

ccalvert 8y ago

I take your point: the trashed refrigerator may be a heavier environmental cost than the plastic bags. It is best if we both recycle and fix the refrigerator. But doing either is better than doing nothing. In other words, arguing that one good is more effective than another good doesn't mean that it isn't admirable to do only the smaller good. Many of us up here on Hacker News are good at fixing things. But some of us might be less skilled in other areas, such as organizing political campaigns or working in the medical field. It's easy to criticize someone for not doing something we find easy, but it is harder to see how they might be skilled in areas where we struggle.

coldtea 8y ago
>It is best if we both recycle and fix the refrigerator. It might just be marginally better. If "fixing the refrigerator" (and other such items in our lives, cars, etc) yields 100 e (e = a made-up token measure of environmental benefit) and not using plastic bags for a decade yields 1 e, then it's almost irrelevant.
- artursapek 8y ago
  I think abstractly in these terms too, probably too much so. Whenever my wife or I purchase something or throw it away, I ask myself how much we just debited from the earth. I wonder how one would actually go about defining this measure?
  - coldtea 8y ago
    One thing is that companies don't help at all at this -- and they wont unless they are forced to (the same way companies were forced to add calorie and nutrition breakdowns). I'd like to see a "CO2/water/etc cost" sticker
bwoj 8y ago
In most places I’ve lived in the US it’s takes a lot of work to get an old appliance to a landfill and out of the hands of someone who would repair or recycle it. Somebody buying a $2000 fridge probably had the old one taken away and somebody involved in that process would repair and resell it.