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OT: “green plans” what happened to reduce reuse recycle?

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Stirling

Hot Rolled
Joined
Dec 11, 2013
Location
Alberta canada
With all of these environments “green plans” what happened to reduce reuse recycle?

In school (90’s) they preached the 3 R’s
Now everyone wants to save the world and the ONLY way to do it is to buy this, buy that, from electric cars to “green” power generation, “green certified” dish soap, bla bla, you get the point.

But I never hear “don’t buy new” use things fully. Repurpose.
It’s less “harmful” to fully use up that Pontiac sunfire than get a new EV hummer.

(EV hummer, seriously???? Damn thing weighs as much as my vf2)
 
Funny thing is green items will be produced with fossil fuels until solar / wind power takes off...making consumables ie things that get used up have a limited life.
maybe we get there in the end but i feel many missteps on the way.
Fuel cell cars may take over from BEV,s for instance then what do you do with BEV you can only recycle them as well.
Sure makes sense to get away from non renewalables as they will eventually run out quite obviously.
I don't see anyone saying how to recycle solar panels as they have a limited lifespan as well.

All for using things to their limits.
 
With all of these environments “green plans” what happened to reduce reuse recycle?

In school (90’s) they preached the 3 R’s
Now everyone wants to save the world and the ONLY way to do it is to buy this, buy that, from electric cars to “green” power generation, “green certified” dish soap, bla bla, you get the point.

But I never hear “don’t buy new” use things fully. Repurpose.
It’s less “harmful” to fully use up that Pontiac sunfire than get a new EV hummer.

(EV hummer, seriously???? Damn thing weighs as much as my vf2)


Still going strong:

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle | US EPA


Change is inevitable and with resource use you have to pick your battles and define goals.
"Cash for clunkers" targets particulate emissions as a key goalpost and works.

Do you want another- run the numbers and decide for yourself.
There is an abundance of evidence for product cycles and their effects on the varied parts of the equations from economic efficiency, resource consumption to pollution and energy use.

Societies are becoming more efficient due to technology and the knowledge base which underlies just about every action we take.
Green is one aspect of the gains occurring.
There are others.

Pick your battles and what you give a damn about.

Around here folk toss their trash out the windows of their cars and I have to deal with it in my front yard.
Me- I use a trash can.


Knowledge is prescriptive.
By that I mean that if you really understand a system you see that two different approaches have two different effects and one might be seen as "better" on some basis.
Many people rail against being told how to go about their business.

Understandable but that does not change the basic facts- different approaches have different effects.
Understand the process and define your goals- most public information campaigns on things such as environmental action are just trying to provide information so it is understood what those effects are.


Want a simple exercise in environmental action- decide if you support and therefore wish to continue to use palm oil.
There are LOTS of moving parts in the equation.
 
WE have curbside recycling and composting
China stopped taking our paper, so that is a problem, and scrap dropped so low I couldn't get anyone to even take aluminum chip


Personally I think that if it cannot be reused, it should have a minimum recycled content.

Cardboard box can be reused[I cut them up for packing]

Paper towels cannot. Cutting down trees for pulp is ridiculous.

I buy the Earth First brand paper towels for work. I think the name is hysterical both because of the radical group and the bumper sticker

EARTH FIRST[in big letters]
we'll strip mine the other planets later[ in small type]
 
Cardboard use has skyrocketed since Covid and our online shopping habits. Cardboard is made from trees of course, with a small percentage being recycled.

Retail is changing, and I’m not sure if it helps the planet or not? Goods use to arrive at a store via semi truck, and we purchased there, and brought home in thin plastic bags using our relatively-efficient personal vehicles.

Now, we get a big chunk of our stuff dropped off on the front porch, in a cardboard box, by one of many delivery vans/trucks that traipse all over the region.

How is that more efficient than a semi-truck dropping everything at the store, with no individual shipping boxes or fuel-hog delivery trucks required to get the product to the consumer’s residence...??
 
We have a curbside recycling program where I live. They pick up paper, cardboard, cans, and some types of plastic. I am told that the only thing they make money on is cans. Much of the rest apparently goes to the dump.

This is just one reason that I am skeptical when they say that everything will be heaven when we go to electric cars with lithium ion batteries that will be recycled ... just like the paper, cardboard, and plastic picked up curbside.
 
Funny thing is green items will be produced with fossil fuels until solar / wind power takes off...making consumables ie things that get used up have a limited life.
maybe we get there in the end but i feel many missteps on the way.
Fuel cell cars may take over from BEV,s for instance then what do you do with BEV you can only recycle them as well.
Sure makes sense to get away from non renewalables as they will eventually run out quite obviously.
I don't see anyone saying how to recycle solar panels as they have a limited lifespan as well.

All for using things to their limits.

I have some solar panels that are around 20 years old and they still put out very close to the rated wattage. I think when they say that solar panels have a lifespan of 25 years they are factoring in the ones that get broken. They do degrade some over time but I'd venture a guess that when they are 50 years old they will still be putting out power. Of course they will be old technology so not as many watts for the same area as new but still generating power.
 
How is that more efficient than a semi-truck dropping everything at the store, with no individual shipping boxes or fuel-hog delivery trucks required to get the product to the consumer’s residence...??

Maybe because a delivery truck can hold hundreds if not thousands of packages so that keeps a lot of car traffic off the roads. The trucks generally only drive very short distances between deliveries but those same items would require lots of driving cars to stores to pick them up. That's how it is more efficient to shop online and let someone else deliver your items.

Also, many of the packages that I get are delivered by the USPS and they were already stopping at my house.
I'm certain that a UPS truck uses less fuel to go from my next door neighbors house to my house that it would take me to drive to town and pick up the same items.
 
It was taken over by corporate interests. If you really look at the environmental effort at the granular level it is frightening how accurate my first sentence is. There is a lot of money and power against it.

As for "green" energy I still don't know of any, at least at the industrial level. Hydro is sorta green but the damage it does to the ecosystem is extreme.
 
Maybe because a delivery truck can hold hundreds if not thousands of packages so that keeps a lot of car traffic off the roads. The trucks generally only drive very short distances between deliveries but those same items would require lots of driving cars to stores to pick them up. That's how it is more efficient to shop online and let someone else deliver your items.

Also, many of the packages that I get are delivered by the USPS and they were already stopping at my house.
I'm certain that a UPS truck uses less fuel to go from my next door neighbors house to my house that it would take me to drive to town and pick up the same items.

Good point about multiple cars versus one delivery van or truck.

However there is still the little problem of cardboard usage, which has probably increased ten-fold over the last decade.

And the future of the USPS is package delivery. Everybody gives Trump's USPS guy hell because he removed letter sorting machines; well, he was doing that to make room for package handling equipment.

ToolCat
 
Good point about multiple cars versus one delivery van or truck.

However there is still the little problem of cardboard usage, which has probably increased ten-fold over the last decade.

And the future of the USPS is package delivery. Everybody gives Trump's USPS guy hell because he removed letter sorting machines; well, he was doing that to make room for package handling equipment.

ToolCat
Then why did it start taking weeks to deliver what used to take 2-3 days? This is what I noticed with my business shipments.
 
Then why did it start taking weeks to deliver what used to take 2-3 days? This is what I noticed with my business shipments.

Dunno about Minnesota, but here in the Northeast, mail volume more than tripled last fall. Nashua, NH postal distribution center had a Covid outbreak and workers stayed home, either sick or didn't want to catch it (they had that option). 3 weeks was a normal transit time for a letter to get through Nashua.
 
Maybe because a delivery truck can hold hundreds if not thousands of packages so that keeps a lot of car traffic off the roads. The trucks generally only drive very short distances between deliveries but those same items would require lots of driving cars to stores to pick them up. That's how it is more efficient to shop online and let someone else deliver your items.

Also, many of the packages that I get are delivered by the USPS and they were already stopping at my house.
I'm certain that a UPS truck uses less fuel to go from my next door neighbors house to my house that it would take me to drive to town and pick up the same items.


All those individual deliveries must be creating an epic trash pile of cardboard and plastic. Seems like banning plastic shopping bags and straws is kinda hypocritical when the same localities welcome Amazon with open arms.
 
When AOL stopped distributing their free CDs, nationwide plastic use dropped 96% and everyone thought we were in the clear.

*Citation needed
 
I tried dropping off a bunch of mixed household recyclables at a Raleigh-area trash center yesterday. They no longer accept glass bottles except as landfill material. WTF?
 
I tried dropping off a bunch of mixed household recyclables at a Raleigh-area trash center yesterday. They no longer accept glass bottles except as landfill material. WTF?

A number of years ago many local municipalities started charging extra recycling fees for such things as a recycle bin or mandatory use of bags that were supplied for an extra fee.

As it turned out, most all of the recyclables were simply going into the land fill along with everything else. Another program that got started but really ceased to exist at the level it started out at.

But....Demands for scrap metals has led to scrappers patrolling the neighborhoods on trash day so that is the good news--two scrap yards on my way into the shop appear to be very busy.
 
Scrap metal is way up, out local places are actually paying sir steel now. Before you got nothing if it was under one ton.

As for local municipalities, our trash/water is private owned ;but the city owners over 50% of the shares......) they tossed a mandatory $18/month fee for recycling and now do curb side and depo drop off, then it gets all thrown in the same pile..... but it feeds the methane reactor so its now “green” and “ok”. The city used our taxes to pitch in 10million to install the damn methane generator... but we still get charged a fee for dropping of at the dump after my taxes paid for it. Gah. Then the redneck assholes all dump there trash in the damn ditch to avoid the $10 dumping fee. It’s absurd. Now the city has to pay even more for cleanup than if they would accept trash for free to feed the generator... oh, but the trash is a private company.....

Well that’s my municipality rant. Stay tuned text time, same bat time. Same bat channel.

Na na an nana!
 
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