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Cleaning a Spoon Is Complex
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoSo much of recycling is more costly than getting new. I.e. injecting some (trivial) amounts of aluminum back into the extremely efficient aluminum mining/refining system is honestly more trouble than it's worth. Where I live recycled aluminum cans are shipped to a steel recycling plant (something that is worthwhile) to be dumped by the traincarload into each batch to precipitate out the sulfur, then skimmed and sent to a landfill. Useful, efficient and not just theatre.
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoIt’s a good thing we have an infinite amount of aluminium to mine then or the system would be unsustainable in the medium term and it would be completely brain dead to do that.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoBetter read some more about that - aluminum is essentially endless.
- radford-neal 4y agoEight percent of the earth's crust is aluminum. That's a lot. Of course, that doesn't mean that recycling aluminum is senseless - there's the energy cost of isolating the aluminum to consider. But literally running out of aluminum is not something to worry about.
- thakoppno 4y agoAnyone up for doing the math about how long it would take to deplete that much aluminum at the rate this planet consumes aluminum? Does it take us past the point the sun melts the earth?
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoBecause of course we can mine the whole Earth crust. It’s a good thing our ability to effectively mine in not limited to a few kilometres and our ability to actually find ores is so amazing. I’m such a fool, sorry. More seriously, I’m done with sarcasms. We actually need to recycle aluminium. Smelting is far more energy intensive than extraction and depletion is a very real problem. First, viable gisements are not that common. Second, as we extract the best, we are faced by poorer and poorer quality of ores which mean the cost of smelting gets worse and worse. Aluminium is definitely not endless as someone would have you believe in a reply.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoAluminum production exceeds that of all other non-ferrous metals combined. We're not anywhere near that description.
- _visgean 4y agoIsnt that called negative externalities in economic theory? e.g. the overall cost od producing the spoon will be paid by governments who will have to deal with environmental demage... (and likely increased healtcare costs..)
- tsimionescu 4y agoRe-using is still much better though - there is essentially no cost to cleaning a metal spoon compared to building and throwing away a plastic one. Bonus points for cleaning your spoons during the shower if you want to conserve water, Kramer-style (added since 90's sitcoms seem to have been popular in this thread).
- tiagod 4y agoYou might've picked the worst example, as aluminium refining is an electrolysis process which is extremely energy intensive (Iceland imports a lot of ore and exports a lot of metal for this reason). I might agree with you if you back your statements up with some data, but it does go against what I've always read about aluminium in particular.
- throwamon 4y agoThis is ridiculous. The complexity of manually washing a spoon, even with all those steps added, isn't even in the same ballpark as manufacturing it. You need all of the same kind of steps to manufacture the spoon (including piping water to the factory and cleaning it with soap or whatever), and the other ones are orders of magnitude more complex. And just because you added more words and used some technical terms it doesn't show any more complexity.
- bmmayer1 4y agoAren't there going to be likewise complex manufacturing processes behind the chemicals and machinery, including plastics, used in water treatment and piping? It's turtles all the way down. That's the point.
- ryukafalz 4y agoThose processes could reasonably be considered essential in modern times, because we all need to have potable water available anyway. The manufacture of plastic disposable spoons could not.
- throwamon 4y agoThanks, this is the obvious point every other reply here seems to blissfully ignore. The levels of cognitive dissonance are astonishing.
- js2 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue-in-cheek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue-in-cheek
- throwamon 4y agoA tongue-in-cheek based on a straw man doesn't make you look good
- ajuc 4y ago
- photochemsyn 4y ago> "You know the thing where you see something on Facebook, start reading it or composing a reply, and then you lose it?" No, actually. I've never used Facebook, or Twitter. It's like having an automatic +10 on your roll for mental stability and anti-depression. I'd highly recommend it. Facebooked and Twitterized... it means silo-ized (locked into partisan rabbit holes) and dumbed-down (incapable of comprehending concepts that require more than a few sentences to explain).
- huimang 4y agoYou know the thing where you see something on HN, start reading it or composing a reply, and then you lose it?
- photochemsyn 4y agoWith HN, what happens more often than not is I see an interesting link, click on it, find some very useful information, often quite complex, which I then bookmark and come back to again later, typically learning something of value which I can then incorporate into other projects. There's really too much quality information disseminated here to absorb, so I have to pick and choose. Quality of information on HN is certainly far higher than on the other social media platform I used to frequent, Reddit, where even on the tech subreddits it was a dumpster fire more often than not, to the point where I eventually just deleted my account there. And Reddit's superior to Facebook and Twitter, based on everything I've seen escape from those walled trashpits into the larger internet.
- raverbashing 4y agoCleaning the spoon is still easier How old are plastic spoons? 50-70yrs-ish? Reusing metal spoons is much older than that (by ok, 100-200yrs-ish - stainless steel was discovered on 1913)
- raytube 4y agoI just lick it clean and put it back in the drawer.
- monktastic1 4y agoOoh look at mister fancy pants here with drawers.
- jacknews 4y agolol, by 'drawers' I think they meant 'cupboard slide-out containers', not knickers/fancy-underpants/drawers. Unless...
- Doxin 4y agoWait hold up, where exactly are kitchen drawers a fancy thing? I don't think I've ever been in a kitchen here without at least a cutlery drawer.
- monktastic1 4y agoYeah, the joke was that I'm even more uncultured.
- someweirdperson 4y agoI've found it much more difficult to clean a fork.
- naillo 4y agoYou might be joking but metal spoons are ridiculously good at not letting bacteria grow on it. A quick wipedown of any sort is basically all that's actually necessary.
- speedylight 4y agoWow didn’t think Joey has an HN account!
- csours 4y agoIs there a better name for this "arguing past each other" or "arguing from a blind spot" The use case for a single use plastic implement is very different from a reusable metal implement. 1. A plastic spoon is safe, sanitary, and very low cost. 2. Many can be industrially composted now, and have renewable sourcing. Sentence one describes primary reasons why I would choose to use a plastic spoon. Sentence two has nothing to do with my use of the spoon. To be clear, I have a strong dislike for single use plastic. Single use plastic is a scourge. I hate it when I see a plastic bag or bottle or implement in the park or a waterway. It's disgusting. At the same time, plastic is a miracle. Most of the time, a reusable spoon makes more sense than a plastic spoon. But plastic spoons opens up food service options.
- elif 4y agoThe difference is you are already buying water in your kitchen for non-spoon purposes. You are not already buying plastic spoons for non-spoon purposes.
- Comevius 4y agoThe real difference is that having running water for washing things is a necessity, and can be also provided in an ecologically sensible way. Manufacturing trillions of plastic spoons is insanity, but that's the free market for you. We put our comfort and vanity above everything. Unfortunately the top 10% that consumes the most by far will be the last to face the consequences, but they will face it too. Sooner or later these violent delights are going to receive their violent end.
- glitchc 4y agoIt’s a false equivalence as the potable, drinkable water extracted from this process is used for far more than just cleaning the spoon.
- _visgean 4y agoOn related news: https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/plastics/single-use-plastics/eu-restrictions-certain-single-use-plastics_en https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/plastics/single-use-... > From 3 July 2021, single-use plastic plates, cutlery, straws, balloon sticks and cotton buds cannot be placed on the markets of the EU Member States. In addition, the same measure applies to cups, food and beverage containers made of expanded polystyrene, and all products made of oxo-degradable plastic. not sure how much it is enforced but I have to admit most single use cups or food packaging now at least pretends to be biodegradable.
- dale_glass 4y agoFunny, but doesn't really work. First, the manufacture of a spoon is going to involve water at many points. The same water that you wash it with, or likely even better because nobody wants to have sediment on their expensive manufacturing hardware. So on that part alone it fails, because the first picture includes the "rebuttal" in its own complexity. Second, complexity greatly varies. Water purification is an extremely bulk and standard process we already use for a myriad ends. On the other hand, spoon manufacture has spoon-specific steps in it. Water purification is going to scale better because there's so much downstream use, and it's a single thing that doesn't need to be treated as discrete units.
- rspoerri 4y agoIt's ridiculous to compare those two aspects. Nature delivers water which can clean a spoon. Last time i checked plastic spoons didn't grow on trees. Also (apart from laboratory's experiments) plastics do not recycle, water can be cleaned and food waste in it naturally decomposes. Comparing these things downplays the enormous energy, transportation and even water consumption required to produce plastic. Also you can describe anything with a few sentences. Just because it takes the same amount of words, doesn't make the process equally complex.