Dixie cups became the breakout startup of the 1918 pandemic
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
In the short term I'd say it makes sense to me, but long term I really hope we find other solutions.
Gasoline weighs ~6 pounds a gallon. How many pounds of plastic does a moderately conscientious person place into waste streams in a month? How many miles do they drive?
I can't be certain about what happens to plastic I recycle (but it's sorted and marketed, so I think it ends up in products that use recycled plastics).
When I say it is sorted and marketed, I mean they bale up plastic by type and sell the bales. There's some possibility that the bales, which are 99% the same material, are then shipped to China and sorted for value, but not really.
And keep in mind, for most materials, and especially plastic, the recycling center pays for someone to take the material. Metals used to be a big exception, and could be used to offset the cost of recycling the other materials, but even they have greatly decreased in extractable value recently.
And even bales like you describe might need to be re-sorted for cleanliness, color, type of contaminate, or anything else. Most municipal programs are not producing "ready-to-recycle" bundles of plastic, unless it's being used solely as a filler.
With that in mind, dumping the stuff of lower value in Asia makes sense, where people can pick out individual things of value, or things that might have value after getting washed in the local river.
I've seen the baling done.
I know the person that markets their output. The recycling center gets paid for the output. If they don't get paid for something, it goes in the landfill they are located at.
Recyclable? No. The recycled plastic bag market has collapsed. The price of recycled plastic bags has dropped significantly. For many municipalities (ie: handled by "Waste Management" company), the company has decided that cleaning out plastic bags from conveyor belts is more costly than the price of recycled plastic.
Something that can survive being washed with hand soap for example should be more than good enough for most people in terms of sanitation.
(Source: I've washed dishes in 5+ commercial kitchens, though not a pizza parlor. But I've seen these machines and setups in several pizza places.)
I don't know about the "recycled soapy water" bit. All the systems I've seen use fresh water on each use. The cost of dishwashing is trivia for a restaurant compared to the refrigeration systems, so I would be somewhat surprised if there was a collection tank, plumbing and valving to recirculate water from. That seems like it would occupy a lot of room and cost a pretty penny. Have you actually seen such a set-up?
> Dishes in your home are gross in comparison
Ah, yes and no. Hot soapy water is definitely effective. But the commercial systems are meant to sanitize, not clean. There are frequently things stuck to the dishes (lettuce comes to mind) that a) don't come off in water cycles, and b) may not get hot enough, long enough to kill everything to the deep surface of the lettuce, gunk, whatever.
By comparison, the dishes at home may not get to as high a temperature but you personally have the opportunity to inspect the dish before you re-use it. In a restaurant, the food is prepped to plate or serving dish before it comes to you.
In either case, I would anticipate most any swabs of the dishes would fail to grow on culture. In fact, in some commercial kitchens, like hospitals, we do environmental cultures. So this is a fairly known thing, at least as far as the design performance of the sanitization machines go. So, gross, stuck-on lettuce, yes. Sterile, yes. If your local deli isn't using the machine as intended, not much I can say about that.
Here's an example of the kind of machine I'm talking about: https://www.hobartcorp.com/products/commercial-dishwashers/d...
It has a tank at the bottom, for the wash water. As fresh water comes in for sanitizing, some of the wash water goes down the drain -- 3/4 gal/cycle, per the brochure. We would drain the tank at the end of each day, and fill fresh in the morning.
> So, gross, stuck-on lettuce, yes. Sterile, yes.
The rule we were taught was: when it comes out of the machine, if it looks clean, it is clean. Which is to say, if there was still lettuce or other things on a dish you needed to spray them off and run it through again (and do a better job spraying before loading).
> Inside the dish machine, recycled soapy water blasts them for maybe 40 seconds, and then they are sanitized with extremely hot fresh water for maybe 20 seconds.
These two steps were a pipeline in the setup. The recycled soapy water was one "station". You pull down on a lever, and it goes up a bit later. You slide the tray to the right, pull a 2nd lever (for the 2nd station) for the very hot fresh water.
I don't know what temperature the "hot water" was, but by touch I'd describe it as "burning hot". Lots of steam, and the plates basically dried off by themselves in just minutes because it was so hot.
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Honestly, commercial dishwashing systems are significantly superior to the home stuff. If anything, my time as a professional dishwasher (as limited as it was) taught me that commercial systems care far more about sanitation than home systems.
On the other hand, washing things is always resource and energy intensive. Making dishwashers better would likely make it more environmentally friendly to use disposables than wash reusables.
180F, generally.
I was talking in context of the coronavirus, specifically plastics that are used to avoid contact with the virus. Obviously they exist, I am being hopeful that they become used.
> Furthermore, if you’ve seen how dishwashing works in your
> average pizza place, you probably wouldn’t want to put
> your lips on a multi-use plastic cup pandemic or not.
Right, but most things people are single-using are not things that touch their lips. It's going to be masks, bags, gloves, etc. If designed correctly, these can easily be multi-use.
In terms of cups, I actually quite like Germany's process of standardized glass bottles. I think glass in general is also easier to clean and worst case can be melted and re-formed.
The problem is upstream.
Why haven’t they invented good biodegradeable plastics yet?
It’s not like there is a plastics lobby telling everyone not to switch to biodegradeable plastics like there is with smart guns because of the NJ law...
Just the simplicity seemed ideal
It's not even tech, it's just off the shelf junk that any shop can buy for an extra $5 over a manual dispenser.
I despise the hand operated ones now. Same with mechanical faucets in a public bathroom. I don’t want to turn it off once my hands are clean...
It's weird to see automatic soap dispensers but manual "hand pump" paper towel dispensers.
Throw a battery in it, hell, just throw a chip in it.
In most cases (Most cases) analog Trumps digital.
It’s quite common here. Also interesting to watch the market dynamics at play as the price has steadily come down and everyone is copying it.
That being said, that would be only sanitary if you were wearing a shoe with a closed toe.
Not affiliated with the company, but definitely a fan of the product.
The difference between feet and hands is that hands frequently touch mucous membranes, where feet don't. So if you can move a contaminating activity from the hands to the feet this easily reduces infections by an order of magnitude for that vector.
Motorway service stations in the UK don't have doors on the entrance to the restroom just to the stalls. Same in many airports around the world.
Ok, smaller facilities might need doors but quite a few really don't.
https://www.nfpa.org/Assets/files/AboutTheCodes/101/101_FAQs... (PDF link)
The very first sentence of the paragraph in your link's section on this subject mentions these exceptions.
https://www.dezeen.com/2020/04/27/handle-hacks-hands-free-do...
I prefer to use the soles of my shoes frankly - and if I prefer it I suspect most others would hence increasing the likelihood of use and so efficacy of the solution.
And yes, latency physically can't be good enough if users are on different continents. So, interestingly enough, this future synchronous communication tech can have some de-globalization impact.
Cancel culture is real, and a bit of real progress might be happening too, but judging it simply based on twitter is like judging anything based on what the most abrasive drunks throw at each other in pubs.
[0] the big problem of twitter and FB is that really anyone can talk to anyone, just comment whatever their completely unsolicited opinion happens to be. there's no moderation. there are likes, but there's no downvote. at least on reddit each community can set and try to keep their norms. and HN has dang :)
[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-unnatural-hi...
It references the Dixie doll company, "dixies" (ten dollar bills in Louisiana whose origin comes from "dix"), and "Ice Cream Dixies."
If you disagree, you can provide a direct quote.
It's a bit tenuous, but it doesn't seem any less tenuous than the association between the "master" branch on git with the subjugation of slavic people.
This is worth a read: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/06/what-dix...
Are you confusing them with Dixie Crystals?
Anyway, I wish people paid attention to the corporate practices and ownership behind brand names.
Spoiler alert: Dixie cups are a subsidiary of Koch Industries (via Georgia Pacific).
https://www.dailycitizen.news/news/lifestyles/town-crier-dix...
https://images.app.goo.gl/rbZRdCejSCa8MHuK8
For reference here is a painting uses the same archetypes that the dolls reference: https://images.app.goo.gl/E1twLvbmKW4YHNen8
So the cups may be just some good paper cups, but really no way out of where that name comes from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie
EDIT for those on a downvoting spree: I don't mean that the above meaning of Dixie is the origin of the Dixie Cup name, just that that's what I thought the original poster was referring to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_cup#Dixie_cups
As an American, Dixie cups are dixie cups :) I know, that's no answer but that was my intent, I do not think we use the term everyday and prefer to say paper cups, but if someone said "dixie cups" I would not be surprised, just like in some other places you could "xerox" a document instead of "photocopying" it.
Don't know how long off the boat they were, but often misspellings in UK surnames arise across generations in records. I guess because the family themselves are totally illiterate.
Also, IIUC on immigration to USA officials would record your surname on your papers and that became _the_ spelling, so that might also explain it?
Probably about a third of the people I meet pronounce my name wrong. It's a bit tiresome, but I wager if my name was Llywelyn it would be even worse.
The assumption that Americans anglicized their names did so by accident because they were illiterate is just silly. I'm sure that happened sometimes, but loads of people anglicized their names deliberately in an attempt to conform with local expectations. One of my great-great-grandfathers, a literate German speaking immigrant to America, changed his name from Müller to Miller. Why? Well I can't ask him, but probably because it was the thing to do. This sort of thing was very common particularly during that time period. The later means the same thing, sounds about the same, but crucially would be more familiar to anglophone Americans. And Müller is comparably easy.
(To be clear, my last name is not Miller; I have an non-anglicized but reasonably common Italian surname.)
My guess would be people not reading user names and assuming I'm the person who originally brought up the name.
Dixie cups are usually referred to the smaller water cooler cups, solo cups are usually the bigger ones used for beer and soft drinks.