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Comment by KennyBlanken | Hacker News Reader

To save everyone a lot of time: he finds that a sintered bronze bearing has worn and allowed metal-on-metal contact elsewhere in the unit. He theorizes it's the oil, which he demonstrates is very thin at room temperature. Which is meaningless - film strength doesn't have to be high if there isn't high pressure between sliding surfaces.

The claim that fridges from the 40s and 50s were very efficient is nonsense. Even a 10-20 year old fridge is very inefficient compared to a modern fridge. It's as easy as looking at energy star ratings.

> When it becomes a problem, it goes to the dump where all the foamed-together plastic parts will not be feasible to separate nor recycle.

It's never been economical / feasible to manually take apart an appliance for recycling. They're shredded and the plastic/metal chunks separated mechanically for the raw materials.

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> They're shredded and the plastic/metal chunks separated mechanically for the raw materials.

The plastics recycling industry is over 90% fraud, just like the carbon credits market.

There are thousands of cases of Australian garbage turning up in indonesia with trash bags marked with the name of the local authority responsible for managing it. Plastic from UK is either burned in Poland to power cement production, or is sorted in Turkey and send to the third world to kill children and sea turtles.

I throw plastic in the trash to make sure it never leaves the country, but stays here and goes into landfill and doesn't hurt anyone. And to make sure the true cost of disposing of it is paid.

>The plastics recycling industry is over 90% fraud [...]

>Plastic from UK is [...] sorted in Turkey and send to the third world to kill children and sea turtles.

So in other words, they're sending recycling to third world countries to be sorted because the cost of labor is cheaper, and those countries have bad waste management practices so the unrecyclable materials end up in rivers or whatever. I guess this counts as fraud if you think that putting something in recycling means that it'll definitely be reused somehow. Many people might even legitimately hold this belief. However, if you do a little bit of thinking you know this is an impossible goal/strawman. For one, people frequently miscategorize their recycling, which means things that can't be recycled end up in recycling. Obviously those won't be reused. Also, no recycling technology is perfect, and there's bound to be something that gets up too degraded/contaminated to be properly recycled. Meanwhile, I'm not aware of any active efforts to portray recycling as some sort of 100% perfect waste remediation, so I'm not sure where the fraud angle is from. It's a case of mismatched consumer expectations at best.

> because the cost of labor is cheaper, and those countries have bad waste management practices...

If you are running any kind of business, say house insulation, you take money to fully insulate a house, don't insulate 90% of the house, and then attempt to mislead the customer into thinking the job is done, you have commited fraud or embezzlement.

If these companies are paid to recycle but recycling is not happening, then someone has commited fraud. Also the contract does not say 'you can dump unresycleable stuff into the ocean' - they are suppose to dispose of it properly.

It is their job to audit their supply chains and to make sure the job is done. If I know from public sources that majority of plastic that goes to their contractors in Turkey are commiting fraud, then a company with an army of lawyers knows it too.

If they continue using contractors in knowledge that their contractors are fradulent, but are telling me that plastic is being recycled, they are defrauding me. When major western media publishes a video of masked armed men chasing their reporters in Indonesia for investigating 'recycling', it should be clear to anyone that this is massive organised crime.

You don't get to blame this on 'those countries' because our countries are not doing shit either. We created the problem and we outsourced it by contracting literal mafia in Indonesia. Your taxpayer dollars are used to pay mafia bosses and to bribe Indonesian officials, sponsoring corruption in 'those countries'.

This is not just my opinion, there have been multiple investigations and convictions for recycling fraud.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/brothers-sentenced-for-14...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recyc...

>If you are running any kind of business, say house insulation, you take money to fully insulate a house, don't insulate 90% of the house, and then attempt to mislead the customer into thinking the job is done, you have commited fraud or embezzlement.

Okay, but even in your example of insulating a house, there are areas that can't be insulated. For instance, it'll be insanely expensive to insulate the studs themselves, because they're load-bearing. A reasonable consumer would understand that you can't replace the entire surface of a house with insulation, just like a reasonable consumer would understand that not everything they put in recycling is going to be recycled.

>If these companies are paid to recycle but recycling is not happening, then someone has commited fraud. Also the contract does not say 'you can dump unresycleable stuff into the ocean' - they are suppose to dispose of it properly.

Without specifics it's hard to argue either way. I'm not aware of recycling contracts that stipulate x% must be recycled. Can you provide some references here? Here in the US counties/cities only does recycling as a money-making measure. If they market rate for recycled outputs drops too much, some jurisdictions end up landfilling the recycling.

>https://www.gov.uk/government/news/brothers-sentenced-for-14...

Looking at the story it seems like it's less "taking e-waste and dumping it in a river somewhere" and more "submitting fraudulent invoices".

>https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recyc...

>The exporters make millions by charging retailers and manufacturers a fluctuating tonnage rate for plastic waste recovery notes – currently £60 a tonne. Retailers buy these plastic export recovery notes – Perns – to satisfy the government they are contributing something to recycling plastic packaging waste.

This seems like an issue with a government program intended to curb plastic waste, rather than consumers being misled. Prior to your comment I wasn't even aware of the existence of such a program. That's not to say the fraudulent behavior is acceptable, but it's slightly different than what we were originally discussing which is consumers being somehow deceived that what they put in recycling actually ended up in a river somewhere.

> Okay, but even in your example of insulating a house, there are areas that can't be insulated.

Then thats what you have to tell that to the client, and the client is free to look for a different proffeshional if he is not happy.

However if you lie, and client thinks thay you have insulated things that are impossible to insulate, thats fraud. And that's happening.

> I'm not aware of recycling contracts that stipulate x% must be recycled

Think about, whats the point of a recycling contract that says 'you could recycle only 0.1% if you feel like it'?

> we were originally discussing ... consumers being somehow deceived

that happens too. I have taken my old electronic goods to a commercial recycler. You have to pay to dispose of large appliances.

Now I realise there is about 60% chance that they took out and sold the valuable copper, and the rest is sitting in a river somewhere, leaching heavy metals and poisonong children

>However if you lie, and client thinks thay you have insulated things that are impossible to insulate, thats fraud. And that's happening.

I agree fraud is happening in the UK, because the government specifically set up a market for recycling credits. However, I doubt consumers are thinking of that when they're chucking their appliances in the garbage bin. I myself were not aware of such a program, and unless such a program is widespread that example has limited applicability.

>Think about, whats the point of a recycling contract that says 'you could recycle only 0.1% if you feel like it'?

That's... basically how I treat most public recycling bins. They're some hopelessly contaminated with non-recyclables that I assume they're collected as trash. It's entirely unreasonable to expect that just because someone put something in the recycle bin, that the city would bend over backwards to ensure it's recycled. Again, I'm also not saying that there aren't people who actually believe that ("wishcycling" is a thing), but what I'm saying is that anyone who has given the topic a bit of thought would realize that:

1. not everything can be recycled

2. even something that could theoretically be recycled, can be contaminated so that it can't be recycled

3. recyclers are subject to economic constraints

4. therefore, it's entirely unreasonable to expect that everything that you throw in recycling ends up recycled

Applied to the original topic of appliances/electronics, this means that I expect they recycle the bits that are economically feasible to recycle, and toss the rest.

>that happens too. I have taken my old electronic goods to a commercial recycler. You have to pay to dispose of large appliances.

Right, but is the service you're paying for "getting rid of the electronics in a way that complies with local laws" or "getting rid of the electronics in a way that complies with local laws, and ensure that it gets properly recycled"?

> I expect they recycle the bits that are economically feasible to recycle, and toss the rest.

So last year I had a lot of old electronics, I spesifically looked for a recycler, not a landfill.

I spesifically asked if they can recycle the old motherboard before handing it over. If they said no, I would go to someone else. I was prepared to pay a reasonable fee.

Maybe there is someone in Uk that does actually recycle 95% of the motherboard and charges £2 for their service, but they can't get any business because of all the fraudsters that pretend to recycle for free and actually don't

There is no way to distinguish between the 0.001% recycler and 100% recycler.

> Okay, but even in your example of insulating a house, there are areas that can't be insulated. For instance, it'll be insanely expensive to insulate the studs themselves, because they're load-bearing

ignoring for a second that modern insulation is just blown onto whatever surface you want, and obviously doesn't affect load bearing properties,

the analogy is about doing 90% of your job and acting like you did 100% of it

even if you personally think that extra 10% is hard

even if you personally think that extra 10% shouldn't be your responsibility

you still have to do it for it to not be fraudulent

> Plastic from UK is either burned in Poland to power cement production'

It's basically burning fossil fuel. Too bad about the dioxins though.

Depends on which type of plastic. Burning anything halogenated is really bad, but e.g. polypropylene or polyethylene is comparable to natural gas in terms of emissions (CO2+H2O) because they contain only C and H.

Yeah but if you ask people no one thinks "burning it" would count as recycling, but it does.

And also, if anyone actually reads the page linked - just below his post you can see a reply from an appliance repair shop, stating that they repair about 1500 refrigerators a year, and they see maybe one compressor failure a year - further stating that modern compressors, even with their shitty design, are still the most reliable part that will outlast the rest of the applience by a mile.

And yeah, I agree with them actually - there's no way 1950s compressors had such low failure rates.

I do recall seeing an american ad for some oven brand from the 50s, where the leaflet advertised that an average consumer shouldn't expect to repair it more than 2-3 times in a 5 year period - and that was advertised as a selling point!

Old refrigerators may not be as efficient, but they were built better internally and last longer. The savings from an efficient refrigerator that only lasts a few years is meaningless.

He is not arguing old fridges were as efficient as modern ones, but the compressors. From what I know, most modern fridge efficiency usually boils down to better isolation.

Is compressor not evolved from 50s? Looks hard to believe. Isn't modern refrigerators use inverter compressor? I suspect that some other improvements exists.

compressors have only two simple characteristics, compression ratio and volume. A fridge doesn't require anything special and is essentially the same piece of metal since the 50's exept theres probaly alot less metal in modern ones.

Not true, if you can compress a real refrigerant slower you get better performance; modern control systems that can ramp up and down are significantly more efficient than older on-off styles.

It's too simplified while talking efficiency. Let's see how much A/C become efficient over decades.

Even a 10-20 year old fridge is very inefficient compared to a modern fridge. It's as easy as looking at energy star ratings.

Do you think the manufacturers aren't gaming those ratings either?

The energy efficiency of fridges over time has definitely not been monotonic either. The ones that use the most were the late 60s-80s models that sacrificed insulation thickness for more interior volume.

>Do you think the manufacturers aren't gaming those ratings either?

Oh cmon, you can't categorically dismiss an entire government program with an offhand comment like that. You need to at least provide some sort of evidence supporting your claim.

But I saw on your YouTube channel that.. do your research man...

The problem with many energy efficiency ratings, including Energy Star and that controversial California "ban gaming PCs" one, are that they are designed around "power consumed for a particular use case", where use case is defined as "watch TV for the household average number of hours per day", not normalized for whether the picture quality was great or poor. In the gaming PC case, there was a bureaucratic formula based on how many ports the computer had, and having lots of ports allowed you to use more energy because it was considered a "high expandability" computer, regardless of whether it was reasonable for the computer with empty extra ports and no different parts to use more power. And it focused almost exclusively on "turned off or standby" power, not power in use.

In the case of TVs, manufacturers game the numbers by rating efficiency "as shipped to the consumer at factory default settings." The manufacturer just sets the brightness to 20%, and throws a warning on the screen if the customer tries to change it, saying "the TV may use more energy". Of course, in the store, the TV is set to Store Mode, which means the brightness is often even higher than 100%, and the TV has a sticker about how efficient it is. Nobody would buy a TV that was dimmed permanently to the Eco Mode, but technically, you can "watch the very dim TV", so it counts.

This means that the composite "energy efficiency score" is not calculated with "output" or "work done" or "function realized" held constant. The text of the standards often does not define exactly the outcomes to be achieved.

Thus, it is entirely possible for a manufacturer to produce products with a degraded functionality in exchange for "better energy efficiency", regardless of whether worse functionality may cause the consumer to use the item for twice as long. (i.e. some government restricting the wattage of vacuum cleaners, which may cause vacuum cleaners to become less effective instead of more efficient, causing increased run time)

In the case of fridges, you might imagine how a manufacturer might skimp on "lasts long", "how much space the fridge takes compared to how much space is inside", and other things like this.

I thought early fridges did surprisingly well because they tended to be smaller and the frost-free mechanisms are wasteful on multiple levels (they're running a heater, and then probably have to run the cooler more to compensate)

You'd have to stick an ammeter on it, but I bet a 50s fridge is pretty efficient because they are manual defrost only. Most modern full-size fridges are auto defrost – essentially they suck down electricity to heat up the cooling system. The efficiency gains over a couple decades ago are due to moving from fixed, mechanical timers to computer controlled adaptive defrosters.

>I bet a 50s fridge is pretty efficient because they are manual defrost only

That doesn't seem like a fair comparison. It's like saying a bike is "pretty efficient" compared to an e-bike because it doesn't consume any energy (infinite efficiency!)

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