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Burn After Wearing
- deadbabe 2y agoThese kind of places always seem so surreal. They’re like a place you’re not supposed to go, a place where deleted things end up. No humans around except for a few scavengers. Where are some other interesting remote dumping grounds like this where piles of discarded items just sit around abandoned? Is there a dry desert somewhere with a bunch of old beige computers just laying around?
- card_zero 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial ?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- amenhotep 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/309th_Aerospace_Maintenance_and_Regeneration_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/309th_Aerospace_Maintenance_an... springs to mind, although it doesn't quite fit the bill!
- ilaksh 2y agoThe weird thing to me is that we have those places everywhere and don't think twice about it. The only difference is that we cover the garbage with dirt. They are called "landfills" but they are really just mountains of garbage.
- Dalewyn 2y agoSometimes we even give them really nice names: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumenoshima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumenoshima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumeshima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumeshima (Both places' names translate to Dream Island.)
- II2II 2y agoThere are other differences. The garbage being discussed was sorted, baled, and shipped to markets with the pretense that it was going the be recycled or reused. (To be fair, a fraction of it was.) It diverted garbage away from our landfills, dumping it where it was beyond "out of sight, out of mind." The intent is entirely different.
- Toutouxc 2y agoActual landfills are, at least where I live, heavily regulated and use quite a lot of technology and engineering to minimize their impact. And landfilling itself is actually being abandoned here, AFAIK you can’t start a new landfill anymore and the costs of landfilling will be artificially jacked up in order to soften the final ban in ~6 years.
- thfuran 2y agoMeaning you're about to start exporting a lot of garbage to jurisdictions with laxer regulations on landfills?
- oskarw85 2y agoExactly. Such a policy doesn't do anything to curb the amount of waste. It just shifts it to poorer regions and lines Mafia pockets with money
- Toutouxc 2y agoIdeally this should lead to an uptick in recycling and switch the rest to incineration (and electricity generation).
- pjsg 2y agoA film (well worth watching) about this sort of place is Manufactured Landscapes: https://archive.org/details/ManufacturedLandscapes_201902 https://archive.org/details/ManufacturedLandscapes_201902 -- you don't really get the whole scale of things until you see something like this. Trivia note: This movie has the longest opening tracking shot of any movie of the time (according to a film professor friend).
- deadbabe 2y agoThank you! I will try to watch it :)
- latentcall 2y agoRemember watching this maybe 15 years ago. Really impactful film.
- plastic3169 2y agoSorry to get stuck on your trivia note. What is the definition of a tracking shot? Russian Ark by Sokurov from 2002 is one continous 87 minute take.
- deadbabe 2y agoThe movie 1917 is one continuous 2 hour take.
- autoexec 2y agoIf you mean this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1917_(2019_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1917_(2019_film) it was many long shots edited to look like two continuous takes (there's a deliberate fade to black at one point). According to this (https://theasc.com/articles/lives-under-siege-the-goldfinch-and-1917 https://theasc.com/articles/lives-under-siege-the-goldfinch-...) it was filmed over four months.
- skhunted 2y agoGarbage can be found just about anywhere now. There is a TV show called Alone where people try to survive off the land in remote locations. There’s a limit to how much stuff a person can bring with them but they are allowed to use any items they find. In almost every season someone finds something that was dumped. The whole world is becoming a garbage dump. There are giant garbage patches in the oceans now. It’s disconcerting that we have done so much damage to the planet.
- banish-m4 2y agoFuck. This is such a waste to people who need clothes and of material. This reminds me of the recent ABC (US) investigation about bag recycling where most of the bags were going to incinerators, landfills, or being covertly shipped to Indonesia and Malaysia for "recycling".
- XorNot 2y agoIs it though? People tend to overestimate the costs of production versus recycling. You could easily spend, in terms of CO2, vastly more resources trying to sort, clean and ship around this stuff, rather then just setting the pile on fire - particularly if it's principally organically-derived fibers (cotton) and not synthetics.
- banish-m4 2y agoPerhaps the economic calculus is to keep prices of existing clothing high by destroying excess inventory rather than selling at steep discounts to encourage purchase at a S&D intersection via sell-downs, selling this inventory to secondary markets like Ross, TJ Maxx, Salvation Army, and Goodwill, or giving it to charity. It seems like such a waste that could've been captured and used more efficiently. It was perhaps the most expedient action used by a small number of less than resourceful corporate employees trying to write-off excess inventory. The case of plastic bag recycling is outrageous deception.
- bratwurst3000 2y agoThe BASF in Germany burned 1 month of cerosine for Frankfurt airport because there were no flights while lockdown. Why didn’t they store it? Because storing is more expensive than burning it. Maybe the same happens to clothes.
- o11c 2y agoOr in other words, the glassmaker's fallacy, and proof that the free market is evil. After all, it is clearly in the glassmaker's best interests to run around breaking windows.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- monero-xmr 2y agoI know a guy who knows a guy, and he says that guy takes medical waste and basically dumps it into the sewer. I don’t know if that’s a euphemism for a river or burying it in the landfill. But basically his business is to have others pass the buck on regulated disposal to him, who then just dumps it. I’m sure this type of thing is fairly common.
- rl3 2y ago>I’m sure this type of thing is fairly common. Unfortunately: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecomafia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecomafia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_of_death_(Italy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_of_death_(Italy) https://www.vice.com/en/article/3b7m9n/the-mob-made-southen-italy-a-toxic-wasteland-0000555-v22n1 https://www.vice.com/en/article/3b7m9n/the-mob-made-southen-... https://www.vice.com/en/article/j59xap/europes-biggest-illegal-dump-italys-chernobyl-uncovered-in-mafia-heartland https://www.vice.com/en/article/j59xap/europes-biggest-illeg... https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jan/23/buried-bbc-podcast-exposing-waste-rubbish-crime-scandal https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jan/23/buried-...
- monero-xmr 2y agoThe guy I know is in the US, but he deals with a lot of Canadians also. His business is gray (think something like marijuana but not that) where it’s sort of legal in some places but mostly not. One time we were at a bar and his friend came who was wearing a patched biker jacket, I did not recognize the gang. But the guy was totally nice. I have had a few weird situations with organized crime and my hunch is they are way, way bigger than society understands. Like the American Mafia was way too public, the FBI nailed them, and now the smart criminals just don’t exist in any form in the public consciousness. I think OC now exists as legitimate business but it’s just a few layers removed. So they might operate a doctors clinic, but the real point of it is to milk Medicare for scams, and things like this. But on paper it seems correct
- lozenge 2y agoThere isn't anywhere within driving distance of the US or Canada that you can legally dump medical waste in a sewer...
- ilaksh 2y agoMeanwhile, in every city everywhere, we bury mountains and mountains full of arbitrary garbage. This stuff is not buried and a lot ended up burning. At least it's sorted! And arguably burning it could be better than burying it.
- NoahKAndrews 2y agoI recommend reading the article to see what the constant burning of clothes is doing to their air.
- RealityVoid 2y agoI'm confused by this stance. How could burning it be better than burying it? If you bury it it's (relatively) inert and all stored neatly in one place. Whereas if you burn it you release it in the atmosphere, release carbon and probably not-so-great residues everywhere.
- yumraj 2y agoYou have to dig a hole to bury and it’s expensive to do that, for large enough holes.
- Gare 2y agoNot really, most landfills use natural depressions or are hills instead of holes.
- ht_th 2y agoAnd in some very flat countries, those landfillhils become nice recreational landscape features, for example, the "Col du VAM"¹ in Drenthe, the Netherlands. ¹ https://www.drenthe.nl/locaties/61224200/vam-berg https://www.drenthe.nl/locaties/61224200/vam-berg
- kzrdude 2y agoIf you bury it, you slowly leak all kinds of toxic stuff into groundwater and soil around. If you incinerate it, you recover some heat used for district heating and you have controlled circumstances - filter and monitor emissions. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/climate/sweden-garbage-used-for-fuel.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/climate/sweden-garbage-us...
- bugbuddy 2y agoI actually recognize those clothes. They are the ones I walked pass in the malls because they were too expensive.
- dan-robertson 2y agoWhat do you think the right price for clothing is? Something like one of the items you recognised, for example.
- exabrial 2y ago[flagged]
- bugbuddy 2y agoNot me, I wear clothes from the thrift store.
- YZF 2y agoI just keep wearing old clothes even if they got holes or something. A benefit of being a geek is the social expectations are pretty low. EDIT: This also reminds me of the story about the containers the Philippines forced Canada to take back: https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/canadian-garbage-from-philippines-departure-1.5156007 https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/canadian-garbage-from-philip... A lot of "recycling" is "ship somewhere they don't care" or "another route to the dump".
- exabrial 2y agoGood! Textile waste is huge
- lagniappe 2y agoI think it's not just fast fashion either, a lot of this conference swag can go too.
- schiffern 2y ago> all the people Seems excessively overgeneralized. (also see HN guidelines re: "be kind", "flamebait", "shallow dismissals", and "ideological battles" https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html )
- Beefin 2y agoI asked an LLM: "if there was infinite technology and no limitation on science or physics what would be the most ecological way to dispose of garbage" this was the response: Complete Material Recovery: Every scrap of waste could be broken down at the molecular or atomic level and then reassembled into raw materials. This would be a perfect form of recycling where nothing is wasted, and materials are perpetually reused. Energy Conversion: Garbage could be converted directly into clean energy through highly efficient processes, perhaps even approaching 100% energy conversion without any emissions or residues. Biological Integration: Waste could be processed using engineered organisms or bio-systems that decompose or transform all types of waste into environmentally beneficial substances, like nutrients that support ecosystems rather than disrupt them. Space Disposal: With no limitations, safe disposal methods could involve sending waste to the sun or other celestial bodies designed to safely contain or annihilate it without any impact on Earth or its environment. is any company working on these solutions?
- adonovan 2y agoNo, because you started from a false premise.
- throwup238 2y ago> Biological Integration: Waste could be processed using engineered organisms or bio-systems that decompose or transform all types of waste into environmentally beneficial substances, like nutrients that support ecosystems rather than disrupt them. Oh yeah, lots of people working on biological integration: https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/lg/34130/image.jpg https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/lg/34130/imag... It’s a competitive industry.
- XorNot 2y agoWhy are people constantly posting these "I asked an LLM" or "I summarised this with an LLM" posts? No one needs this. These are all things people can do themselves.
- whatindaheck 2y ago[dead]
- userbinator 2y agoI believe that waste should be stored until something useful can be done with it --- on a long enough timescale, everything gets recycled eventually.
- lowdest 2y agoSimilarly, I strongly believe we should sort our recyclables, even if they end up getting buried in adjacent pits. It's reduced entropy, save that energy for later.
- delichon 2y agoA hoarder's motto.
- downboots 2y agoIf you get to live on a long enough timescale to see it
- peddling-brink 2y agoYour personal timeline has nothing to do with it. The timeline of humanity depends on now.
- downboots 2y agothat's the point of my original message
- xpe 2y ago> I believe that waste should be stored until something useful can be done with it --- on a long enough timescale, everything gets recycled eventually. What happens if we assume the statement is true (as a thought experiment) and explore the ramifications? I see three key follow-up questions? 1. What valuation is implied by the above statement? 2. What do we mean by "waste"? 3. What are the salient differences between _burying_, _storing_, and _burning_? Some answers to each: 1. It requires the future value, for some unbounded `t`, to exceed the present value. For this to be sensible, the cost of storage cannot dominate. 2. What is waste now is a function of our current economics* and technological level. Storing something indefinitely is an implicit bet that future changes to economics and/or technology will make recovery of item worth it relative to the cumulative storage and opportunity costs (including compounding). 3. In a broad sense, entropy. This applies to both the item stored (its internal state) and the energy required to locate it (i.e. location indexing). Put another way: entropy maps to more concrete concepts such as: cost of recovery, expected degradation, and ability to locate later. * I don't mean to imply a narrow view of economics. What I actually mean is closer to the considerations from _political economy_.
- chriscappuccio 2y agoLooks like a good use of pyrolysis to generate waste oil for energy
- ametrau 2y ago[dead]
- boopmaster 2y agoIt wouldn’t be so appalling if the clothes were made from sustainable, biodegradable materials. I appreciate that the article calls out the trash as being like an oil slick, which is a sticking point I think we all can be upset about, and use our agency to demand change. Don’t buy plastic to wear. Tell manufacturers (brands) they are grotesque for using plastics in clothing.
- xandrius 2y agoFor the past few years I've tried to buy socks, underwear and even T-shirts without any plastic in them. Turns out to be extremely hard, borderline impossible in many countries (including US and EU). It gets even worse if someone doesn't want to buy online and wants to find a local shop then the chances go even lower. I'm not I've seen an 100% cotton product in ages in a physical store.
- gedy 2y agoLevis?
- djhn 2y agoIf you wear more classic mens clothing you can dress pretty much 100% in linen, wool, cotton, silk, leather and various brass/steel buckles. 100% merino wool (winter) or linen/cotton/silk blend (summer) for socks, underwear and t-shirts. 100% cotton and linen for shirts and trousers. 100% wool knitwear, suits, formal trousers, jackets and winter coats. 100% leather shoes. Not to mention the clothes themselves last decades.