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Wow. I checked and its true. Largest capacity is around 24000 TEU (Twenty foot long containers, though 40 foot long ones are also used) Its mind boggling how m

Wow. I checked and its true. Largest capacity is around 24000 TEU (Twenty foot long containers, though 40 foot long ones are also used) Its mind boggling how mich energy is spent in transporting stuff around the world. They produce 2.2% of green house gases (as on 2012), poised to grow from 50 to 250% till 2050. And this does not include further transport downstream to consumers. Clearly concentrated manufacturing is environmentally disasterous. These are the kinds of challenges Silicon Valley ought to solve. Creating new technology to enable hyperlocal manufacturing.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>Clearly concentrated manufacturing is environmentally disasterous. Distributing the same level of manufacturing would probably be worse because of loss of efficiencies.
irjustin 5y ago
It's been tried so many times esp when 3d printing got hot 8ish years ago. Removing the shipping distance creates a host of other problems. Storing of raw materials, increased cost of non-shared tooling, local labor cost vs non-local just to name a few.
- kumarvvr 5y ago
  Storing of raw materials is not a huge problem, especially if they are distributed across the globe. Also, manufacturing and distribution can happen at smaller geographical areas rather than country or continent wide areas. I think the overall impact of distributed manufacture and supply is lesser than concentrated systems. Also, having a distributed system allows for greater innovation and investment into eco-friendly and sustainable processess. It is far easier to forget about the pollution happening halfway across the world, in a dictatorship that suppresses news than that happening in your backyard.
  - irjustin 5y ago
    I'm not trying to argue against the eco-friendly nature and overall sustainability. I used to live in Hong Kong from 2013-2015 and was directly connected to 2 startups that wanted to do this w/ 3d printing at the heart. One was a "container deployment" an ultra mini-manufacturing that fits inside a container that you would deploy in a specific city by "just hooking up power". Another was more a regional play, build a local factory via multi-container sets. Like how Starbucks deploys a store with X number of containers. They did not work for the reasons stated above combined w/ 3d printing isn't that great. Except in high margin items, you'll never make up for the increased infrastructure cost. The local land and labor costs are non-trivial. One thought experiment is setup manufacturing in East coast & West coast. If one coast decreases in demand, what happens? Likely have excess supply, which then requires storage or shipping it to the other coast. Cost is the ultimate driver and eco-friendly solutions invariably drive costs up because they lack economies of scale. So while agree with your goal, it doesn't work in the real world.
nitrogen 5y ago
Its mind boggling how mich energy is spent in transporting stuff around the world. What's truly mind boggling is just how little energy is used to ship things around the world. Container ships are crazy efficient.
- Karunamon 5y ago
  I think this is looking at the wrong number. The atmosphere "cares" about emissions in absolute terms, not in terms of who or what put them there per unit of utility gained by their presence. The fuel used in these container ships is truly nasty stuff, with marine shipping being solely responsible for double-digit percentages of certain greenhouse gases. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_shipping#Atmospheric_pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_shipp...
  - namibj 5y ago
    Of which greenhouse gases? I skimmed through the linked section and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_IMO_Strategy_on_the_reduction_of_GHG_emissions_from_ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_IMO_Strategy_on_the_re... , without spotting a double-digit number that turned out to be a %-of-global-GHG-emissions. Or are you referring to all-time emissions? That would seem more probable, given the long history of coal-fired ships.
    - Karunamon 5y ago
      Per the linked Guardian article from 2009, shipping is responsible for 18-30% of all the world's nitrogen oxide (NOx) pollution and 9% of the global sulphur oxide (SOx) pollution. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping... Absolute numbers here: https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2009.07.037 https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2009.07.037
      - lkbm 5y ago
        Yeah, technically those are indirectly greenhouse gases, but just to note, the article linked points out that "Maritime transport accounts for 3.5% to 4%". It's double-digit percentages of some pollutants that are very bad for human health, but relatively minor in terms of climate change. EDIT: I take it back. NOx is significant. SOx not so much.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

>Clearly concentrated manufacturing is environmentally disasterous. Distributing the same level of manufacturing would probably be worse because of loss of efficiencies.

irjustin 5y ago

It's been tried so many times esp when 3d printing got hot 8ish years ago. Removing the shipping distance creates a host of other problems. Storing of raw materials, increased cost of non-shared tooling, local labor cost vs non-local just to name a few.

kumarvvr 5y ago
Storing of raw materials is not a huge problem, especially if they are distributed across the globe. Also, manufacturing and distribution can happen at smaller geographical areas rather than country or continent wide areas. I think the overall impact of distributed manufacture and supply is lesser than concentrated systems. Also, having a distributed system allows for greater innovation and investment into eco-friendly and sustainable processess. It is far easier to forget about the pollution happening halfway across the world, in a dictatorship that suppresses news than that happening in your backyard.
- irjustin 5y ago
  I'm not trying to argue against the eco-friendly nature and overall sustainability. I used to live in Hong Kong from 2013-2015 and was directly connected to 2 startups that wanted to do this w/ 3d printing at the heart. One was a "container deployment" an ultra mini-manufacturing that fits inside a container that you would deploy in a specific city by "just hooking up power". Another was more a regional play, build a local factory via multi-container sets. Like how Starbucks deploys a store with X number of containers. They did not work for the reasons stated above combined w/ 3d printing isn't that great. Except in high margin items, you'll never make up for the increased infrastructure cost. The local land and labor costs are non-trivial. One thought experiment is setup manufacturing in East coast & West coast. If one coast decreases in demand, what happens? Likely have excess supply, which then requires storage or shipping it to the other coast. Cost is the ultimate driver and eco-friendly solutions invariably drive costs up because they lack economies of scale. So while agree with your goal, it doesn't work in the real world.

nitrogen 5y ago

Its mind boggling how mich energy is spent in transporting stuff around the world. What's truly mind boggling is just how little energy is used to ship things around the world. Container ships are crazy efficient.

Karunamon 5y ago
I think this is looking at the wrong number. The atmosphere "cares" about emissions in absolute terms, not in terms of who or what put them there per unit of utility gained by their presence. The fuel used in these container ships is truly nasty stuff, with marine shipping being solely responsible for double-digit percentages of certain greenhouse gases. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_shipping#Atmospheric_pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_shipp...
- namibj 5y ago
  Of which greenhouse gases? I skimmed through the linked section and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_IMO_Strategy_on_the_reduction_of_GHG_emissions_from_ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_IMO_Strategy_on_the_re... , without spotting a double-digit number that turned out to be a %-of-global-GHG-emissions. Or are you referring to all-time emissions? That would seem more probable, given the long history of coal-fired ships.
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    Per the linked Guardian article from 2009, shipping is responsible for 18-30% of all the world's nitrogen oxide (NOx) pollution and 9% of the global sulphur oxide (SOx) pollution. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping... Absolute numbers here: https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2009.07.037 https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2009.07.037
    - lkbm 5y ago
      Yeah, technically those are indirectly greenhouse gases, but just to note, the article linked points out that "Maritime transport accounts for 3.5% to 4%". It's double-digit percentages of some pollutants that are very bad for human health, but relatively minor in terms of climate change. EDIT: I take it back. NOx is significant. SOx not so much.