AirTags key to discovery of Houston's plastic recycling deception
appleinsider.com
appleinsider.com
Okay
At least with Lightning and Micro-B you knew the score.
The good USB-C stuff is great. The rest is worse than B ever was.
I also have some credit card payment hardware that is clearly USB-B and they just swapped the port.
The computer world seems fine. It’s everyone else.
If you keep it turned off for entire day to charge then sure.
The backlash is mystifying though. MacBooks, iPads, and Beats had been shipping with USB-C for years, a standard Apple was heavily involved in creating in the first place. Most other manufacturers had already standardized on it. Unless you lived in a very strange bubble of only interacting with iPhones and air pods, you already dealt with USB-C devices. For those very few people in that very limited bubble, the problem was fixed by replacing a single cable. It was a mountain of controversy for a figurative molehill.
Also the wording isn't clear, they might have meant the problem was how long they kept making lightning.
https://www.amazon.com/Lightning-Adapter-MacBook-Samsung-Mon...
I have a rat's nest of cables for almost any situation (as any accessory comes with a cable), but my daily drivers are just USB-C cables with adapters at the end.
Using a metal part, when plastic will do, just costs extra energy.
Obviously some things need to be metal for strength, I'm talking about when that's not necessary.
Citation sorely needed.
It removes waste, it's emits less CO2 than pull extra oil from the ground, and it's cheap. You don't get a triple win like this very often when it comes to the environment.
Copper is of course valuable enough that at times people have stolen copper wiring to sell it for recycling. I don't know whether that's a thing today.
At one point, printed circuit boards contained gold--used, as I understand it, to coat traces (sort of like wires) to prevent corrosion. Tiny amounts, of course, but apparently enough to warrant recycling. I actually knew someone who stripped the traces off of old boards and sold them. Again, I don't know whether that's still a thing.
You can scrap copper for anywhere between $1-$3/lb depending on quantity, quality, and location. Copper is commonly recycled.
Here's a Nucor steel plant video.[1] Good overview of the process. Note that this is a spherical video and you can change the camera angle to look around. Seven categories of steel junk go in and are mixed depending on the desired product. The video is a bit vague about how the continuous caster works - that's partly proprietary technology. This particular plant is a joint venture with Yamato, but Nucor has other totally-owned plants.
[I]n 2018, recycled material as a percentage of apparent supply of various metals, including aluminum, chromium, copper, iron and steel, lead, magnesium, nickel, tin, and titanium, ranged from a low of 22% for tin to a high of 75% for lead (table 1). in 2018, the United states recycled 58.6 million metric tons (Mt) of metals with a total value of $37.7 billion (excluding zinc, for which data were withheld to avoid disclosing company proprietary data in 2018).
2018 Minerals Yearbook: Recycling --- Metals (2018)
<https://pubs.usgs.gov/myb/vol1/2018/myb1-2018-recycling.pdf> (PDF)
[1] https://www.steel.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/AISI-and-SM...
[2] https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024-iron-steel...
[3] https://pubs.usgs.gov/myb/vol1/2018/myb1-2018-recycling.pdf
(I'm ... somewhat discounting the AISI data as more likely to be skewed industry-positive, that is, with a higher claimed recycling rate.)
I don't know how that wasn't a much bigger PR issue, but at least I would expect an apple-focused publication to not call them "industry leaders" in such context after that.
https://www.theverge.com/apple/2020/10/4/21499422/apple-sues...
Apple does not allow recyclers to refurbish their devices, even when they are still fully functioning, by its written contract with the recycling companies.
After it got public and traction, Apple seemed to have just dropped the lawsuit, which was suing for 30M in damages (for 100.000 devices that were being tracked while being shipped and refurbished).
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/07/apple-g...
[2] https://thelogic.co/news/exclusive/apple-sues-ontario-electr...
Of course the vast majority of plastic usage doesn't fall into this bucket but is more a matter of plastic having convenient properties while also being very cheap.
Huh? My country (the US) jumped on the environment bandwagon in the 1970s.
Is this a developing slang or have I just been under a rock and only noticed it now?
I can't say for certain about it's commonality online in written form though.
I learned the term "feigned surprise" from Recurse Center's social rules[1]. It's related to, but not exactly the same as, that well-known XKCD about "today's 10000", too[2].
It communicates disagreement and pushback to perceived aloofness.
Its archetypal form would be an academic making a Monty Python Witch Trial argument being refuted by an average Joe. You generally don't see it followed by a rigorous intellectual argument, because by its framing it's rejecting intellectualism. Put another way, it's a call to common sense. In reality, it tends to reflect an inchoate argument,.
50 million tons of e-waste yearly, https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/waste...
Apple sells 21.9 million units/year: https://www.statista.com/topics/10435/apple-mac/
Large distances are covered with tiny steps.
Recycling those is probably far more valuable than recycling plastic, pound per pound. We just make so much plastic.
Recycling plastic more than once is basically impossible. It's also not a free process, as grinding up plastic creates micro particles that pollute our air and rivers.
The question is whether there's any material that's cheap, malleable and mass produced enough to replace plastic.
I throw mine away now because that's the only way I can make sure it doesn't get shipped to Asia and dumped into the ocean.
I'm not saying it's that easy, but sigh: it's a start.
That reduces much of the emissions and congestion of shipping as well.
Local means you grow food in places not really suitable for it, so you need extra energy to make that happen. Would like you like to grow tomatoes in a heated greenhouse, or out in the open?
Local is also smaller quantity, so instead of huge efficiencies you need small individual shipments. This increases congestion.
Local has some advantages in terms of community, but environmentally speaking? It's 100% bad.
On a global scale, the huge (emissions) efficiency of loading a single enormous shipment of produce is only true on the receiving end, a number of farms far away all ran their own small deliveries to a depot for shipping at the start of the chain. There is no magic turbo-carrot-farm that harvests the world’s supply in one go.
Plastic per se isn't the problem, lack of reuse is, and that's a problem of not having to account for externalities.
If it weren't for marketing then we could refill simple reusable packets.
Plastic beer bottles it seems are not as popular as glass and the world drinks a lot of beer. Are there advantages to glass for beer?
This matters less for water or sugar water, but even Pepsi cares about the thickness of plastic used for something it knows will be drunk within a few months of production.
Sooner or later someone is bound to crack the code on plastic recycling — enzymes or gm bacteria or whatever, or even just throwing it all back down empty oil wells. I think separating all this crap in the meantime is perfectly cromulent.
Instead people are told there is a solution for recycling. They feel like the problem of plastic waste is solved. So they don’t make any efforts to reduce or reuse their waste.
There's not really anything in the way of grass-roots waste reduction that scales. I'm not really offered a choice between product and product-without-plastic. My trash is filled every week with all manner of plastic I didn't ask for. I would be over the moon if I could go to the grocery store and all the plastic was aluminum, paper, and glass— (bonus if I could return the containers) but that decision is made by the bean counters.
I'd throw whatever little weight I had behind legislation to make it so but at least at the state level it would never pass. The single-use plastic bag ban was met with a reaction at the same level as if the people for it killed everyone's dog.
Eventually, when decommissioned the area gets covered with dirt.
How is that kinda solved, do you mean like "I don't live near a landfill so I assume that air full of microplastics isn't the air I'm breathing and that water isn't the water I consume"? That sort of solved? Because beyond that I ain't seeing it.
The microplastics in your air and water probably aren't coming from landfills, in fact the solution to that is very likely to be more landfills. Those plastics come from coastal countries lacking good waste management who dump plastic into rivers and oceans, and the solution is painfully boring— municipal waste management.
Since most of the trash is burned in Switzerland to produce electricity and municipal heat it doesn't make sense to recycle other plastics.
IMO a bigger focus should be on the additives in plastics and types of plastic that don't burn clean or can't be captured easily instead of banning straws etc.
Other issues such a one time use vapes which end up in the trash containing non removable batteries should be banned before laws like requiring plastic bottle caps being permanently attached.
I’m missing the logic here. Wouldn’t burning less trash and recycling more plastic make sense at some level?
The likelihood of a straw in Switzerland landing in the ocean is practically zero so for example banning them would make little sense when the alternative paper straws had to be imported requiring more CO2 overall.
You wrote in essence, “it’s no point recycling plastic because we burn it” – that just does not make sense to me. It’s like saying ”there’s no point braking because we’re driving into a wall anyway”.
Now you’re talking about the fact that paper straw produce more CO2 than plastic straws overall (production, import, etc…) and hence plastic straw don’t need to be banned – which I actually also disagree with but that’s not my question.
My question is, why does burning trash means you don’t have to recycle plastic?
By burning the plastic you eliminate the problem that it causes. You also gain some energy back from it. If you can recycle plastic easily like PET then that is a good alternative but most plastics are difficult to sort and recycle.
Reduce is the only way forward. Throw it in the trash if you have it.
And they'd take it to Asia and dump it in the ocean on the way.
There's nothing wrong with plastic in a landfill.
I have seen subsequently, and considered briefly running after, many plastic bags in the streets blowing towards the storm runoff system.
And plastic in a landfill tends to degrade over a very long period of time, into substances that seem to have a tendency towards contaminating water tables and ecosystems.
“Recycling” on the other hand is a code word for shipping stuff on a slow boat to China, and is actually much worse for the environment.
Houston is in Harris county…
More effective solutions are focussed on avoiding plastics as much as we can. One of the biggest areas to win is looking at the packaging of products.
What's wrong with plastic recycling: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HNWn885qWtU&pp=ygUgcGxhc3RpYyB...
The plastic recycling numbers in the EU: https://circulareconomy.europa.eu/platform/sites/default/fil...
There was an article similar here on HN where plastics meant to be recycled end up in very odd places. It’s basically sold for pennies and transported to different places where it’s finally just stockpiled as garbage. Strange business of how it changes hands.
Plastic bags vs reusable bags. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental...
"Most will be melted and turned into fuel that is burned, adding to carbon emissions."
That should say "reducing carbon emissions", not adding. Burning plastic for energy is a net reduction in CO2 emission.
Transforming plastic into fuel is more efficient than obtaining new fossil fuel. It actually reduces emissions compared to using net new fossil fuels.
Still, transforming plastic into fuel is not an emissions reduction compared to renewable energy sources.
That's not to say burying plastic is a good thing. It's obviously better to not have used single-use plastic in the first place.
And? Is that news to anyway? Your earlier point is the correct one: In a world where hydrocarbons are burned for energy, burning plastic the best possible way to deal with plastic.
Once we transition to a different world we can do something else, but until then we should burn plastic.
Not sure I understand that math. You have plastic. You burn it. That is a net increase in atmospheric CO2.
The other option is you bury it, which sounds horrible, but at least doesn't increase atmospheric CO2.
The problem is you're going to say that instead of burning the plastic, we burn something else. But maybe we don't do that, either?
Explain what you mean by that? I mean, out here in the real world, we are burning things for energy.
Are you talking about some theoretic magical world that doesn't exist?
Because in the real world burning plastic for energy reduces CO2 emissions.
Compared to what? Over what period? Consider this at the extremes. Instead of investing in any photovoltaic, 100% of PV demand should be shifted to burning landfilled plastics. Would you argue that makes sense?
Do you only work in extremes? Either 100% plastic, or 100% pv?
There is fuel that was pulled out of the ground, we can use it, or we can spend even more energy to pull even more fuel out of the ground and then burn that.
Which is better?
Saying "let's burn the plastic" without a plan to stop creating single use plastic creates a backdoor reason and economy to keep using plastic for everything.
> without a plan to stop creating single use plastic
Not to mention this is not something that will ever happen. No one is planning for this because it's a bad idea.
Plastics REDUCE CO2 emissions compared to the alternatives. Unless your alternatives are everyone not eat and not do anything, and just sit at home.
A tiny example: Wrapping an English Cucumber in plastic dramatically increases its life. Or you could not do that, but then we'll need to grow 3 to 10 times as many of them, and/or ship them by air to every store.
So what do you choose? The single use plastic? Or the alternative that consumes dramatically more resources, and emits far more CO2?
Compared to not burning it.
> Over what period?
I don't know what you mean by period. If you mean period of effect, then indefinitely, since the CO2 sticks around, I guess?
If you mean period of burning, then at least as long as there's direct fossil fuel plants for it to compete with.
> Consider this at the extremes. Instead of investing in any photovoltaic
Who suggested a reduction in investment in anything?
I could also say that if we burned plastic for energy instead of... running hospitals, that would also be bad. Does your comparison make more sense than mine?
I don't think your scenario is even possible, numbers-wise.
This is a monstrously insane statement.
I am looking at a piece of plastic. Let's say it's a plastic bag. Other than the (considerable!) emissions that came from its mining, manufacture and shipping, it has zero CO2 emissions.
I now set fire to it. I'm, uh, seeing a fair bit of smoke come off it. I'm thinking there might possibly be some emissions happening there.
It also smells really acrid, and I'm getting these weird premonitions of winding up in a cancer ward suddenly.
You burn plastic instead of oil, and if you burn it properly it has zero toxic emissions.
In the net, you have reduced CO2 emissions, because now you don't need to pull extra oil out of the ground - you instead burn the oil in your hand.
> This is a monstrously insane statement.
I suppose if your plan is to hold plastic bags in your hand and burn them. Of course that's not the actual suggestion you were replying to - so you basically made up a scenario, then criticized it.
Yes, that's a good plan - don't do the thing that no one was suggesting anyone do.
According to [1], the gCO2e/kWh for the relevant energy sources are: Coal 850g Natural gas 385g Plastic incineration 512g
According to [2], in the US in 2023, 43.1% of electricity was from natural gas and 16.2% from coal. Based on that, the average fossil fuel kWh resulted in 512 gCO2e.
So, if you substitute the average fossil fuel with burning plastic, there is NO net improvement in CO2 emissions per kWh. Against just natural gas, burning plastic actually produces 33% more gCO2e.
I think the above approach is the correct way to evaluate this. Basically, to get your kWh from nonrenewable sources, you are still burning something and have to choose one thing or another to be burned. Choosing plastic allows you to defer burning your fossil fuel (or, in other words, gives you more total fuel to burn), but it doesn’t help climate change efforts.
[1] https://www.clientearth.org/media/1h2nalrh/greenhouse-gas-an... (page 29) [2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
It's actually quite a high amount! With plastic you get that for free.
However, plastic sure isn’t free in that regard! 8-10% of petroleum (which is pulled out of the ground, with increasing effort each year) is used to produce plastics. I’d put good odds on extraction and transportation CO2 costs for petroleum exceeding those for LNG - no good guess on coal. That also doesn’t account for your energy costs in moving the post-consumer plastic around.
Plus, natural gas has significantly lower emissions than plastic to begin with.
Obviously, which others touched on, it’s better to displace burning fossil fuels and plastics (arguably fossil fuel too) with renewables —- an effort that continues to accelerate.
The point is that it's free once it gets to the recycling stage. You could just dump the plastic in a landfill, or you can use it for energy.
Basically the efficiency comes from using the plastic twice, but paying for it only once.
> Plus, natural gas has significantly lower emissions than plastic to begin with.
Well the question is this then: Are we burning any oil at all for electricity? If zero oil in the entire US, then you can make this point. Until then, lets replace that oil with plastic.
As for your renewable comment, this is intended as something to do today, to at least help. Over time it won't be needed, and that's fine, but let's work on today.
Yes, all this "plastics bad chemicals bad" eco-virtue-signaling is stupid. This idiotic paranoia is more destructive to society than anything else. Keeping the masses scared is how they will continue to maintain control.
Yes, plastic is everywhere.
So what? So is water and air.
I don't give a shit.
Reconsider complaining about the things that lead to your existence.
There's exactly no evidence to assume anyone will have a reason to dig up and use our plastics in the future. Imagining a hypothetical reason someone would want to do this is unproductive and drives people to make decisions based entirely on a fiction that their waste might be useful to future generations. In fact, we already know that plastics degrade and break down: unlike metals and glass (which can already be productively reused and recycled) plastic becomes less useful with time.
"History of Oil: Regions and Uses of Petroleum in the Classical and Medieval Periods" (2020)
<https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-3...>
What limited wider application were largely limits to how rapidly it could be extracted, which waited for drilling methods first developed in China for salt mining thousands of years ago, before being adapted by Galacian and American oil prospectors in the 19th century, and far more importantly, transportation, first in barrels on barges, then on railroad cars (requiring iron and steel for locomotives, cars, and of course rails themselves), and pipelines (requiring high-quality steel and manufacturing processes), virtually all of which required industrial-age technologies.
This is actually true of fossil fuels generally: coal was first used proximate to natural occurrence, then in Britain where the proximity to coastlines and waterways meant that it could be shipped large distances, and natural gas required pipelines, pressurised storage facilities, and cryogenics. Even today, natural gas remains difficult to store and transport in bulk without ready access to pipelines.
In the US, despite abundant coal reserves, fuelwood served the bulk of energy needs until the development of Bessemer-process steel permitted not only railroads, but railroads whose rails could handle the weight and forces of heavily-laden coal gondolas, in the 1880s. Locally-sourced, locally-transported wood was far more practical, and overwhelmingly abundant (despite being harvested at rates exceeding replacement).
Meanwhile, alternatives for fuel, medical, and other uses were generally available, mostly through plant- and animal-based fats and oils: olive oil (from which petroleum oil received its name), wood and charcoal rather than rock coal, and animal fats used in skin treatments and candles. These could be locally sourced near population centres and rather than in the remote and often hostile regions in which fossil fuels were found.
The ancients were well aware of fossil fuels, they simply couldn't make ample use of them without numerous other complementary technologies.
1. We've forgotten about fossil fuels
2. Fossil fuels are a desirable source of energy in the future
3. Plastics buried in landfills will decompose into oil
4. There won't be more plentiful sources of oil, such as wells that weren't depleted in the present, or unrefined biomass that decomposed into more useable crude oil