7 ms·

I see now how is it possible to have "Pears grown in Argentina, packed in Thailand". Even at current prices it adds perhaps 20 cents to the cost of a single, 2

by Tade0 4y ago

I see now how is it possible to have "Pears grown in Argentina, packed in Thailand". Even at current prices it adds perhaps 20 cents to the cost of a single, 250g package. Considering it was less than 4 cents previously it made economic sense to ship it for packaging in a country with cheaper labour.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
> adds perhaps 20 cents to the cost of a single, 250g package. Can you share your math?
- CapitalistCartr 4y ago
  Not OP, but it's pretty obvious. At $1-$2 (US) per cubic foot, 4-8 packages per cu. ft. is 20¢ apiece. A shipping container is about 2400 cu. ft., more for hi-cubes.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    You also have hard limits on the total weight of the container, which is why no one transports iron ore in containers.
    - mtillman 4y ago
      Pretty common to ship 20mt of metal in containers-we process $8B in raw commodities a year like this. Commodity traders don’t pay these prices to ship though, these are high value manufacturing (cpg, tech) prices. Commodity firms still ship enough volume to pay sub $2k a can.
      - mistrial9 4y ago
        > ship 20mt of metal in containers containers vary a lot in their construction and materials, right? open-top railway car containers are not the same as common trans-continental containers, and refrigerated units are different again. All of those and more are in daily use in vast numbers, worldwide.
      - thrown_22 4y ago
        20,000 kg of steel is ~3m^3. That leaves rather a lot of the 30m^3 volume of a 20 foot container empty.
    - mistrial9 4y ago
      I believe that the trucking portion of handling the container has weight limits; the machinery that handles the loading and unloading have their weight limits; the ship and the way it is loaded from bow to stern has weight limits, and a container itself has weight limits. Somewhat analogous to freeway overpass heights, the tendency over time is that the various limits harmonize with each other and you get typical shipping practices. A shipping container full of raw cotton is indeed quite different than one full of "iron ore" but actually, consumer electronics and various car parts, their load limits, are more commonly restricted in the way they are loaded and handled.
- Tade0 4y ago
  I assumed that weight is the limiting factor, considering the content is slightly denser than water, and an ISO40 container holds 26 740 kg: https://freightfinders.com/container-transport/40-feet-iso-container/ https://freightfinders.com/container-transport/40-feet-iso-c... Assuming two trips the lengths of which are in the same order of magnitude as the one mentioned: $10 522 * 2 = $21 044. That's $0.7869 per kg, so $0.1967 per 250g package. At $2k per container it's $0.0373.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jacobyoder 4y ago
I noticed... Limes grown in ... Peru or Uruguay, packed in ... Europe (might have been Italy, but maybe Poland)... then shipped to someplace in the US, then driven to me. This was on a bottle of lime juice. That is all of ... $1? Yet... I'd need to buy dozens of limes just to squeeze enough juice to get half that small bottle.
- ericmay 4y ago
  > That is all of ... $1? That's all of $1 of realized cost. It's not accounting for negative externalities to the environment, depletion of non-renewable natural resources that future people may rely on, or poor living conditions/wage slavery/etc. Though some of that would certainly be offset by economies of scale so there's some number greater than $1 that would reflect the true "global cost" of doing that. It's just unknown and not measured.
  - jupp0r 4y ago
    And yet the vast majority of pollution will be created by somebody using their car to drive to the store and back when buying goods. This is even true for fruit that’s flown in.
    - more_corn 4y ago
      This is simply not true. Consumer transportation accounts for a tiny fraction of global energy use. This is a common tactic for blame shifting to excuse the complete lack of effort and egregious waste from the corporate and industrial sectors. Shame on you for blindly picking it up and retransmitting it.
      - evr1isnxprt 4y ago
        Shame on you for ignoring the industrial feedback loop that is required to make consumer vehicles. The building and refueling of gas stations. Shipping replacement parts. The trip to the store is not their only impact. You’re cherry picking a stat that represents the smallest part you want to take responsibility for but demand for all of it as resource costs.
mavhc 4y ago
It's only that cheap because they're using our atmosphere as a free open sewer
- Tade0 4y ago
  Naturally. I see this increase in cost as a good simulation of what would happen if we had a heavy, global carbon tax. To me it isn't nearly as bad as the dark scenarios some conjured.
  - mavhc 4y ago
    The insane part is a carbon tax wouldn't be that high, it's only about 1-10% of the cost to save the world
- Symmetry 4y ago
  In terms of carbon let's calculate that. Rotterdam to Shanghai is about 9000 km. The package is 250 g. Container ship transport is about 15 grams of carbon per kilometer per metric ton. So a total emission of 2.25 grams of carbon for the trip. It costs about $600 to remove a ton of carbon from the atmosphere the hard way, rather than messing about with tree credits and other stuff that's too easy to game. So we'd want to add another $.001 to the price to account for the cost of the carbon involved in transporting it. Bulk container ships are very energy efficient compared to other sorts of transportation. However, they do use bunker fuel and the above doesn't take account of all the sulfur and particulates that gets emitted.
  - oblio 4y ago
    Plus ocean pollution and other disruption, directly due to ships or infrastructure for them.
  - smcl 4y ago
    > It costs about $600 to remove a ton of carbon from the atmosphere the hard way I think I found the source you used to get that number[0] (or [1]) it says: > Atmospheric carbon removal can be as simple (and relatively inexpensive) as planting trees. But to remove sufficient carbon to meet the target, new technologies will be needed. Some are currently being piloted, including potentially expensive and/or environmentally-invasive technologies. Costs are estimated to range up to $600 per tonne of sequestered CO2, although no one really knows for sure. So I don't think we should be using hypothetical future tech (with a big question mark to boot) to put a dollar value on pollution emitted transporting goods today, particularly when it focuses on carbon and doesn't account for the other emissions. [0] - https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-10-06-carbon-removal-will-cost-much-annually-nhs-budget-oxford-research-shows-polluters https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-10-06-carbon-removal-will-cos... [1] - could actually have been this one, which starts by describing it as $600/ton and later clarifies that this is using experimental tech: https://www.science.org/content/article/cost-plunges-capturing-carbon-dioxide-air https://www.science.org/content/article/cost-plunges-capturi...

by Tade0 4y ago

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago

> adds perhaps 20 cents to the cost of a single, 250g package. Can you share your math?

CapitalistCartr 4y ago
Not OP, but it's pretty obvious. At $1-$2 (US) per cubic foot, 4-8 packages per cu. ft. is 20¢ apiece. A shipping container is about 2400 cu. ft., more for hi-cubes.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  You also have hard limits on the total weight of the container, which is why no one transports iron ore in containers.
  - mtillman 4y ago
    Pretty common to ship 20mt of metal in containers-we process $8B in raw commodities a year like this. Commodity traders don’t pay these prices to ship though, these are high value manufacturing (cpg, tech) prices. Commodity firms still ship enough volume to pay sub $2k a can.
    - mistrial9 4y ago
      > ship 20mt of metal in containers containers vary a lot in their construction and materials, right? open-top railway car containers are not the same as common trans-continental containers, and refrigerated units are different again. All of those and more are in daily use in vast numbers, worldwide.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      20,000 kg of steel is ~3m^3. That leaves rather a lot of the 30m^3 volume of a 20 foot container empty.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    I believe that the trucking portion of handling the container has weight limits; the machinery that handles the loading and unloading have their weight limits; the ship and the way it is loaded from bow to stern has weight limits, and a container itself has weight limits. Somewhat analogous to freeway overpass heights, the tendency over time is that the various limits harmonize with each other and you get typical shipping practices. A shipping container full of raw cotton is indeed quite different than one full of "iron ore" but actually, consumer electronics and various car parts, their load limits, are more commonly restricted in the way they are loaded and handled.
Tade0 4y ago
I assumed that weight is the limiting factor, considering the content is slightly denser than water, and an ISO40 container holds 26 740 kg: https://freightfinders.com/container-transport/40-feet-iso-container/ https://freightfinders.com/container-transport/40-feet-iso-c... Assuming two trips the lengths of which are in the same order of magnitude as the one mentioned: $10 522 * 2 = $21 044. That's $0.7869 per kg, so $0.1967 per 250g package. At $2k per container it's $0.0373.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jacobyoder 4y ago

I noticed... Limes grown in ... Peru or Uruguay, packed in ... Europe (might have been Italy, but maybe Poland)... then shipped to someplace in the US, then driven to me. This was on a bottle of lime juice. That is all of ... $1? Yet... I'd need to buy dozens of limes just to squeeze enough juice to get half that small bottle.

ericmay 4y ago
> That is all of ... $1? That's all of $1 of realized cost. It's not accounting for negative externalities to the environment, depletion of non-renewable natural resources that future people may rely on, or poor living conditions/wage slavery/etc. Though some of that would certainly be offset by economies of scale so there's some number greater than $1 that would reflect the true "global cost" of doing that. It's just unknown and not measured.
- jupp0r 4y ago
  And yet the vast majority of pollution will be created by somebody using their car to drive to the store and back when buying goods. This is even true for fruit that’s flown in.
  - more_corn 4y ago
    This is simply not true. Consumer transportation accounts for a tiny fraction of global energy use. This is a common tactic for blame shifting to excuse the complete lack of effort and egregious waste from the corporate and industrial sectors. Shame on you for blindly picking it up and retransmitting it.
    - evr1isnxprt 4y ago
      Shame on you for ignoring the industrial feedback loop that is required to make consumer vehicles. The building and refueling of gas stations. Shipping replacement parts. The trip to the store is not their only impact. You’re cherry picking a stat that represents the smallest part you want to take responsibility for but demand for all of it as resource costs.

mavhc 4y ago

It's only that cheap because they're using our atmosphere as a free open sewer

Tade0 4y ago
Naturally. I see this increase in cost as a good simulation of what would happen if we had a heavy, global carbon tax. To me it isn't nearly as bad as the dark scenarios some conjured.
- mavhc 4y ago
  The insane part is a carbon tax wouldn't be that high, it's only about 1-10% of the cost to save the world
Symmetry 4y ago
In terms of carbon let's calculate that. Rotterdam to Shanghai is about 9000 km. The package is 250 g. Container ship transport is about 15 grams of carbon per kilometer per metric ton. So a total emission of 2.25 grams of carbon for the trip. It costs about $600 to remove a ton of carbon from the atmosphere the hard way, rather than messing about with tree credits and other stuff that's too easy to game. So we'd want to add another $.001 to the price to account for the cost of the carbon involved in transporting it. Bulk container ships are very energy efficient compared to other sorts of transportation. However, they do use bunker fuel and the above doesn't take account of all the sulfur and particulates that gets emitted.
- oblio 4y ago
  Plus ocean pollution and other disruption, directly due to ships or infrastructure for them.
- smcl 4y ago
  > It costs about $600 to remove a ton of carbon from the atmosphere the hard way I think I found the source you used to get that number[0] (or [1]) it says: > Atmospheric carbon removal can be as simple (and relatively inexpensive) as planting trees. But to remove sufficient carbon to meet the target, new technologies will be needed. Some are currently being piloted, including potentially expensive and/or environmentally-invasive technologies. Costs are estimated to range up to $600 per tonne of sequestered CO2, although no one really knows for sure. So I don't think we should be using hypothetical future tech (with a big question mark to boot) to put a dollar value on pollution emitted transporting goods today, particularly when it focuses on carbon and doesn't account for the other emissions. [0] - https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-10-06-carbon-removal-will-cost-much-annually-nhs-budget-oxford-research-shows-polluters https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-10-06-carbon-removal-will-cos... [1] - could actually have been this one, which starts by describing it as $600/ton and later clarifies that this is using experimental tech: https://www.science.org/content/article/cost-plunges-capturing-carbon-dioxide-air https://www.science.org/content/article/cost-plunges-capturi...