The degree to which not screwing up the environment has become partisan for some people is really quite depressing.
Recycling is something the oil companies came up with to whitewash their image, and justify single use plastics, it doesn’t work, has never worked and it’s hard to see how it would work. This is the real “Inconvenient Truth.”
If you really wanna “do your part to fight climate change,” you’re better off trying to live like someone out of 1890 before plastics was a thing, and people repaired/patched 100x before even considering replacements. You’ll have less time for arguing with idiots like me online but you’ll be much happier and actually be making a positive contribution.
> Recycling is something the oil companies came up with to whitewash their image, and justify single use plastics, it doesn’t work, has never worked and it’s hard to see how it would work.
No, it's because he's an idiot whose brain is turned to mush from obsessing about culture war politics.
The plastic recycling history is vaguely interesting for some plastics and completely irrelevant for glass and metals which are profitably recycled due to the economics of recycling them vs. creating them from scratch.
In any case, the local waste plant recycles what they can and then burns the rest for energy so I'll let them make the call on what's profitable to process.
All fired silicon materials are more stable when they have been fired at least twice. If you make ceramics, you save all your failures to make grog, which is basically ceramic sand or dust. Mixed in with fresh clay it reduced the expansion ratio and the internal stresses.
Bottles with recycled material are more sturdy than those without. I don’t know how the process of bringing a bottle plant online works, but if it doesn’t include either buying grog from a supplier or feeding all the glass from the test runs into a hopper I would be very surprised.
I have never heard a physicist explain this phenomenon, but if you crush something it tends to break along the weakest points, so crushed silicon has selected out many of the weakest grains and left the strongest ones. Then either they continue to grow or they just increase the ratio of strong to weak.
Plastics like PET and HDPE are recyclable but sorting recyclable materials from non-recyclable ones is costly which meant a lot of recycling does end up as waste.
We need to start penalizing manufacturers and retailers for single-use plastics. Laws like those passed in Maine banned most single-use plastic bags and mandates that anyone offering them must also provide recycling a drop off bin.
Consumers mostly do not have a choice about how their products are packaged so the onus must be shifted onto retailers and manufacturers who make those decisions.
Things such as refillable water bottles are simple examples of this as well.
Of course MAGA country is a laggard so this will probably take another 5-10 years to become adopted after it becomes the norm in the left cities->suburbs>rural.
The plastics era is slowly ending and being replaced by ideas that used to work fine.
Perfect example of an unnecessary vile comment.
Most rural people already reuse and repurpose many things, they don’t have trash pick every week if at all and like to have a clean area for their children and grandchildren. It’s in their blood to find innovative ways to use something again in a different way. Your hate is coming from somewhere gross and you should consider some introspection on why you have so much of it in your heart.
It was necessary to me, thats why I made it. Whether or not you consider it necessary has no bearing on me. Just downvote and move on.
>Most rural people already reuse and repurpose many things, they don’t have trash pick every week if at all and like to have a clean area for their children and grandchildren.
I think you are not descriptive enough when it comes to the term rural. I specifically said MAGA country. That does not encompass all of rural.
And to be clear, my point with "left cities->suburbs>rural" was to indicate that the concept of "stores that sell refills" as a concept is still a niche idea (in the US). It will begin in the cities and then once it becomes the norm there, it will expand to the suburbs and eventually become the norm in rural as well.
You saw this same concept in the adoption curve of many things such as electricity, internet access and well, even single use plastics (The rural areas were the last to ditch the milk man)
Again, this comment is filled with vitriol and hostility. This is not a healthy way to live, I strongly encourage you to seek outside council on how to process these destructive feelings.
In fact some cities offset the price of trash service with the money from recycling. Which is part of the impetus to fine people for not separating. You’re costing the city money.
There's also a few good ones for moving away from ICEs: (1) I'd rather make things out of oil/plastic than just burn it up (2) national sovereignty and (3) resilience in case of war or disaster.
Relatedly, I don't think I've every heard an environmentalist use these points. Any idea what that is?
Stop arguing with abstract concepts, benefits for society, and dishonest framing (people are really allergic to anything they perceive as being lied to). Show the immediate, direct, tangible benefits they get.
So what does that leave us? Cult deprogramming techniques? Lithium in the water?
Show me the techniques that work, and I'll do it. I've studied and tried them all.
Meanwhile, I've given up. Absolutely refuse to talk news or politics with friends and relations. Not even with people I agree with.
Now I just practice radical empathy.
I fear the only way to win is to not play.
They might be less stubborn if you were less condescending and spent more time actually trying to come up with good arguments to convince them. pretty clear that being arrogant never changes anyone's mind. inclined to believe that you don't actually care about convincing, just judging
Another relative, after one of the recent shootings, said there was nothing we can do about gun violence. I immediately named off a few modest proposals that don't involve mass registration or confiscation, and he immediately said "yeah those don't sound bad".
Both my parents were conservatives for a long time, but were not angry, bitter, finger-pointing people about it until they had a traumatic event happen, AND a black Democrat became president, AND they got access to high speed internet and Fox News in the same year - 2008.
Now they watch four+ hours of Fox propaganda per day, my mother more because she goes onto bona-fide hate and misinformation sites and prints out articles on how Ukraine is the hub for US bioweapons labs and World Order money laundering because Ukraine is literally the most corrupt government in the world. With bylines of made up names, whose biographies are empty when you click the hyperlink. But that is more trustworthy than the Wall Street Journal, or the New York Times, or gasp NPR.
I've had experience in these conversations. I know that the approach is to get them talking about what matters to them first, and find common ground. Believe me, I'm not "doing it wrong".
Doing it, even doing it correctly, is exhausting, full stop.
Straws and plastic bags in developed countries with working waste disposal systems are another example. Each time someone pulls a half-dissolved paper straw out of their drink, you've just made a person that is less willing to support environmental measures.
Happens with other topics, like transgender treatment for kids.
Some people just hate change and being told how they should live.
They keep advocating for things that won't really help the environment - or actively hurt it. As long as those things pass some kind of "purity test".
For example:
Being against nuclear power.
Plastic straw ban (the replacements are way worse for the environment).
Banning natural gas in homes (using electricity for your stove, water heater and dryer has greater emissions).
Plastic bags vs others types - study after study has shown this helps litter, but is worse in every other possible way.
Recycling plastic rather than burning it. Burning it is better for the environment, but "sounds bad".
Burning plastic isn’t better for the environment than recycling. It is better than landfill, assuming you're using the heat to displace fossil fuels though.
You can check out the waste hierarchy on wikipedia if you care about being well informed about stuff:
Go read a study on the energy and water costs of recycling plastic. But I'll give you a quick summary:
Plastic has two energy components. The energy embodied in it because it's flammable, and the energy to manufacture it.
It takes more energy to recycle plastic, than it does to manufacture it. So why do people want to recycle it? Because they want to recover the energy embodied in it!
But if you burn it, you get that energy back, AND you got to use the plastic for some productive purpose. And since recycling it takes more energy than manufacturing it new, burning plastic is always better than recycling it.
Different countries, different methodologies, different assumptions but recycling being better than burning which is in turn better than landfill across a range of environmental impacts is fairly consistent.
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/10/5340/pdf
> Overall, this review found that for all the studies which aiming to compare waste treatment technologies, mechanical recycling comes out as the environmentally preferable option in most cases
Hopefully this:
> And once people do find out how badly they have been mislead they tend to have a backlash and turn completely against anything an environmentalists suggests.
also applies to you finding out that you've been lied to by people who have a vested interest in generating exactly that backlash against environmentalist.
> Similar discretion is needed while comparing the results obtained for the WTE [waste to energy] option by the four studies. It is known that the incineration process emits greenhouse gases, but it also generates thermal energy and electricity which can be used as an alternative to fossil fuel consumption. However, the results indicate that overall, the WTE option contributes adversely towards the global warming problem, with all high positive impact values between 50% and 100%. However, all four studies indicated a negative impact value for AP, indicating that the incineration process is advantageous in reducing the impact of acidification, making it the second most environmentally friendly method of disposal, and suitable for disposal of the residues discarded by the MRF process.
The key point being, if you can get your heat or electricity from a non-fossil source, then it's preferable to do so. Because releasing CO2 into the atmosphere is bad for climate change.
But luckily for WTE, the are other aspects that make landfill even worse. Still not as good as recycling, just like all those environmentalists have been saying, correctly, for years. How boringly non-contrarian of them.
That would imply they somehow manage to emit double the CO2 that the plastic actually contains. Or they burn it and don't capture any energy at all, so there is no substitution taking place.
And the negative GWP for recycling? That's impossible. Recycling something does not remove CO2 from the air - rather it costs CO2 to do the recycling. I suspect they are subtracting the embodied energy of the plastic to get that figure, which is dishonest.
Sorry, but this "study" is worthless. But it's an excellent example of the sorry state of environmentalism.
That seems unlikely.
I've never even seen this specific meta review before, I just knew that's what they all said and grabbed the first link I found to a recent one. Feel free to check others, they will all broadly agree because this is fairly boring stuff.
This is why I started this thread with "Because environmentalists have a truly terrible track record.". And this is also why so many people are so distrustful of what "experts" say about this topic.
Environmental research is so dependent on assumptions it's basically impossible to do it honestly. Usually an author will have a goal in mind, then write a paper to reach that goal, and he'll have no trouble doing so - just change an assumption here or there, and you'll be successful.
If you want a way to cut through the nonsense just follow the money: Resources cost money, the method that is cheapest, to a rough approximation, is the one that uses the fewest resources.
Nuclear power should be obvious.
Plastic straws take FAR FAR FAR less energy than metal ones - don't forget the hot water to wash the metal one. Paper straws are usually coated with stuff, the paper takes more energy that plastic, and the coating doesn't break down - so you don't even get the compost.
So long as we are burning natural gas for energy, it's better to use it directly in your home, vs have someone else burn it, make electricity, then use that.
Plastic bags are good for litter, but you would have to use reusable ones hundreds of times, and never wash them - ever, for them to be better. Not to mention people reuse around half of them for garbage bags, so if you ban them, people still need to buy them.
Only if you're using resistive heating. Heat pumps run on natural-gas-produced electricity can be at least as efficient as direct natural gas combustion for heating, and they automatically transition to cleaner sources of energy as the grid does.
> you would have to use reusable ones hundreds of times, and never wash them - ever, for them to be better
I understand that this is the case for cotton bags, IIRC due to high water use in cotton production, but for other types of reusable bags the threshold is lower.
> people reuse around half of them for garbage bags
This estimate seems like it's significantly too high. I do most of my grocery shopping at places that don't provide free plastic bags, and yet I still end up with far more single-use plastic bags than I could ever use for garbage. I would guess that no more than 10% of single-use bags actually get reused for trash.
Your oven also uses resistive heat. Induction can work well, but is underpowered if you are cooking more than 3 or 4 things at once (especially if you also use the oven). You need around double the electric service most homes run to the range (there is no standardized plug for it).
Induction is only a replacement for causal cooks, people who make full course large meals will not be happy with it.
>>but I specifically mentioned hot water and dryer.
I've never in my life have seen a dryer that runs on gas. Is this a thing?
>> Heat pump do not work well for those applications
What's wrong with heat pump dryers? They are awesome, as long as you aren't putting them in an unheated space like a garage. They use much less energy than condenser dryers and considerably less than vented ones, while being pretty quick.
Nearly everyone has gas furnaces here in MN since it’s significantly cheaper to heat with natural gas in the US, and it gets very cold here.
> like(yet again) another US only problem
I don't think Europeans realize how they sound when they say stuff like that. Especially when your stove would be considered low end in the US.
A good stove is around 5 kW, and each burner is 2.5kW = 15kW to run everything at once - basically double the service you have. Unless you want to wire the range and stove separately (which might be an option).
> I've never in my life have seen a dryer that runs on gas. Is this a thing?
Obviously it's a thing, otherwise why would I say it? Is this a European thing not to have them?
Gas dryers cost a bit more to buy (15% more maybe), but much much less to operate (half to be exact). If you have gas service in your home and you buy your own appliances you'll almost always pick that.
> What's wrong with heat pump dryers?
They are very expensive, and save about half the electricity - but gas dryers also save about half the energy, so there's no point in going for the heat pump.
Even if you have no gas service, they cost around double a non heat pump, and it would take 10 years to recoup the money. It's not worth it - all you are doing is generating emissions in the dryer factory instead of your house.
Environmentally the gas dryer is better, at least as long as we still burn gas to generate electricity.
And don't forget the heat pump dryer takes much longer to dry clothing - at least for my house the dryer is always the bottleneck for laundry, I would never buy one that takes longer!
There are similar problems around wind/solar, which tend to just be green washing natural gas peaker plants, many of which aren't even combined cycle. So the easy back of the envelope here is, that if your not getting ~50% of your power from a nuke its likely that burning the gas in your house is more CO2 friendly (the places with lots of hydro also have nukes, so 1rst order approximation).
And the plastic bag thing, is again feel good because those bags both have a very short time to degrade (despite all the environmentalist misleading people into thinking they last decades, which is true when they are buried in a landfill, but that isn't the case they then talk about which is finding them in the open environment where UV destroys them in a few months to a couple years).
The plastic drink bottles though? Those are much more robust, but just about no one banned them in favor of recreating the commercial bottle washing systems we had before and that exist in mexico/etc. But again, one had to be very careful about total system costs, which is how we get back to nukes. We have to shift the energy curve away from CO2 sources, and the only way to really do that is to find a significantly more energy dense mechanism. And we have one, which is somewhere in the ballpark of 7 million times as dense per Kg and instead of arguing about the CO2 being emitted to move or manufacture things, we could basically zero it out with 40 year old technology and likely gain another order of magnitude of efficiency if we built energy systems with modern technology that actually burnt the entire fuel load rather than calling it "waste".
Most environmentalist are just as uninformed as the climate deniers, which is why we are stuck.
PS: once you start to understand much of the above you can also see how premium electric cars can frequently be worse for the climate than econobox gas. The numerical systemwide advantage isn't so overwhelming to wipe out the disadvantages in places that get a lot of power from coal.
Emitting a bit more carbon now is worth it if we can significantly reduce emissions long term