5 ms·

People keep saying that China was accepting recyclables. They weren't accepting them, they were buying them. It's hard to make a case that it was all just tras

People keep saying that China was accepting recyclables. They weren't accepting them, they were buying them. It's hard to make a case that it was all just trash when somebody was paying for it.

czps 8y ago
I don’t know the industry but it seems to me that if the “trash” was bought by Chinese companies only to be dumped there for the most part then it’s still trash. Was it cheaper to ship this stuff to China than to pay American landfills to handle this stuff? I don’t think having someone pay for it matters. Isn’t it the end result that matters?
- dang 8y ago
  Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but should have some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. There are legit uses for throwaways, just not routinely. Lots more explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20community%20identity https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
  - czps 8y ago
    Generally when I reach a certain number of points I destroy the account by changing the password to something that I can’t remember and I don’t use an email address with my accounts. There is no delete option that I’m aware of. I’ve been on the site for a long time. Since the beginning. I didn’t know you guys kept track of MAC addresses or however else you track this stuff. I won’t do it again. This is the push I’ve needed to stop coming to the site. Thanks. I mean it.
    - kenrose 8y ago
      I think you mean IP addresses. :-)
      - username3 8y ago
        IP addresses change.
        hombre_fatal 8y ago
        You only need an IP address overlap one time to link two accounts. It's pretty much guaranteed to happen if you aren't actively avoiding it. But let's revisit the fact that remote servers cannot see a MAC address.
        username3 8y ago
        Public WiFi share IP addresses. >I didn’t know you guys kept track of MAC addresses or however else you track this stuff. Revisit however else.
        BearsAreCool 8y ago
        If I remember correctly IE used to have a way to view mac addresses through javascript.
    - ineedasername 8y ago
      >This is the push I’ve needed to stop coming to the site. Thanks. I mean it. Welcome! Always nice to see the trollishly inclined see themselves out.
    - dajohnson89 8y ago
      Why didn't you just use a single account?
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    > Users needn't use their real name, but should have some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. There's an interesting middle ground here which is to let users specify whatever username nobody else has ever used for their posts. Then they can choose to link them to prior posts (or not) as they see fit. It's not clear to me that this prevents having a community, but I'm not sure what the consequences are.
mdorazio 8y ago
It wasn't all trash, but a significant portion was. Without expensive sorting machinery, recycling is generally only profitable with extremely cheap labor and a disregard for environmental damage caused by tossing the unprofitable stuff in the nearest dump. What was profitable for 1990s China would not have been profitable for the US.
- mikewilliams 8y ago
  Recycling will never be profitable, but we can't just keep burying trash and forgetting about it, or maybe we can, I don't know.
  - berbec 8y ago
    I don't know about never. The price of a product is related to its scarcity. At a certain point, there will be recyclable materials we are almost out of. At that point, I can see recycling becoming very profitable. I can see a time when we mine garbage dumps for materials.
    - schrectacular 8y ago
      I think about this a lot too. Plastic is extremely energy-dense. The landfills of today could easily be the fuel mines if the future. And yes, it will be full of contaminants, but coal is tainted with heavy metals and radioactive materials. Anyway, recycling has always been a resource drain to make people feel good. It's definitely better to recapture and contain as much waste as possible, but people don't think about things like how much water is wasted by rinsing all those bottles out.
  - michaelbuckbee 8y ago
    What's missing from the "profitability" equation are all the costs that are pushed elsewhere: - polluted water so we're all injesting micro plastics - polluted air as the manufacturing is a mess - increased energy consumption to manufacture "perfect" looking packaging. These all have real, hard, cash driven consequences that aren't factored into the normal profitability equation.

People keep saying that China was accepting recyclables. They weren't accepting them, they were buying them. It's hard to make a case that it was all just trash when somebody was paying for it.

czps 8y ago

I don’t know the industry but it seems to me that if the “trash” was bought by Chinese companies only to be dumped there for the most part then it’s still trash. Was it cheaper to ship this stuff to China than to pay American landfills to handle this stuff? I don’t think having someone pay for it matters. Isn’t it the end result that matters?

dang 8y ago
Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but should have some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. There are legit uses for throwaways, just not routinely. Lots more explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20community%20identity https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- czps 8y ago
  Generally when I reach a certain number of points I destroy the account by changing the password to something that I can’t remember and I don’t use an email address with my accounts. There is no delete option that I’m aware of. I’ve been on the site for a long time. Since the beginning. I didn’t know you guys kept track of MAC addresses or however else you track this stuff. I won’t do it again. This is the push I’ve needed to stop coming to the site. Thanks. I mean it.
  - kenrose 8y ago
    I think you mean IP addresses. :-)
    - username3 8y ago
      IP addresses change.
      - hombre_fatal 8y ago
        You only need an IP address overlap one time to link two accounts. It's pretty much guaranteed to happen if you aren't actively avoiding it. But let's revisit the fact that remote servers cannot see a MAC address.
        username3 8y ago
        Public WiFi share IP addresses. >I didn’t know you guys kept track of MAC addresses or however else you track this stuff. Revisit however else.
        BearsAreCool 8y ago
        If I remember correctly IE used to have a way to view mac addresses through javascript.
  - ineedasername 8y ago
    >This is the push I’ve needed to stop coming to the site. Thanks. I mean it. Welcome! Always nice to see the trollishly inclined see themselves out.
  - dajohnson89 8y ago
    Why didn't you just use a single account?
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  > Users needn't use their real name, but should have some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. There's an interesting middle ground here which is to let users specify whatever username nobody else has ever used for their posts. Then they can choose to link them to prior posts (or not) as they see fit. It's not clear to me that this prevents having a community, but I'm not sure what the consequences are.

mdorazio 8y ago

It wasn't all trash, but a significant portion was. Without expensive sorting machinery, recycling is generally only profitable with extremely cheap labor and a disregard for environmental damage caused by tossing the unprofitable stuff in the nearest dump. What was profitable for 1990s China would not have been profitable for the US.

mikewilliams 8y ago
Recycling will never be profitable, but we can't just keep burying trash and forgetting about it, or maybe we can, I don't know.
- berbec 8y ago
  I don't know about never. The price of a product is related to its scarcity. At a certain point, there will be recyclable materials we are almost out of. At that point, I can see recycling becoming very profitable. I can see a time when we mine garbage dumps for materials.
  - schrectacular 8y ago
    I think about this a lot too. Plastic is extremely energy-dense. The landfills of today could easily be the fuel mines if the future. And yes, it will be full of contaminants, but coal is tainted with heavy metals and radioactive materials. Anyway, recycling has always been a resource drain to make people feel good. It's definitely better to recapture and contain as much waste as possible, but people don't think about things like how much water is wasted by rinsing all those bottles out.
- michaelbuckbee 8y ago
  What's missing from the "profitability" equation are all the costs that are pushed elsewhere: - polluted water so we're all injesting micro plastics - polluted air as the manufacturing is a mess - increased energy consumption to manufacture "perfect" looking packaging. These all have real, hard, cash driven consequences that aren't factored into the normal profitability equation.