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I worked finance at a pulp mill once - a small pulp mill by international standards. The mill used 90 million litres of water a day. It has been hard to take my

I worked finance at a pulp mill once - a small pulp mill by international standards. The mill used 90 million litres of water a day. It has been hard to take my own efforts to save water seriously since then.

mpalmer 2y ago
Your perception is that water is wasted elsewhere, therefore you feel less inclined to avoid wasting water yourself?
- rockemsockem 2y ago
  Why do something "to make a difference" if it's literally incapable of making a difference (even with every single person doing it).
  - mpalmer 2y ago
    Why indeed
  - philwelch 2y ago
    It’s a sort of luxury disease. It used to be that life entailed so much material suffering that people needed to rationalize that they were suffering for something, and so human beings got incredibly good at that coping mechanism. So good that now that we live in a world where we have material abundance, we cannot believe it, and then we go out of our way to impoverish ourselves just so we can feel good that at least we’re suffering for something. All of us can have high flow showers and toilets like we used to. The world isn’t going to end if we do. Even regions that have water shortages can solve them with technology that’s existed for the better part of a century by now. But if we do that, we will end up standing in our hot, high-flow showers thinking to ourselves—this is wrong, we don’t deserve this, this is too good to be true.
    - mpalmer 2y ago
      Tell that to California
      - philwelch 2y ago
        I think if we banned almond milk, California would have no water problems at all. Almond cultivation uses much more water than residential water in CA, so you’d think the first thing they’d stop doing is putting all of that water into almonds just to turn around and process the almonds into ersatz milk. But no, you gotta wear the hairshirt instead. If building things was an option in California, they could just use nuclear power to desalinate water from the Pacific, but let’s be realistic.
  - pjerem 2y ago
    Because you have values ? Do you throw your junk on a street if the street is already dirty ? It’s not because others don’t care that it’s an excuse to act like them.
    - rockemsockem 2y ago
      Pragmatism is a good value. Your analogy doesn't work because this has been made easy by trash cans and the effect is immediate, local, and advantageous to yourself vs water conservation which requires sacrifice and water use itself is not inherently bad, it's the results of aggregating lots of water use together that can be bad.
- dang 2y ago
  "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Y_Y 2y ago
Being wasteful is generally bad, but changing consumer behaviour is mostly a distraction from industrial resource use. I can't believe we still waste so much time and effort on "recycling" plastic water bottles when there are so many things that would be orders of magnitude more useful, if only we were willing and able to upset large companies.
- forgotTheLast 2y ago
  The slogan is "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" in that order. industrial resource use is to indirectly fulfill individual demand. Recycling might be a sham but reducing individual consumption would make a difference.
- ttepasse 2y ago
  Something I like about the recycling scheme for single-use plastic and aluminium cans here in Germany is a secondary aspect: It reduces littering of those. I remember the decades before the scheme and it a least reduced this. (But we need a deposit on cigarette butts..)
  - Y_Y 2y ago
    Of all the schemes I've seen I think the German Pfand system works the best. Solid re-usable bottles, and a small but nontrivial cash incentive to return bottles. Amusingly Ireland recently implemented a half-assed version of the same thing, but the bottles are flimsy and must be in perfect condition upon return. The machine (if it works) just gives vouchers for whatever supermarket has placed it in their car park, and the charges are stupid (tiny cans of tonic have a deposit as high as the original price).
stragies 2y ago
Are all of those 90 million liters used, as in "lost", or is a large percentage of it captured/re-used?
- illusive4080 2y ago
  Captured, reused, or cleaned and discharged back into the adjacent river. (I didn’t work in a paper mill but have family who has and I’ve been to them plenty of times to ask questions of the engineers)
- dinkblam 2y ago
  water can never be "lost", it always comes back
- WithinReason 2y ago
  I assume it's the same as shower water
iterateoften 2y ago
My opinion is to do my best but not to overthink it. If I need to throw a plastic bottle away and there isn’t recycling available putting it in the trash isn’t going to alter history. That doesn’t mean when recycling is available I don’t prioritize it.

mpalmer 2y ago

Your perception is that water is wasted elsewhere, therefore you feel less inclined to avoid wasting water yourself?

rockemsockem 2y ago
Why do something "to make a difference" if it's literally incapable of making a difference (even with every single person doing it).
- mpalmer 2y ago
  Why indeed
- philwelch 2y ago
  It’s a sort of luxury disease. It used to be that life entailed so much material suffering that people needed to rationalize that they were suffering for something, and so human beings got incredibly good at that coping mechanism. So good that now that we live in a world where we have material abundance, we cannot believe it, and then we go out of our way to impoverish ourselves just so we can feel good that at least we’re suffering for something. All of us can have high flow showers and toilets like we used to. The world isn’t going to end if we do. Even regions that have water shortages can solve them with technology that’s existed for the better part of a century by now. But if we do that, we will end up standing in our hot, high-flow showers thinking to ourselves—this is wrong, we don’t deserve this, this is too good to be true.
  - mpalmer 2y ago
    Tell that to California
    - philwelch 2y ago
      I think if we banned almond milk, California would have no water problems at all. Almond cultivation uses much more water than residential water in CA, so you’d think the first thing they’d stop doing is putting all of that water into almonds just to turn around and process the almonds into ersatz milk. But no, you gotta wear the hairshirt instead. If building things was an option in California, they could just use nuclear power to desalinate water from the Pacific, but let’s be realistic.
- pjerem 2y ago
  Because you have values ? Do you throw your junk on a street if the street is already dirty ? It’s not because others don’t care that it’s an excuse to act like them.
  - rockemsockem 2y ago
    Pragmatism is a good value. Your analogy doesn't work because this has been made easy by trash cans and the effect is immediate, local, and advantageous to yourself vs water conservation which requires sacrifice and water use itself is not inherently bad, it's the results of aggregating lots of water use together that can be bad.
dang 2y ago
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Y_Y 2y ago

Being wasteful is generally bad, but changing consumer behaviour is mostly a distraction from industrial resource use. I can't believe we still waste so much time and effort on "recycling" plastic water bottles when there are so many things that would be orders of magnitude more useful, if only we were willing and able to upset large companies.

forgotTheLast 2y ago
The slogan is "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" in that order. industrial resource use is to indirectly fulfill individual demand. Recycling might be a sham but reducing individual consumption would make a difference.
ttepasse 2y ago
Something I like about the recycling scheme for single-use plastic and aluminium cans here in Germany is a secondary aspect: It reduces littering of those. I remember the decades before the scheme and it a least reduced this. (But we need a deposit on cigarette butts..)
- Y_Y 2y ago
  Of all the schemes I've seen I think the German Pfand system works the best. Solid re-usable bottles, and a small but nontrivial cash incentive to return bottles. Amusingly Ireland recently implemented a half-assed version of the same thing, but the bottles are flimsy and must be in perfect condition upon return. The machine (if it works) just gives vouchers for whatever supermarket has placed it in their car park, and the charges are stupid (tiny cans of tonic have a deposit as high as the original price).

stragies 2y ago

Are all of those 90 million liters used, as in "lost", or is a large percentage of it captured/re-used?

illusive4080 2y ago
Captured, reused, or cleaned and discharged back into the adjacent river. (I didn’t work in a paper mill but have family who has and I’ve been to them plenty of times to ask questions of the engineers)
dinkblam 2y ago
water can never be "lost", it always comes back
WithinReason 2y ago
I assume it's the same as shower water

iterateoften 2y ago

My opinion is to do my best but not to overthink it. If I need to throw a plastic bottle away and there isn’t recycling available putting it in the trash isn’t going to alter history. That doesn’t mean when recycling is available I don’t prioritize it.