Hacker News Reader

It's not clear to me from that link whether those savings apply to the whole supply chain or not.

So when they say stuff like... "Producing recycled paper requires about 60 percent of the energy used to make paper from virgin wood pulp."

... does that include costs of reasonably sustainable forestry vs. reasonably sustainable old paper separation & collection?

... does it include non-financial costs made by the end-users of the original paper?

... does it include implicit costs of potentially lower quality paper (or if that's ever the case, the values of higher-quality)?

... does it include the opportunity costs (probably small) of whatever else you might do with that old paper, such as sequester carbon or burn for energy?

... does it consider costs of energy (some joules are cheaper and less damaging than others; so e.g. it may be wood->paper factors run where energy is trivially cheap and simply haven't bothered to try and be energy-efficient)?

... does it consider non-energy resources?

Basically, it's not clear to me whether this is a technical argument about one of the important steps in the respective processes, or an overall assessment about the approaches going forward.

Most of the statistics are worded differently from that source, but according to the EPA, the energy used to make products with recycled materials is:

            paper: 40% less

    steel and tin: 60%-74% less

          plastic: 33% less

            glass: 30% less

         aluminum: 95% less

edit:formatting

Aluminium is the prime example of a material that's really worth recycling. Production of aluminium involves both high temperatures (950 to 980 degrees Celsius) and a rather large amount of electricity. Recycling just involves melting the aluminium down (The melting temperature is around 660 degrees Celsius).

>Production of aluminium involves both high temperatures (950 to 980 degrees Celsius) and a rather large amount of electricity.

It’s rare I see anyone have even the slightest bit of actual production knowledge in these climate-related topics, so I appreciate that.

You’re right about recycling aluminum. It’s also why a LOT of the new production work is done in Iceland with geothermal heat and nearly free electricity.

Unfortunately, it makes so much sense to produce aluminum in Iceland, that it’s shipped from China to Iceland and back again to do so... on crude tanker fuel at very low efficiency.

There's the in-home cost. My mother-in-law would run the cans and bottles through the dishwasher before putting them in the rcycle bin. The energy, hot water, soap constituted a catastrophic reversal of any possible gain from the recycling.

Just driving the truck around the neighborhood to pick up the bins is a cost in diesel, human resources (which translate to carbon at some level).

>My mother-in-law would run the cans and bottles through the dishwasher before putting them in the rcycle bin.

That seems to be the issue, not the recycling program.

> Just driving the truck around the neighborhood to pick up the bins is a cost in diesel, human resources (which translate to carbon at some level).

The same truck would still drive arround though if you didn't have recycling program, it will just be a black truck instead of a green one.

How many folks are derailing recycling out of a misconception of the issues involved? Most I would guess.

Not sure what black/green means. We have separate recycling pickup vehicles around here. They wouldn't run at all if there were no recycling.

But then your garbage truck (black) would have to pick up all the recycling that the green truck used to pick up. So unless your current black trucks are never full then you would either need more black trucks or they would need to make 2x the trips.

Not the previous poster, but it seems "black" represents garbage truck whilst "green" represents recycling.

The argument they were making is if your garbage weren't going to a recycling plant, it would be going to a landfill. Either way, the same amount of waste has to be transported from your home, so the same number of trucks would still be driving around.

Recycling is a trivial number of trucks. And far as I know, they don't crush the material. Also they keep it separate (paper/glass/metal) and the sections probably never fill evenly. So a pretty inefficient operation is my guess.

That may be with the recycling operation were you live, but everywhere I have lived it's been one bin type, one truck, dump the bin and go. The only time I have had to do more than separate paper from non-paper was back when I also had to hand-carry recyclables to a drop spot.

>That seems to be the issue, not the recycling program.

The recycling program requires the cans be clean, so someone, somewhere is washing them.

Efficiently, in huge washers. Not four or five bottles at a time in a consumer dishwasher.

In our household we wash our glass and metal packaging for recycling in the old-fashioned way, with water and suds in the sink alongside the rest of the post-dinner washing up. It's a lot quicker than a dishwasher, uses a lot less water and detergent, and quite relaxing and therapeutic in its own weird way. (Takes time out to shine halo)

It turns out that you're nearly always using less water, soap and electricity if you wash using a dishwasher rather than by hand.

https://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/built-in-dishwashe...

> The same truck would still drive arround though if you didn't have recycling program, it will just be a black truck instead of a green one.

It might not depending on the system in place. Many recycling programs require two truck routes to separately collect the trash and recycling. This doubles the amount of trucks and human labor but the trash load produced by each property stays the same.

In NYC there are separate routes and trucks to collect recycling. Saw the same thing in San Diego. One truck does the trash route, and some time later comes the recycling truck.

For us, the recycling only gets picked up every two weeks, so that will be 50% more driving, not double.

Also, if the garbage trucks fill up slower, there should be some reduction in trips to empty them.

In most of the UK now, recycling is collected more frequently than non-recycling. For us, non-recycling is only collected every 2 weeks, and the bin issued for it is half the size of the recycling bin.

Food waste is still collected weekly, and is sent to an anaerobic digestion plant.

On a related note:

I live in a city where trash collection rates are tied to how big of a trashcan you have. Along with recycling and compost collection programs, this is intended to deter people from overusing the landfill.

BUT, as a result of having a very small trashcan (to minimize my personal cost) I end up putting the can out every week if the can is even 1/4 full, as I occasionally have a heavy week due to an event or seasonal cleaning and I don't want to have garbage around the place for extra week(s). The desired effect on my waste habits, i.e. reducing the amount of landfill trash I ultimately produce, is negligible.

Therefore the garbage truck must stop at my house roughly twice as often as it would if there was no disincentive cost to having a large can. If enough other people in my city operate like I do, then we're running a significant amount of extra trucks and labor for virtually no benefit.

> using recycled materials more efficient by:

> ...

> - 5% for aluminum cans

I found this phrasing confusing. From the article you linked,

>> Aluminum can be recycled using less than 5 percent of the energy used to make the original product. (EPA)

I would say that's more efficient by 95%. (Thank you for providing the link!)

Well, if you're using less than 5% of energy, that means with the same amount of energy you can make 20x. So I'd say it's actually 1900% more efficient.

Yes, you are right! Each bullet point on their site tried to word it slightly differently so it was a little confusing. I messed up translating the aluminum one clearly. Thanks for pointing it out!

> first step realize that happiness is not automatically linked to consumption

I’ve always thought that framing the issue like this is both smug and dishonest.

Smug because you’re essentially saying that people are wrong about the things they believe bring them satisfaction and comfort.

Dishonest because reduce in this context will always mean a reduction in quality of life.

Aside from being an ineffective way to convince people of anything, it also seems counterproductive in the sense that it alienates people from caring about the issue.

This is a profoundly consumerist point of view, IMO. It presupposes that buying more stuff necessarily brings more satisfaction and comfort (which is not true in general once one's basic needs for security, food, shelter, and healthcare are met), and that having less stuff means "a reduction in quality of life" (also not true, having less stuff leads to an increase in quality of life for many people).

There are demonstrably a lot of unsatisfied, uncomfortable people who have a lot of stuff and whose quality of life is quite poor, all things considered.

This position erroneously presupposes that life satisfaction and quality of life are the same thing. Many people are satisfied with a lower quality of life, and are more than happy to invest tremendous effort into things that others may expect to be more convenient. But the point of view in the parent comment is essentially “if you do not derive satisfaction in life from the same things that I do, then you are wrong”, which is remarkably arrogant and closed minded.

Quality of life is a subjective issue [1], of which material possesion is just one amongst several dimensions. Therefore, it is perfectly possible for a person to improve their quality of life by consuming less: by the very definition of quality of life, it is enough for said person to feel that their quality of life improved as a result of consuming less for it to be true.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_life

Nearly all of the metrics used to track quality of life relate directly to consumption. Perhaps I would have been better to say ‘standard of living’, which exclusively measures consumption. But none of that changes my point, which is when you say ‘reduce’ in this context, you’re not being honest about what you’re reducing, and basically saying that the only correct way to derive satisfaction from life is the way that you do it (or at least the way you’re proposing it should be done).

How would you frame it?

People saying this are frequently those who would also admit that they were wrong about the things they believed to bring them satisfaction and comfort. From their own experience they know that it did not mean a reduction in quality of life for them. That doesn't mean it works that way for everyone, but it's not dishonest.

Well, honestly...

If you believe that the future of the world depends on reducing consumption, a presupposition which is not necessarily true, then you are asking people to reduce their quality of life. That’s not to say that people cannot be satisfied by a reduced quality of life, but asking people to sacrifice things that bring them comfort, convenience or satisfaction is by definition asking them to reduce their quality of life.

I'm not referring to asking people to sacrifice something, but to question assumptions around consumption which supposedly brings comfort, convenience or satisfaction. That doesn't mean all those assumptions are wrong, but that it's likely some of them are.

I don't know about smug, is more just a factual appraisal. People are very often wrong about the things they believe bring them satisfaction and comfort. That is clearly evident. This is also to be expected though, as we are all just making it up as we go along really.

As for reduction in the quality of life, you don't generally tell an obese person that their quality of life would improve if they could just eat more cake. Consumption and quality of life are not in a linear relationship.

I agree, I think a lot of the "reduce consumption or you are wasting your time/money/harming the environment" propaganda takes it too far.

I stated it the way I did to point out that happiness is not linked to consumption in the sense that more consumption does not always equate to more happiness. On the flip side, I was also not referring to a reduction of consumption to the point that it influences one's quality of life. Personally, over the last few months I've noticed some purchases I made in the past that I didn't need or didn't use enough to make it worth it, or where I could have used something I already had on-hand. I use that as a learning opportunity, to adjust my mindset into the future by creating a couple of simple guidelines before making semi-major purchases (did I sleep on it, did I do adequate research into pros/cons/alternatives without going crazy, etc).

Quite to the contrary of what you are saying, I find a reduction of purchases in this way will positively contribute to my quality of life, both in the present and in the future with increased savings rate and decreased clutter. I'd much rather live in a place where I wasn't looking at stuff I don't use and feeling bad about it. I think you falsely equated my statement and this idea about reduction with the millennial's definition of minimalism. That carries a smug connotation, I'm just talking about mindfulness that fits seamlessly into place with your current lifestyle. I even tried not to take a stance on the issue, and only stated that consumption is both the products you buy and the ways you go about doing things, not that anyone who consumes above X amount is evil.

That's weird. In my experience, products advertising "made using recycled materials" tend to be more expensive than without (with the exception of aluminum, which tends not to be advertised as recycled at all). Are there costs missing from your efficiency numbers?

>In my experience, products advertising "made using recycled materials" tend to be more expensive than without

That's not necessarily because of their higher cost to produce. It's often because they target higher end "environmentally conscious" customers, and use the "made with recycled materials" as a price differentiation / market segmentation strategy (working class Joe? get our $1 notebook. Latte-sipping hipster? Here's our $5 recycled notebook)...

You'd still expect recycled material to be used in preference to virgin materials for cheap products, if recycled material is actually more efficient.

This doesn't forbid using recycled materials for cheaps products, you just don't advertise it.

In an economic system, a product will be sold at the highest price possible, so if advertising it as using recycled materials nets you higher profit, than you will do that. So even if non-recycled is more expensive to produce, it will be cheaper if people are not willing to pay as much for it.

There a lot of cases of the exact same product being sold at different price tags under different names/brands.

In an economic system, a product tries to be sold at the highest price possible _for each potential buyer_, not as a whole.

I should have added “all else being equal”. In context of the question I was trying to answer this still holds.

And it happens all the time. But no need to brand it especially, and kill the lucrative recycled lines by associating recycled with el-cheapo...

This only looks at energy consumed during production, not at (long term) availability of raw materials. It seems reasonable to assume that long term the cost of energy and recyclables will go down and that of non-renewables such as oils and ores will go up.

We better worry about running out of aluminum. After all, it's only the third most abundant element in the Earth's crust. /s