4 ms·

I think it is a shame that such a negative comment is at the top. In fact, I am ashamed by association. Their burn rate is low (~$30,000/year now, though likel

by patcon 1y ago

I think it is a shame that such a negative comment is at the top. In fact, I am ashamed by association. Their burn rate is low (~$30,000/year now, though likely higher before) and the value they generate for everyone else has clearly been very high, even just in intangibles. They sound like a public good, and you hang them out to dry for not being... a profitable corporation? Is there an alternate universe where you toss libraries under the bus as well, when they fail to pay their way like bookstores? (I'm curious if anyone has feelings, why or why not this is a reasonable comparison for me to make.) You (and those voting/speaking to your worldview) are likely materially collapsing something from existing through creating a narrative here. Which is meaningful because this community is likely one that could step up -- with a deep understanding of open source, and wealth through tech associations and profits. Is your take worth that? Sink or swim, creators and gift-givers? Is PP universally bad enough that you wish for that to be your contribution here?

daedrdev 1y ago
They seem at best perforative in their efforts as the original comment points out. Surely there is a middle ground where one can concede a company is poorly run and unprofitable, and that those two things often tie together
- oulipo 1y ago
  One of the BIGGEST requirement for change is to *bring about a community*. Perhaps "technically" they haven't been "the best", but their major value has been creating a community of people who care and demand change. And that's a lot more than many people commenting here from their sofa could claim
  - ackfoobar 1y ago
    A community around recycling reminds me of the article "We wash our trash to repent for killing God". Like some commenters in this discussion I believe plastic recycling is a distraction at best.
    - zevon 1y ago
      What is there to "believe"? Precious Plastic collects and creates some knowledge, furthers the education of many people around the world and transforms some stuff that would have otherwise gone to waste to useful things. I really do not understand the mental contortions one needs to undertake to judge such things as somehow negative. Is no project that doesn't scale enough to solve all the problems in a domain worthy of undertaking? And how is it useful or respectful to be judgemental about what other people engage in and form communities around? Is being a Football fan, an archer, a woodworker or whatever in your spare time somehow more valuable or more useful than engaging with recycling, upcycling, tinkering with machines, doing community work and all the other activities that go into a project like PP?
      - nchmy 1y ago
        There's definitely some people here who are against the entire concept of recycling plastic. But the topic and difference of this thread is that football fans don't ask you to feed and house them for over a decade, while they do performative art (all while owning 10, unmentioned, hectares of land but claiming homelessness and poverty).
        zevon 1y ago
        Huh? Football fans regularly produce significant costs for the tax payer by way of the huge police and cleanup activities needed for big games, for example. Even if you take the stance that PP is art - artists have asked for money for as long as there has been art. Doesn't seem unusual to me. Are you referring to the land in Portugal that they also made available to the public and that they made a lot of YouTube videos and other documentation about? I would hardly call that "unmentioned".
        nchmy 1y ago
        [flagged]
      - ackfoobar 1y ago
  - fastball 1y ago
    The community exists. You don't need to give money to people who are clearly bad with it in order to continue building that community.
deng 1y ago
[flagged]
- bcoates 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - deng 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - tomhow 1y ago
      Please don't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - tomhow 1y ago
    Please don't comment like this on Hacker News, it's clearly against the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- iLoveOncall 1y ago
  > Also, the dig against "Precious Plastic Camp" as a "hipster commune" is just... I don't even know where to start. From what I could find it's a little thing where kids learn how to recycle plastic, and he makes it sound like they spend their money on some Burning Man, I mean what the hell. I think the parent refers to Project Kamp, their "sustainable" community in Portugal (they have a YouTube channel), for which "hipster commune" is actually a very kind description.
  - deng 1y ago
    That makes more sense, but we seem to have a different notion of the term "hipster". Anyway, from what I can see in the YT channel, it's not for me, but at least on first glance I can't see anything that would justify bashing these people. Where does this intense dislike come from? Are they peddling some grift or are deep into some conspiracy theory? I don't see it.
kryogen1c 1y ago
>Their burn rate is low (~$30,000/year now, though likely higher before) The article you're commenting on says their quarterly expenses are 34k
- oulipo 1y ago
  Still low...
- hobofan 1y ago
  I'm struggling to understand how the numbers make sense. The One Army patreon alone shows 1600 paid members, with the minimum paid tier being $7/month. With ~10% fee for Patreon, this should come out to: 1600 * 7 * 0.9 = $10080/month. That alone should sunstain them according to the numbers they are giving out themselves. Do the other non-Precious-Placstic parts of their Patreon make up such a big share that not a lot of that goes to Precious Plastics? I'm less skeptical about Precious Plastic than a lot of people here from an idea standpoint (I think even if it doesn't make a huge impact ecologically, I think its a nice project for educational purposes). However I've become quite weary over the years of projects that don't have a good financial track record asking for many AND are not being transparent enough about their financials to allow potential backers to make sound judgments. If they present as a non-profit (no matter if they are registered as one or not), they should also aim to fulfill best practices about being a non-profit.
ljm 1y ago
Libraries are funded by the tax payer and as such have no expectation to make money - they simply operate within the budget they are given. A charity or a non-profit organisation is funded by donors. Non-profit doesn't mean 'loss making', it means that all of the money is re-invested in the organisation to support it as a going concern, rather than paying it all out to shareholders or, in the case of PP, re-donating it to their community. So it's perfectly reasonable to want such an organisation to be, well, financially sound. That way it can continue to make the impact it does, or even increase that impact through growth. If that doesn't happen then you haven't donated to support a sustainable mission, you simply funded a one-off project. In any other situation this would be seen as catastrophic mismanagement and there'd be some accountability for it.
nchmy 1y ago
If you'll re-read my comment, you'll see that the lack of financial sustainability was only one of many significant criticisms. The strongest is simply that the machines/educational materials they produce are simply not practical, useful, or accessible. It's, as many other comments have said, performative. Conversely, there's plenty of great and little-known organizations around the world who HAVE built productive, sustainable organizations around small-scale recycling - by designing their own devices. Moreover, as many other comments have pointed out, there's never been any accountability (again, not just in a financial sense. Though, the figures are also quite murky, such that you're citing numbers that are far too low). There's no plan other than "give us more money and THEN we'll put in some effort to come up with and share a new plan". These are not serious people. Theyre seemingly decent and nice enough, but do not merit further support - let alone celebration. There's plenty of others in the world who are far more deserving of help, but don't have the cool marketing platform that PP does.
- jononor 1y ago
  Wich machines and organizations do you recommend for recycling plastic?
- fnordpiglet 1y ago
  In your comment you noted (and they note in their post) their work spins off other innovators and it sounds like in a way they represent a movement and an inspiration. They may very well be performative - maybe you might even call them artists rather than engineers or business people. But it sounds like their art creates awareness and inspires a lot of other, as you say, less visible and less performative people and organizations. Why isn’t this alone worth something? Their burn rate seems very small and their performative contribution seems in excess of the capital they detract from others ventures and maybe even creates a certain amount of awareness of the effort broadly? Note I have no knowledge this is the first I’ve heard of them. The questions above are truly meant as such.

by patcon 1y ago

daedrdev 1y ago

They seem at best perforative in their efforts as the original comment points out. Surely there is a middle ground where one can concede a company is poorly run and unprofitable, and that those two things often tie together

oulipo 1y ago
One of the BIGGEST requirement for change is to *bring about a community*. Perhaps "technically" they haven't been "the best", but their major value has been creating a community of people who care and demand change. And that's a lot more than many people commenting here from their sofa could claim
- ackfoobar 1y ago
  A community around recycling reminds me of the article "We wash our trash to repent for killing God". Like some commenters in this discussion I believe plastic recycling is a distraction at best.
  - zevon 1y ago
    What is there to "believe"? Precious Plastic collects and creates some knowledge, furthers the education of many people around the world and transforms some stuff that would have otherwise gone to waste to useful things. I really do not understand the mental contortions one needs to undertake to judge such things as somehow negative. Is no project that doesn't scale enough to solve all the problems in a domain worthy of undertaking? And how is it useful or respectful to be judgemental about what other people engage in and form communities around? Is being a Football fan, an archer, a woodworker or whatever in your spare time somehow more valuable or more useful than engaging with recycling, upcycling, tinkering with machines, doing community work and all the other activities that go into a project like PP?
    - nchmy 1y ago
      There's definitely some people here who are against the entire concept of recycling plastic. But the topic and difference of this thread is that football fans don't ask you to feed and house them for over a decade, while they do performative art (all while owning 10, unmentioned, hectares of land but claiming homelessness and poverty).
      - zevon 1y ago
        Huh? Football fans regularly produce significant costs for the tax payer by way of the huge police and cleanup activities needed for big games, for example. Even if you take the stance that PP is art - artists have asked for money for as long as there has been art. Doesn't seem unusual to me. Are you referring to the land in Portugal that they also made available to the public and that they made a lot of YouTube videos and other documentation about? I would hardly call that "unmentioned".
        nchmy 1y ago
        [flagged]
    - ackfoobar 1y ago
- fastball 1y ago
  The community exists. You don't need to give money to people who are clearly bad with it in order to continue building that community.

deng 1y ago

[flagged]

bcoates 1y ago
[flagged]
- deng 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - tomhow 1y ago
    Please don't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tomhow 1y ago
  Please don't comment like this on Hacker News, it's clearly against the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
iLoveOncall 1y ago
> Also, the dig against "Precious Plastic Camp" as a "hipster commune" is just... I don't even know where to start. From what I could find it's a little thing where kids learn how to recycle plastic, and he makes it sound like they spend their money on some Burning Man, I mean what the hell. I think the parent refers to Project Kamp, their "sustainable" community in Portugal (they have a YouTube channel), for which "hipster commune" is actually a very kind description.
- deng 1y ago
  That makes more sense, but we seem to have a different notion of the term "hipster". Anyway, from what I can see in the YT channel, it's not for me, but at least on first glance I can't see anything that would justify bashing these people. Where does this intense dislike come from? Are they peddling some grift or are deep into some conspiracy theory? I don't see it.

kryogen1c 1y ago

>Their burn rate is low (~$30,000/year now, though likely higher before) The article you're commenting on says their quarterly expenses are 34k

oulipo 1y ago
Still low...
hobofan 1y ago
I'm struggling to understand how the numbers make sense. The One Army patreon alone shows 1600 paid members, with the minimum paid tier being $7/month. With ~10% fee for Patreon, this should come out to: 1600 * 7 * 0.9 = $10080/month. That alone should sunstain them according to the numbers they are giving out themselves. Do the other non-Precious-Placstic parts of their Patreon make up such a big share that not a lot of that goes to Precious Plastics? I'm less skeptical about Precious Plastic than a lot of people here from an idea standpoint (I think even if it doesn't make a huge impact ecologically, I think its a nice project for educational purposes). However I've become quite weary over the years of projects that don't have a good financial track record asking for many AND are not being transparent enough about their financials to allow potential backers to make sound judgments. If they present as a non-profit (no matter if they are registered as one or not), they should also aim to fulfill best practices about being a non-profit.

ljm 1y ago

Libraries are funded by the tax payer and as such have no expectation to make money - they simply operate within the budget they are given. A charity or a non-profit organisation is funded by donors. Non-profit doesn't mean 'loss making', it means that all of the money is re-invested in the organisation to support it as a going concern, rather than paying it all out to shareholders or, in the case of PP, re-donating it to their community. So it's perfectly reasonable to want such an organisation to be, well, financially sound. That way it can continue to make the impact it does, or even increase that impact through growth. If that doesn't happen then you haven't donated to support a sustainable mission, you simply funded a one-off project. In any other situation this would be seen as catastrophic mismanagement and there'd be some accountability for it.

nchmy 1y ago

If you'll re-read my comment, you'll see that the lack of financial sustainability was only one of many significant criticisms. The strongest is simply that the machines/educational materials they produce are simply not practical, useful, or accessible. It's, as many other comments have said, performative. Conversely, there's plenty of great and little-known organizations around the world who HAVE built productive, sustainable organizations around small-scale recycling - by designing their own devices. Moreover, as many other comments have pointed out, there's never been any accountability (again, not just in a financial sense. Though, the figures are also quite murky, such that you're citing numbers that are far too low). There's no plan other than "give us more money and THEN we'll put in some effort to come up with and share a new plan". These are not serious people. Theyre seemingly decent and nice enough, but do not merit further support - let alone celebration. There's plenty of others in the world who are far more deserving of help, but don't have the cool marketing platform that PP does.

jononor 1y ago
Wich machines and organizations do you recommend for recycling plastic?
fnordpiglet 1y ago
In your comment you noted (and they note in their post) their work spins off other innovators and it sounds like in a way they represent a movement and an inspiration. They may very well be performative - maybe you might even call them artists rather than engineers or business people. But it sounds like their art creates awareness and inspires a lot of other, as you say, less visible and less performative people and organizations. Why isn’t this alone worth something? Their burn rate seems very small and their performative contribution seems in excess of the capital they detract from others ventures and maybe even creates a certain amount of awareness of the effort broadly? Note I have no knowledge this is the first I’ve heard of them. The questions above are truly meant as such.