On Fri, 24 Jan 2020 15:50:40 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Friday, 24 January 2020 20:10:27 UTC, T i m wrote:
On Fri, 24 Jan 2020 10:09:15 -0800 (PST), tabbypurr wrote:

If there is a
facility that disposes of it in a less environmentally damaging way,
then you should make reasonable efforts to do that.

reasonable is the key word there. A crisp packet is of such low value that spending time washing them is entirely unreasonable.

*A* crisp packet maybe, but it doesn't take long to combine it with
many others.

it would take me forever. We don't eat crisps.

;-)

If crisp packets were aggregated for parcelled disposal, most other things would be too.

Many other things a

https://www.terracycle.com/en-GB/brigades

The value of the space required would far outstrip the value added by doing this, even if one ignored the extra labour sorting everything.

See above. Everybody does their 'bit', that's the point.


Burying them in landfill is not damaging, dropping them on the beach is.

Assuming they make it to landfill, as you say, and don't end up
everywhere else.

You chose to buy / take / eat it, you then have to dispose of it
properly.

Now, if you can't engineer it to say drop a wodge of crisp packets
into a local drop off point, as part of your normal journey then maybe
you shouldn't buy them in the first place.

complete nonsequitur.

Only to you.

no it just is. You're putting the trivial before the nontrivial.

So you say.

You're virtue-fying something of near zero value.

It's nothing to do with any 'value'.

it absolutely is

Nope.


If everyone took crisp packets to a dedicated recycler the world would be worse off, not better.

BS.

Time

'Time' maintaining the planet?

it's not maintaining the planet at all. The planet is fine whether packets are buried or washed & melted.

For how long (and we are talking of the planet as the home for human
life, not some other weasel thing).

energy

When passing?

Even if one is passing, which for most people is not the case, it still takes time & energy.

Yes, but relatively little and far less than the alternatives in
effort and cost. Landfill holes don't dig, line, compress, cover,
compress and cap themselves you know?

& money would have been misspent achieving a purely trivial benefit.

Trivial to you I'm guessing. It's not trivial to me, my family or any
of the thousands (millions?) of people who are 'bothering.

If you aren't part of the solution you are part of the problem.

Moving crisp packets from landfill to a remelt operation is pretty trivial, yes.

It is, if it's done by the people, just as easy as putting them in a
bin and having a binman carry them to the yard, unload, possibly sort,
reload then from the yard to a landfill site.


The various governments are now making manufacturers factor the
efficient disposal / recycling into their products and some are
obliged to accept products back when we have finished with them (a
feature we have already paid for of course).

See, for too long (since we were all generally well off) we have been
buying stuff with no regard what will happen to it when we are
finished with it and many have been happy to just 'throw stuff away'
when often there isn't such a place. So that means stuff has to be
stored (tyres / fridges), burned or buried in a hole in the ground,
all of which have come back to haunt us.

very little needs to be stored,

I didn't say it needs to be stored, I said it is being stored
*because* there isn't yet a sufficient need or efficient system for
dealing with them in the quantities they are getting.

if it is being stored it's because those in charge of it believe it needs to be stored.

Quite, often till they can work out how to best process it and that
doesn't include burying or burning in many cases.

nuclear waste is the main example. But even what little of that I produce doesn't need storing. Burned & buried is not haunting us.

Of course they are. Burning increases pollution and global warming
gasses

2 problems we have little of and none of respectively

From your POV.


(even if it does recoup some of the energy) and burying
requires space and resources and can have negative side effects
(chemical leaching into groundwater and explosive gas buildup),

/every/ disposal option has downsides.

Of course?

Remelt wastes money that could be spent on more useful things.

From your POV. Others must disagree with you or they wouldn't be doing
it.


not to
mention the locking away of resources that may one day be more
valuable than the houses they have built on them.

if so they'll ultimately be mined.

And so even less efficient than dealing with them today (which is what
they are doing).

It's not a sound argument to not use valuable land now.

Eh?


What would be better is to not buy the thing in the first place,
repair it if it goes wrong, re-purpose it into something else / useful
or recycle it in it's core components (so it can be recycled more
efficiently).

In many cases sure. Also in many cases not.

ATM.

FWIW I'd like to see a comprehensive recycling/repair machine developed. One day it'll happen.

If by 'machine' you mean 'system', if so I agree.

See, years ago, if you pulled down a building, it would nearly all get
dumped. Now, all the materials are separated (steel, copper,
aluminium, plastics) and sold to 1) recycle them and 2) offset the
cost to the demolition firm (they factor this into their pricing of
the job). The concrete gets crushed into a smaller aggregate and
often left on site, sold to the developers to use as a valuable
material. Less vehicles, better for the locals and environment and
less waste all round.


Society is grossly wasteful, but many things really are not worth repairing, repurposing etc.

'Worth' again and by whose standards?

you could always start with the market value

You could, many wouldn't. See, things are often worth more to some
than any monetary value. I could easily have bought a new washing
machine to replace my failing one but instead I took a nearly new (13
months) one that was broken, repaired it and used it for the next 8
years. I didn't do that to save time or money (although I did), I did
it because it was better all round.

I took an otherwise written-off washing machine that wasn't
economically repairable (by conventional means) and repaired it and it
lasted another 8 years.

You may throw away something that someone else would repair, keep and
use.

heh, it's usually the other way round

Well there you go then ... and I'm guessing you don't always do it to
save time or money? A car is a classic example of that were replacing
a small bit can keep all the other bits from having to be recycled.

snip

Foiled plastic pouches use far less material per 4 pouches than 1 metal tin.

Maybe, but if it takes 6 x the energy to recycle the foil pouches (and
we should till be build a catapult big enough to launch such waste
into the sun g) then the tin wins.

no, we should just not recycle them. That's the sensible option for now.

Why, when there is a company that is recycling them 'now'?

https://www.terracycle.com/en-GB/brigades/petfood


And there are other differences that far outweigh that issue.

Such as?

cost, whether kitty tolerates eating the same flavour 4 times in a row etc.

Then get a dog. ;-)

You know, the genuine issues.

Issues that pale into insignificance when we have filled all the holes
with our rubbish and the sky's are black from burning the rest.

I'm all for better handling of the waste stream, I think what we do now is lousy, but so many people prioritise trivial waste matters far above their real worth, and that is a pointless cost, not a virtue.

I'm sure they will / do, but something is better than nothing, even if
it's not the best thing, as long as it's done correctly.

so vague as to be meaningless

Again, I suspect just to you. ;-)


snip

As you ask, are these people actually thick? Are we asking too much of
them with the instruction, 'Take the top off the milk bottle before
putting it in the recycling box', or 'flatten all cardboard boxes' ...
because these people simply can't understand *why* they have been
requested so? Or is it they CBA to take the responsibility for their
own waste in a way that allows the council to keep their rates down?

Explaining things once seldom gets the message across.

Then we need to look closer at our education system?

People aren't going to know what the problem is unless collectors leave a label stating clearly what the issue is.

And they sometimes do.

The reality is those running such schemes cba to make them work.

No, they actually do, by re distributing the leaflets, putting up
advertising, social media and newsletters and the like. They are
desperate to make it work because they need it to work, or risk
putting the rates up and losing votes at the next election.


Maybe schools should dump religious education and replace them with
classes on *Why* we all need to be a good citizens?


School education needs a huge overhaul imho

On that we agree 100% then. ;-)

Cheers, T i m