[HN Gopher] Amazon packages burn in India, final stop in broken ...
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon packages burn in India, final stop in broken recycling
system
Author : haltingproblem
Score : 150 points
Date : 2022-12-27 17:31 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| treis wrote:
| I think it's become apparent that the whole recycling concept is
| misguided. There's just not enough economic value in these
| materials to justify the socialized cost. It's better to dump the
| waste into proper landfills.
|
| Ultimately environmental impact is mostly about CO2 release these
| days. We're not running out of most of these raw materials. And
| for the one big one we are (oil) having it end up buried in a
| landfill is about the best realistic option we have today.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah I recycle glass, cardboard, metal, and "high quality"
| clean plastic (mostly bottles). Bags, wrappers, envelopes, food
| containers, any sort of foam, and other similar
| packaging/padding material goes to the landfill.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| We're not close to running out of oil yet, although saudi
| arabia is.
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| Do you have any source for that claim?
| hnlmorg wrote:
| The environmental impact of plastics not degrading isn't
| something to be ignored just because CO2 emissions are also an
| immediate concern.
|
| What we should be doing is shifting away from plastics and
| towards using materials that are biodegradable.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| It really depends on the specific material. Recycling aluminum
| gives _huge_ energy savings, something like 95% reduction in
| energy, because refining bauxite is a bitch. Bottle-to-bottle
| PET recycling also works, but most other forms of plastic
| recycling are a farce.
| treis wrote:
| Sure, but consumers use tiny amounts of metal that can be
| recycled. A can a day is like 10 pounds a year or about $4
| worth of scrap. It borders on pointless and certainly is with
| the associated negatives of the way recycling is done today.
|
| So yeah if you want to collect all your metal scrap for a
| year and bring it to the local yard then yeah that's a net
| positive. But skipping a single plane trip is probably worth
| an entire lifetime of recycling.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| According to wikipedia, the amount of aluminum cans
| recycled is actually substantial:
|
| > _Recycling scrap aluminium requires only 5% of the energy
| used to make new aluminium from the raw ore.[4] For this
| reason, approximately 36% of all aluminium produced in the
| United States comes from old recycled scrap.[5] Used
| beverage containers are the largest component of processed
| aluminum scrap, and most of it is manufactured back into
| aluminium cans.[6]_
|
| This seems to line up with the fact that you can actually
| get paid for aluminum cans, the metal used aluminum cans
| are made of has enough value that it actually makes
| economic sense to pay people to recycle them.
| treis wrote:
| Looks like that goes to a dead cite but I can find
| similar numbers from the aluminum trade organization.
| They don't have an actual methodology that I can see but
| it's probably safe to assume they're cherry picking
| numbers. The most likely way is that they're comparing
| energy used in ore at the factory vs scrap at the
| factory. That will heavily favor scrap because it
| excludes all the energy taken to transport it.
|
| >This seems to line up with the fact that you can
| actually get paid for aluminum cans, the metal used
| aluminum cans are made of has enough value that it
| actually makes economic sense to pay people to recycle
| them.
|
| It's not economically viable to send trucks to pick up
| people's recycling like most cities do. As an example, my
| city charged $120 per residence to do that.
|
| You've got to account for everything that goes into the
| typical single stream recycling we do. The emissions of
| the trucks, the sorting plants, and the cost to pay
| people to do this. I've not see an analysis that tracks
| the carbon emissions of all these to see if it outweighs
| what we get from recycling. But looking at the dollar
| flow it seems basically impossible that it's a net
| positive. You just can't charge $120 a year to haul away
| $30 of scrap (or less) and end up with a carbon savings.
| kibwen wrote:
| Don't be so quick to throw the entire concept of recycling in
| the bin (so to speak). Plastic recycling may be a scam, but
| _metal_ recycling is simultaneously economical, effective, and
| better for the environment than extracting new metals. Steel,
| copper, and aluminum are all successfully recycled in _vast_
| quantities; the majority of the metal we produce these days was
| recycled rather than fresh-from-the-ore.
| tehjoker wrote:
| This is not correct at all. Environmental scientists are
| developing a more sophisticated framework to describe the safe
| operating envelope for humans and it includes plastic and novel
| entities.
|
| https://ikhapp.org/stories-and-research-brief/defining-the-r...
| treis wrote:
| This is a poor low effort post that does not directly address
| anything I've said.
| Scalene2 wrote:
| So, in my city, there's a warehouse, they buy Amazon returns and
| surplus in bulk, every week on the same day, they fill shallow
| elevated bins ideal for picking through with the items. Day 1
| everything is $25 an item, the price reduces each day until
| everything is $1 on day 7. It is a great low cost (it's actually
| profitable), probably profitable enough that if Amazon ran these
| themselves they could pay to process all the waste in an eco
| friendly way and not lose money.
| polar8 wrote:
| Very cool, where is that?
| malfist wrote:
| Lots of places take Amazon returns and do something similar.
| There's an auction house near me that regularly auctions
| pallets of returns from amazon. A relative of mine used to
| run a store where she'd buy those pallets and repair the
| items and resale them. Usually most things are returned work
| fine, or are missing something you could get from lowes.
|
| Amazon doesn't test a lot of their returns and they get sent
| out like that.
|
| Bargain Hunt's business model is entirely reselling amazon
| returns.
| sargun wrote:
| Where is this?
| disqard wrote:
| Does anyone here have any experience with Ridwell? They claim to
| collect and recycle hard-to-recycle materials, like the bags
| potato chips come in.
| daxfohl wrote:
| My partner signed us up. I'm skeptical. My understanding is
| they don't really know what to do with it but are trying
| various things. So not recycling per se, but using the scraps
| for other purposes, similar to how shredded tires can be used
| in playgrounds. I haven't heard anything great yet coming out
| of it though; there's simply not much you can do with bits of
| plastic that you can't do better and cheaper with something
| else, and the supply is always going to grossly outweigh any
| demand. My guess is it's just an expensive roundabout way to
| get to a landfill. I hope I'm wrong.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Interesting that plastic bottles that get accidentally shipped to
| India are still worth extracting and recycling.
|
| > unmasked waste pickers sifted for metal cans or intact plastic
| bottles that could be sold
|
| The plastic they burn is envelopes made of soft plastic that have
| been incorrectly sorted by the recycling process and bundled with
| paper that they do actually want.
| hyperpape wrote:
| The idea that we'll get Americans to properly dispose of plastic
| is not credible to me, without some kind of cultural shift that I
| don't expect (I'm aware that some other countries, perhaps
| Germany and Japan, are much more diligent about how you dispose
| of household waste).
|
| I've observed a number of people who haven't seemed to
| internalize the current rules about what can be recycled. People
| especially want to think that thin plastic bags can go in the
| recycling with everything else. I don't think people are going to
| move away from single-stream recycling, which appears to be a big
| part of the problem.
| wmf wrote:
| The "proper" way to dispose of plastic is in the trash. We just
| need to admit this and get the message out.
| hyperpape wrote:
| I'm not completely sure, but I don't think that's true for
| plastic bottles. Maybe it's the best approach because it's
| simpler and people can adhere to it, but I think _if_ you
| could get people to follow the rules, recycling bottles and
| throwing away thin plastic would be better.
| [deleted]
| patja wrote:
| Most telling is the person in the article with some experience
| working in the recycling industry who was ignorant of the fact
| that her curbside recycling program does not accept the blue
| and white Amazon mailers, nor did she know that the paper
| shipping label must be removed (often an impossible task
| without solvents or a lot of time and patience) prior to drop
| off at the supermarket collection bin.
| MockObject wrote:
| I was a dutiful recycler until links here on HN taught me that
| plastic thrown in the main garbage stream would end up safely
| in a landfill, but 20% of recycled plastic ends up in the
| ocean!
| ars wrote:
| > but 20% of recycled plastic ends up in the ocean!
|
| I'm virtually certain that's not even close to true. I
| remember reading a study that pretended like that was the
| number, but looking closer the "study" was basically "let's
| make up numbers, and extrapolate them", and they didn't
| collect _any_ actual data.
| MockObject wrote:
| Is this the reporting you're criticizing?
|
| "Want to save the oceans? Stop recycling plastic
|
| "If you put your plastic in your recycling bin, there's a
| decent chance it will end up in the seas off east Asia. If
| you put it in landfill, it's going nowhere"
|
| https://inews.co.uk/opinion/landfill-better-recycled-
| plastic...
| ars wrote:
| That article isn't terrible, but it links to https://www.
| sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092134492... which
| essentially calculated that since x% of trash in a
| country goes to the ocean, then a similar % of recycled
| material that that country receives also goes to the
| ocean. (It's not the study I read, but it makes the same
| error.)
|
| This is a false connection. Countries pay money for
| recycling, they are not going to turn around and dump
| that valuable material in the ocean.
|
| Contrary to what many people think, recycling producers
| do NOT pay poor countries to accept plastic, it's the
| other way around.
| marze wrote:
| Plastic doesn't recycle, at a practical scale. I like the idea of
| developing garbage burning plants with superb emission control,
| and burning it all locally.
|
| As well as reducing plastic usage in low value applications. It
| is sad, all the plastic litter in the world.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Plastic doesn't recycle, at a practical scale.
|
| An waste industry buddy of mine designs landfills, and this is
| his take too. It's better to throw your plastic into regular
| trash (and other recyclables into the recycle bin), because
| then you at least know it's likely to end up in a landfill
| where it's safe, instead of being exported and dumped in the
| sea.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The landfill is also functionally carbon sequestration.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Landfills are a large source of GHG emissions, especially
| in the long term.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Most modern landfills have power stations that burn off
| these gases for electricity or heat for local
| consumption.
|
| The ones that don't can be GHG emitters, but that just
| means there are less emissions somewhere else (where
| trash was collected from), because you just concentrated
| a bunch of matter in one place. It's not a significant
| _net_ emitter.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Stable plastics probably don't account for much of that.
| The methane gas comes from food waste/etc rotting.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| That's why I mentioned long term, as you expand the time
| horizon you consider it over, landfill for plastics gets
| worse as it starts to decompose compared with
| incinerating with energy recovery or recycling.
| mjevans wrote:
| Which is why it pains me so much that my municipality
| doesn't include (at least a household food scrap sized)
| compost bin with standard garbage service. They only
| offer a giant and expensive yard-waste bin.
| convivialdingo wrote:
| Waste-to-energy plants have been utilized for a couple of
| decades in Sweden. There's several new plants in the USA.
|
| I think it's more likely that regulated and aggregated
| pollution management will be at least somewhat successful.
| These plants will buy up vast sums of waste that would
| otherwise often get into the environment and oceans. Honestly
| with good air scrubbing it could replace many of our coal
| plants with better air quality outcomes.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| HN is busy telling me over and over again that power from
| coal and natural gas is dirty and cannot feasibly be filtered
| to be clean, so the only way to go is nuclear, which doesn't
| have any problems at all. How come we can burn plastic of all
| things in a clean way?
| malfist wrote:
| Your comment has excessive hyperbole and isn't constructive
| to discourse.
|
| Even pro nuclear folks will recognize that it has drawbacks
| and needs to be managed carefully. They believe that those
| drawbacks are less than that of fossil fuels and that
| nuclear can be ramped up faster than renewables.
| govg wrote:
| As the other person points out, with power there are
| alternatives that are basically 1:1 (electricity is
| fungible for the most part). With plastic, we do not have
| readily available replacements for every kind out there,
| and if we burn them in controlled, concentrated points,
| then (hopefully) we can scrub and filter the air at the
| point of emissions.
| selectodude wrote:
| We can't. But plastic has very few good replacements. Coal
| and natgas have excellent replacements.
| altairprime wrote:
| Does Amazon declare the financial and legal risks of
| externalizing the disposal costs of their plastic- and styrofoam-
| based (and cardboard!) packaging onto municipal recycling and
| waste processing?
|
| For example: what would it cost Amazon if they were charged a
| recycling fee for all single-use packaging by the state
| California?
| ars wrote:
| > For example: what would it cost Amazon if they were charged a
| recycling fee for all single-use packaging by the state
| California?
|
| The bigger question is what would it cost the planet. For
| Amazon to collect and recycle the packages, rather than the
| local municipality, would _enormously_ increase the amount of
| emissions created.
|
| You would be making things much much much worse.
| altairprime wrote:
| For Amazon to be forced to charge to the customer a small fee
| for each package shipped, modeled after the electronics
| recycling fee that California requires to be charged and
| disclosed at time of purchase, would create a financial risk
| to their revenue stream, by forcing Amazon to charge
| customers a fee for every different box and bag used -- not
| to mention compelling customers to use the "reduce number of
| boxes" option by default, which forces Amazon to absorb the
| consolidation cost previous externalized by cheap shipping
| from multiple depots back into their logistics chain. Given
| only this one example, do those risks reach the levels of
| potential impact necessary to compel its disclosure in public
| filings? Are there other examples?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| They already are in some jurisdictions.
|
| It doesn't actually cost them much per item, but in aggregate
| they'll foist the cost onto consumers where they are allowed.
| altairprime wrote:
| Is this fee widespread and becoming moreso, or is it merely
| buried in the taxes for five counties out of five hundred
| thousand? Is it a financial risk to Amazon that consumers
| would rebel against being charged fees per bag/box?
| whatshisface wrote:
| I can declare it for them: $0. The garbage collection people
| take the trash from Amazon's customers, rather than Amazon.
| fullsend wrote:
| Probably crippling for them. The scale of materials they use
| must be astronomical and their retail business has thin
| margins.
| satya71 wrote:
| > There was no doubt in her mind: Smyla had put that envelope
| into her recycling bin. "That's polyethelene, and I'd recycle
| that. If it's got the recycling symbol on it, into the bin it
| goes," she says. "I get a lot of Amazon packages, and they all go
| into the bin, too."
|
| This thanks to Big Oil.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...
| downrightmike wrote:
| And Big Plastic, consumer recycling was never designed to
| effectively recycle, it was designed to effectively get people
| to buy more plastic.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > If it's got the recycling symbol on it, into the bin it goes
|
| I wonder if she actually means the resin identification code
| (RIC) and is confusing that with a recycling symbol. (Edit to
| add: as in "this is recyclable in your particular blue bin")
| LarryMullins wrote:
| It's an easy mistake for people to make. Even identifying
| something as "polyethylene" is ambiguous. If it's
| _polyethylene terephthalate_ (PET) or _" high-density
| polyethylene"_ (HDPE) then it is very likely recyclable. But
| if it's _" low-density polyethylene"_ (plastic bags) then in
| principle it is recyclable but likely isn't through normal
| curbside pickup.
| burkaman wrote:
| She's not confused, the RIC literally is the recycling symbol
| by any useful definition of the word "symbol". The plastic
| industry intentionally adopted it in order to lie to their
| customers.
|
| Another example of a symbol is a stop sign. When you see a
| stop sign with a slightly different color or font than you're
| used to, you (correctly) think "that's a stop sign, I should
| slow to a stop before proceeding". You don't think "that
| orange octagon that says STOP isn't the exact vector image
| that I saw in the textbook, so it could mean anything and I
| will just ignore it".
|
| It's like if I bought fat-free milk that actually had fat in
| it, and the company said "oh you must have been confused,
| Fat-Free(tm) is our line of products for those who feel
| liberated to consume as much fat as they want".
| sokoloff wrote:
| It is a recycling symbol for sure. It doesn't mean "so put
| this in your blue bin" because your blue bin processing is
| probably not set up to separate all the different resins.
| burkaman wrote:
| I know, but I'm saying it does mean that. The plastic
| manufacturer is attempting to communicate "you can put
| this in the blue bin". You are understanding the message
| correctly, and it's not your fault that the message is a
| lie.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The plastics manufacturer can't possibly control or even
| know the details of your local waste management system.
| They're telling you what the item is made of. Whether
| your specific municipality has invested enough to recycle
| that material is not knowable to them.
| disqard wrote:
| You are correct. That RIC is a good way to know whether
| your local waste management system can accept the item.
|
| GP is also correct, in that this RIC could have been a
| number surrounded by (say) a circle, a square, or a
| pentagon -- but instead, the manufacturers of plastic
| deliberately chose a triangle, *because it looks very
| much like the official "this is recyclable" symbol* as a
| calculated tactic to rely on people being misled by this
| similarity.
|
| If most people understood how little of their plastic is
| actually recyclable, they might re-examine what they buy,
| and how often.
| [deleted]
| plorg wrote:
| If she's identifying it as polyethylene it's a good bet she's
| actually looking at the RIC. That said, I don't see a lot of
| plastics that have a recycling symbol and not have a RIC. I'm
| sure it depends on where you live and what products you
| consume, so I wouldn't necessarily assume that her experience
| was the same.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I put glass, paper and metal into recycle.
|
| I throw all plastics into the garbage bin - this is because I
| don't believe in plastic recycling.
| ENOTTY wrote:
| > Laurie Smyla, a 73-year-old retiree from Sloatsburg, New York
| [...] Smyla has a degree in environmental science and even served
| as coordinator for the local recycling program in the late 1980s,
| as she explains when reached by phone. She was able to quickly
| identify the envelope as polyethylene, the most common type of
| plastic.
|
| I gotta wonder, how many people did the reporters have to contact
| before finding the perfect subject to put a human angle on this
| part of the story. Kudos to them for doing the legwork
| ars wrote:
| This headline is the definition of clickbait. And the entire
| article is clickbait too.
|
| Article has nothing to do with Amazon it's about recycling.
|
| And they're not burning packages they are burning a small amount
| of plastic contamination mixed into paper recycling.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| If you reread the article you'll find that this is not about
| burning a small amount of plastic contamination.
|
| > India may be bringing in as much as 500,000 tons of plastic
| waste hidden within paper shipments annually, according to a
| government environmental body that estimated the level of
| contamination at 5%.
| ars wrote:
| I did read the article, and I consider 5% a small amount.
|
| The plastic is being burned for energy, which is the best way
| to handle plastic.
|
| The only real issue this article raised is the poor quality
| incinerators, that don't do a good enough job of burning the
| plastic. I call this article click bait because they spend
| way way too long on utterly irrelevant stuff, and the only
| important part is 2 sentences.
| oftenwrong wrote:
| If we cannot find a way to dispose of plastic without damaging
| people and the environment, perhaps we should stop producing it.
| lebski88 wrote:
| One of the interesting things I found in this article is that I
| had no idea what the plastic amazon pouches they kept talking
| about actually were. Here in the UK amazon ship everything in
| recycled cardboard. Presumably that's from either environmental
| pressure of government legislation. Even the tape is paper.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I've been seeing ideas like this a lot lately and I really
| don't like them. If something that's been in widespread use for
| decades is bad for the environment, come up with a better
| alternative _first_ , and only then stop producing the old
| thing.
| oftenwrong wrote:
| Would you say the same if your home was coated in black
| plastic soot? Why should we hold course after mere decades of
| turning a blind eye toward the consequences of our lifestyle?
| Plastic pollution was not a problem for millennia. You come
| up with a better alternative _to that_.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| And bring the global economy to an instant standstill? No
| government is going to enact such a policy, no matter how
| environmentally friendly its politicians are; certainly not the
| ones running countries that produce plastic stuff.
| tehjoker wrote:
| It would be nice to have an earth that supports human life
| for more than one or two more lifetimes.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I assure you even if we were to continue in our current
| trajectory the Earth would support human life for more than
| two lifetimes.
|
| This is not to say that we shouldn't stop wasting, but
| let's not exaggerate. That being said the Earth definitely
| will become less comfortable if we don't put a pin on some
| of this stuff.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Of course. But that doesn't change the fact that stopping
| the production of plastic crap within a few years is not an
| option beyond the hypothetical realm. Nor is convincing the
| majority of people to stop buying all that crap simply on
| the basis of a moral plea. Pricing in externalities might
| work eventually (and will take a few decades to realize at
| any significant scale).
| forinti wrote:
| We should at the very least stop producing and transporting
| around the globe useless items such as a plastic tree
| imported from China I saw on sale in Brazil.
|
| A plastic tree in Brazil that came all the way from China!
| It's surreal.
| mikeweiss wrote:
| It's past time for state and local government to require large
| online retailers such as Amazon to provide a means of collecting
| shipping materials for recycling and reuse... This segment of our
| economy badly needs some gov regulation... For the sake of the
| planet
| treis wrote:
| Amazon handling recycling is not going to have any fewer
| problems than local governments doing it. The problem,
| ultimately, is that there's no way to responsibly extract value
| from recycling this sort of stuff. The choice is burying it or
| selling it to someone who will irresponsibly extract the value.
| mikeweiss wrote:
| Or Amazon could... Ya know.. collect their packaging and ...
| I dunno ..reuse it!
| treis wrote:
| Or ya know you could like address the point.
| ars wrote:
| There is a way, that's the point of the entire article. They
| put it in the recycling.
|
| If you are suggesting shipping the stuff back to Amazon, you
| should think about that a bit more - the amount of energy
| you'll use to ship it is an order of magnitude more than the
| amount you'll save.
|
| You would be harming the planet in order to make it seem like
| you did a good thing.
| rendang wrote:
| For at least some types of retail products, it seems like a
| system of standardized, reusable containers could be workable
| - the same Amazon, UPS, USPS delivery vans that bring a
| constant stream of packages to my apartment building could
| collect and return them without much additional energy
| expenditure.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| A Dutch newspaper wrote a depressing article1 two years ago in a
| similar vain about plastic from the Netherlands ending up in
| Turkiye for 'recycling'. The same story, just different
| countries.
|
| There are a lot of actors pushing for municipalities to collect
| plastic separately (like paper and glass), but stories like these
| make you wonder if that even makes sense at this point.
|
| 1: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/10/16/plastic-afval-hoe-
| een-n...
| atonse wrote:
| Yeah this is what's bothering about these articles (common at
| least in American journalism) that condescendingly talk about
| issues in third world countries that are as bad in the US.
|
| Not that we shouldn't identify these things. But the issue is
| often not quite related to the country, but a larger issue.
|
| As others have pointed out, for whatever reason, plastic is
| difficult to recycle and through deception, we've been sold the
| idea that it can be recycled.
|
| The most promising stuff I've seen is waste to energy
| (basically, burn the stuff). As long as we can effectively
| capture the emitted toxins from burning the plastic, then it
| seems like a pretty good system. And some countries have
| already been doing this.
| sjellen wrote:
| In what is about to become the year 2023, the most effective way
| of recycling is to limit your purchases altogether. Some day go
| through your Amazon purchase history for the last decade and see
| how much absolute garbage purchases you made.
|
| Resist buying stuff you don't really need. Can you repurpose an
| item? Then turn to the recycling industry and maybe it will find
| a way back.
|
| Resist > Reuse > Recycle
| sandgiant wrote:
| We live in a community of ~100 people. We have a room full of
| other people's left over things that we can take (or add to)
| for free. 90% of the gifts and clothes for our, and other
| people's children, we source from that room. We are able to
| give away a lot more and higher quality stuff than if we would
| have to buy it and the kids are just as happy.
|
| It's incredible how much stuff is produced just to be thrown
| away. But I guess it keeps the wheels turning? I often wonder
| wether this is the best system there is. Something tells me
| it's not.
| mlboss wrote:
| To add on this, there is a "Buy Nothing" group. There is also
| a active Facebook groups dedicated to local communities.
| https://buynothingproject.org
| bloudermilk wrote:
| Can you share more about your community?
| LarryMullins wrote:
| I've always understood "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" to be applied
| _in that order_. But commercial consumption propaganda of
| course emphasizes recycling and de-emphasizes reduction and
| reuse. Emphasizing recycling encourages guilt-free consumption
| which is good for profit.
|
| See also, resin code marks which incorporate the recycling
| symbol, used on plastics which _aren 't_ recyclable:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code#Tabl...
| antisthenes wrote:
| > Some day go through your Amazon purchase history for the last
| decade and see how much absolute garbage purchases you made.
|
| Uuuh, none? I've gone through 2 years and it was literally
| either a consumable (dog treats) or some kind of hardware tool
| that I still have and will last me a lifetime.
| kodyo wrote:
| Thank you for the data point. From this we can extrapolate
| that there is no problem.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Extrapolating your snide remark, I can surmise that you
| have no problems in life whatsoever. Congratulations.
| bmacho wrote:
| I don't really buy many things as well.
|
| I have no idea how many things you buy, the average, or
| what is the general opinion about it. Everyone buys a lot
| of stuff, I guess? Everyone saying that everyone buys a lot
| of stuff?
|
| Nevertheless your comment accusing me (and some similar
| comments) is annoying, probably it annoys GP too for the
| same reason.
|
| Is accusing the general reader that useful? Is it even
| _true_?
| moistly wrote:
| > Nevertheless your comment accusing me
|
| Narcissism much? When the comment doesn't apply to you,
| it isn't directed at you.
| baeaz wrote:
| If can dismiss what he said because it's one data point
| then we can dismiss the original argument altogether.
| jeltz wrote:
| Yeah, there is very little garbage in my purchase history.
| Anecdotally it seems like a minority of the people do the
| bulk of all garbage purchases. I have one friend for example
| with ADHD who does a ton of impulsive shopping.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| Slightly tangential, but for the past few weeks I've been
| actively eating less by deciding what I want to eat, and then
| ordering / making a slightly smaller portion.
|
| I imagine you could apply the same thinking to shopping. Before
| checking out, pick one or two items to cancel or leave to the
| next purchase, or choose a smaller size.
|
| Sometimes it costs a little more per unit, but the upside is
| you consume less.
| frereubu wrote:
| I've always liked the idea of "Libraries of Things". You join
| it like a normal library and can borrow things that you don't
| use often, so you don't even need to buy them in the first
| place. Here's an example in the UK:
| https://sharefrome.org/things/
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I loved this. There are multiple incarnations of the concept.
|
| Then in my city came the startups, the tech bros and sisters
| without tech background but marketing-fu and now you have to
| pay a monthly fee to lend and rent screwdrivers.
|
| Back to getting on a first-name basis with my neighbours
| then.
| MivLives wrote:
| If anyone is struggling with this, don't save your payment
| details in Amazon. It'll make you question if what you're
| ordering is worth it when it's not a one click thing. Another
| good thing is leaving it in your cart over night.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| I've found that usually, when I get the urge to buy
| something, if I just wait a few days the desire will subside
| and I can go on with my life and not miss it. Amazon does its
| best to enable impulse purchases for that very reason.
| barbazoo wrote:
| That's absolutely true but not desired in a world based on
| mindless consumption and convenience unfortunately.
| mrtedbear wrote:
| I decided to itemize all my possessions and recently built a
| tool to do so:
|
| https://litemize.com
|
| I'm in the process of itemizing everything,
|
| https://litemize.com/mrtedbear
|
| And my aim is to keep the number below 200 items (excluding
| books) and 500 items in total, and to minimize purchase and
| disposal activity.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > the most effective way of recycling is to limit your
| purchases altogether.
|
| This has always been true. There's just been a lot of "feel
| good" marketing around this point to beguile the market out of
| this rather common sense in the past few decades.
|
| > Then turn to the recycling industry and maybe it will find a
| way back.
|
| Putting my curmudgeon hat on for a second, I remember a time
| when we used to make products with high enough quality and
| durability that they would either last nearly a lifetime or get
| repaired when they didn't.
| dendrite9 wrote:
| I'd bet many of the older things were also disposable but the
| ones that lasted stick in the mind more. But absolutely we
| also moved towards less and less repairability in how things
| are assembled. Adhesives or plastic welding vs rivets and
| screws. I'm afraid I am not good at thinking about the
| question well, but is it better to have lighter cars that
| need less metal but in exchange they are less repairable? I
| get tied up in defining the bounds of the question so I never
| have a satisfactory answer.
|
| A lot of the money in tech seems to be tied to the same
| marketing, convincing people to consume. The greenwashing is
| a problem as well, although I wish I weren't so cynical when
| I see a company trying to do better so often it seems to read
| as "We're making our X more green and efficient, so buy more
| of them"
|
| I was swimming in a lake this summer with a friend involved
| in marketing when he made a comment about what happens when
| they run out of people's attention seconds. Do we make more,
| fight harder to retain attention, die?, or is there another
| solution.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| It is more than just marketing, the economy depends on
| people spending more than they make. The entire fiat
| currency system requires it is be fueled by debt spending
| and consumerism
| clnq wrote:
| How would one snap out of being seduced by feel-good
| marketing?
|
| For the last six months or so, I've been aware that I want to
| buy an iPhone even though I have a smartphone that fulfills
| all my needs. The cost for the value proposition of the
| iPhone is inferior to many smartphones, and for me, it has
| zero marginal value. I don't care about the iPhone's prestige
| or "lifestyle" angle. There is no justification for buying
| it. Still, it appeals to me, and I don't know why. This could
| be a problem if I did not have the rational faculties of an
| adult. And now and then, I read about a kid saving up for an
| iPhone and being very disappointed/regretting the purchase.
|
| It's seriously hazardous that we no longer have a way to opt
| out of this influence of advertising. I wish we did (on
| reasonable terms, without completely withdrawing from
| society). For a while in the 2010s, minimalism and anti-
| consumerism became more popular. But looking back, they seem
| to have been more of a fad. Now if a kid doesn't have an
| iPhone in school, it's "cringe".
| SoftTalker wrote:
| There will always be a must-have thing in high school,
| there always has been. In my day it was a car, and somewhat
| less importantly, the type of car.
|
| Prior to driving age, it was other things. But there's
| always something.
| angry_cactus wrote:
| Everything else aside, iPhones are more protected on an
| OPSEC level.
| lancesells wrote:
| > Still, it appeals to me, and I don't know why
|
| I wouldn't blame yourself. Humans are curious and seek out
| new things. Humans like things of "beauty" and Apple does
| an unbelievable job of marketing & product design.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >it has zero marginal value.
|
| Sounds like it has some marginal value, otherwise, by
| definition, you would not want it.
| varelse wrote:
| [dead]
| broooder wrote:
| I am trying to start a local 3D printing business, where a lot of
| basic parts or things people need can be made locally with Amazon
| style 2-day delivery. The order just goes to someone in your area
| who is certified to make stuff. I think this could massively help
| our global logistics and waste problems, and be a boon to local
| economies. https://HeyRobot.org Please get in touch if anyone is
| interested in joining in this project. I work on it nights and
| weekends... No VCs, just me and some friends coding.
| amriksohata wrote:
| The opposition parties in India like AAP and Congress are also
| playing a dirty game as they have investment in some of these
| companies, instead they blame random one off days like Diwali for
| fireworks to take the attention off this plastic and crop stubble
| burning
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I've got a bee in my bonnet about "plastic roads".
|
| Many countries, desperate to make use of the gargantuan flow of
| waste plastic, and desperate to avoid it going into landfill, are
| putting the waste plastic into roads.
|
| This is called "recycling".
|
| Sounds like a great idea until you realize that cars and trucks
| drive on the roads and grind them into dust - dust containing
| microplastics.
|
| The microplastic dust will go into air, waterways, rivers,
| oceans, food, plants animals and people.
|
| All this is because the environmentalists have decided that
| "keeping plastics out of landfill" is more important than
| anything.
|
| Plastic roads are an environmental disaster in an epic scale
| being created in the name of "recycling".
|
| The worst thing is that for some reason it's not obvious that
| this is a disastrous idea, and all around the world people are
| breathlessly talking up plastic roads like its a solution to the
| plastic waste problem.
|
| "In 2015, the Indian government made it mandatory for plastic
| waste to be used in constructing roads near large cities of more
| than 500,000 people"
|
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210302-could-plastic-ro...
|
| Mandated madness. The safest place for the fire hydrant of waste
| plastic is in landfill, not "recycled" into microplastic dust.
|
| Would you like a plastic road outside your house, or outside your
| kids school?
| burkaman wrote:
| I don't think you're wrong, but when considering the impacts of
| a plastic road outside my house I think I'd be worried about,
| in order:
|
| 1. Getting hit by a car
|
| 2. Health impacts of car exhaust
|
| 3. Microplastics coming off the cars themselves
| (https://www.wired.com/story/microplastic-san-francisco-bay/)
|
| 4. Microplastics from the road
|
| Also, while it certainly wouldn't surprise me if plastic roads
| produce more microplastics than plastic landfills, I wouldn't
| take it as given. Landfills aren't frozen in time, stuff
| degrades and gets blown around by wind, and I have no idea how
| the process of making a road affects the plastics and their
| capacity to degrade.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > 2. Health impacts of car exhaust
|
| There really aren't any. The amount of pollution from cars
| rounds to zero.
|
| Industrial pollution meanwhile continues unchecked.
| layer8 wrote:
| I wonder if that's worse than tires being worn down by roads?
| missedthecue wrote:
| Are microplastics proven to be dangerous yet, or is all the
| fear and panic still based on vibes?
|
| Based on a brief inventory of scientific journals, it looks
| like the answer is no at best and inconclusive at worst.
| malandrew wrote:
| What if you use the plastic as a foundation or filler covered
| by a layer of asphalt?just curious if it's possible to elongate
| the plastic tire interface and eliminate pulverization
| plorg wrote:
| This is the process described in the article. I suppose you
| would still have to worry about, for example, what happens
| when you replace the road and recycle that asphalt - the
| asphalt with plastic admixture gets mixed into the whole
| batch and remelted. Assuming you kept track of which are the
| plastic roads you could still use the recycled asphalt (with
| more plastic waste?) as the base and use a layer of new
| asphalt on top, etc.
|
| It may be that recycling your plastic is fully useless or
| even harmful, but there are municipalities where plastic in
| the recycled waste stream does get reprocessed into new
| products, and as one of the sibling comments notes, burying
| waste in a landfill isn't the obviously better solution
| either. It's also fine to have ire for the people who push
| plastic recycling for consumers without ensuring plastic
| waste gets into a stream where it's responsibly reprocessed.
| I'm sure there are some less-than-circumspect
| environmentalists who are responsible for this, but there are
| plenty of others, including politicians and industrialists
| who push recycling as a way to avoid reducing plastic
| consumption or to use still more single-use plastic items.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| >> burying waste in a landfill isn't the obviously better
| solution either.
|
| Plastics into landfill is better because the
| toxicity/microplastics are constrained to the immediate
| ecosystem of the landfill, rather than being distributed
| everywhere.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Yeah, the dust coming off of roads is from the vulcanized
| rubber tires, not so much the asphalt itself.
| danielodievich wrote:
| A friend of mine had this boyfriend once who ran a business that
| used recycled glass. Something to do with producing high quality
| sand for filtration systems and some other interesting processes
| (can't remember exactly what it was anymore bummer). The sand was
| made out of ground glass from wine bottles. As he told me, his
| process required just the right kind of glass and it had to be
| very, very clean. There was substantial investment into washing
| and label removal, to produce the right inputs. He said it was
| barely worthwhile, and he said that most plastic and even glass
| recyclables are just too dirty and too mixed up for it to be
| worthwhile. Al and Fe cans and Cu wire on other hand are
| absolutely a go.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/O1iGo
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| https://www.hrw.org/report/2022/09/21/its-if-theyre-poisonin...
|
| I would prefer a system were each country cleans up their own
| mess but robots are more expensive than people.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-27 23:00 UTC)