3 ms·

So, the concern here is that VC money is helping individuals with a little bit of excess money hire other people to do their bidding. Sounds like one of those

by oblak 5y ago

So, the concern here is that VC money is helping individuals with a little bit of excess money hire other people to do their bidding. Sounds like one of those "on a computer" things to me. I know the delivery business is booming everywhere but I am mostly concerned from an environmental point of view because that laziness translates into huge amounts of perfectly good containers being treated like they are only good for one thing only: getting some food delivered to you, my liege

mistrial9 5y ago
the blue-collar, emotionally challenged, still-single at 40 guy down the street repeatedly makes big orders of food from Whole Foods to be delivered.. breakdown- he does not have a lot of extra money; he does not need more food, he is overweight and there is a lot of food in the fridge; Whole Foods used to be more expensive than other stores, I am unsure if he shops carefully or not In other words, this is a specific example that blurs class and disposable income lines, and is also arguably just bad judgement/addictive behavior on his part.. no grand plans or social changes, unless you count being lonely contributing to your poor health choices as social change.. yet the service is benefiting from his indulgence, and the economy is "growing" .. reality is messy and not cleanly in categories
- oblak 5y ago
  Not sure why you are being downvoted. I also presume the primary clientele for such services is young adults or people who live alone / have room mates. Cooking for loved ones is a joy. Or so I've been told by my wife
vorpalhex 5y ago
Yet instead of 10 people all getting in their cars or ordering ubers, a single delivery driver can take an optimized route...
- potatolicious 5y ago
  > a single delivery driver can take an optimized route... This is an oft-repeated claim that never seems to actually exist in real life. One of the original pitches of Uber et al was that it would make the whole system so efficient that drivers would get paid more overall thanks to [insert hand-waving here] technology. It's been many years since that promise was made and nothing like it has materialized. For one thing the ability to "batch" things like this is really minimal. You can't put 10 food orders into a single car, because the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th persons will be receiving cold food. Even if you could batch two orders together, that relies on a level of scale that simply isn't reliably replicable (two orders within a narrow time window of each other, to very nearby restaurants, to destination generally near each other). I've personally seen it happen twice. And then we've also discovered that the delivery gig economy adds a massive new inefficiency that fully offsets the few batching inefficiencies that can be exploited (and then some): idling cars for fast response. It turns out if you want a delivery driver to be around quickly on-demand, you need a lot of cars idling/driving aimlessly, which overall produces even more waste than the status quo.
Ericson2314 5y ago
> but I am mostly concerned from an environmental point of view because that laziness translates into huge amounts of perfectly good containers I swear 99% of all trash I see relates to food take out. I would love some laws demanding that dishes need to be resusable and returend to the restaurant, just like glass coke bottles used to be returned to coca-cola.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Could we switch to cellulose and wax for take-out containers?
- wrs 5y ago
  Seattle requires takeout containers to be compostable or recyclable (they mostly seem compostable in my experience). https://www.seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/collection-and-disposal/food-and-yard/business-and-commercial-compostables/food-packaging-requirements https://www.seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/collection-a...
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    Anything but reuse feels half-assed to me. I want to turn an operational cost of single use dishware into a capital cost of reusable dishware. Manufacturing snigle use crap because we are too lazy to improve logistics is just embarrassing on some level.
dcolkitt 5y ago
For all intents and purposes, the US has essentially infinite landfill space. The technology to store solid waste is improving faster than the rate we're generating at. The majority of landfills actually have more capacity today than they did 30 years ago. And that's not even counting all the wide open empty space that's available to open new landfill.s
- nkingsy 5y ago
  Plastics production is pretty terrible even if it ends up in a landfill. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley

by oblak 5y ago

mistrial9 5y ago

the blue-collar, emotionally challenged, still-single at 40 guy down the street repeatedly makes big orders of food from Whole Foods to be delivered.. breakdown- he does not have a lot of extra money; he does not need more food, he is overweight and there is a lot of food in the fridge; Whole Foods used to be more expensive than other stores, I am unsure if he shops carefully or not In other words, this is a specific example that blurs class and disposable income lines, and is also arguably just bad judgement/addictive behavior on his part.. no grand plans or social changes, unless you count being lonely contributing to your poor health choices as social change.. yet the service is benefiting from his indulgence, and the economy is "growing" .. reality is messy and not cleanly in categories

oblak 5y ago
Not sure why you are being downvoted. I also presume the primary clientele for such services is young adults or people who live alone / have room mates. Cooking for loved ones is a joy. Or so I've been told by my wife

vorpalhex 5y ago

Yet instead of 10 people all getting in their cars or ordering ubers, a single delivery driver can take an optimized route...

potatolicious 5y ago
> a single delivery driver can take an optimized route... This is an oft-repeated claim that never seems to actually exist in real life. One of the original pitches of Uber et al was that it would make the whole system so efficient that drivers would get paid more overall thanks to [insert hand-waving here] technology. It's been many years since that promise was made and nothing like it has materialized. For one thing the ability to "batch" things like this is really minimal. You can't put 10 food orders into a single car, because the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th persons will be receiving cold food. Even if you could batch two orders together, that relies on a level of scale that simply isn't reliably replicable (two orders within a narrow time window of each other, to very nearby restaurants, to destination generally near each other). I've personally seen it happen twice. And then we've also discovered that the delivery gig economy adds a massive new inefficiency that fully offsets the few batching inefficiencies that can be exploited (and then some): idling cars for fast response. It turns out if you want a delivery driver to be around quickly on-demand, you need a lot of cars idling/driving aimlessly, which overall produces even more waste than the status quo.

Ericson2314 5y ago

> but I am mostly concerned from an environmental point of view because that laziness translates into huge amounts of perfectly good containers I swear 99% of all trash I see relates to food take out. I would love some laws demanding that dishes need to be resusable and returend to the restaurant, just like glass coke bottles used to be returned to coca-cola.

908B64B197 5y ago
Could we switch to cellulose and wax for take-out containers?
wrs 5y ago
Seattle requires takeout containers to be compostable or recyclable (they mostly seem compostable in my experience). https://www.seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/collection-and-disposal/food-and-yard/business-and-commercial-compostables/food-packaging-requirements https://www.seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/collection-a...
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Anything but reuse feels half-assed to me. I want to turn an operational cost of single use dishware into a capital cost of reusable dishware. Manufacturing snigle use crap because we are too lazy to improve logistics is just embarrassing on some level.

dcolkitt 5y ago

For all intents and purposes, the US has essentially infinite landfill space. The technology to store solid waste is improving faster than the rate we're generating at. The majority of landfills actually have more capacity today than they did 30 years ago. And that's not even counting all the wide open empty space that's available to open new landfill.s

nkingsy 5y ago
Plastics production is pretty terrible even if it ends up in a landfill. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley