"Feel Good" Green Solutions a Bunch of Rubbish

[celtic_crippler]

I shouldn’t laugh, but I can’t help myself. Love the pictures.

Article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...How-carefully-sorted-waste-dumped-abroad.html?

The Government has always insisted that household rubbish is carefully recycled – but the Daily Mail revealed earlier this year that large amounts are deemed unusable by recycling plants, and instead sent to landfill. Now the Environment Agency has confirmed that material sent to China, Indonesia and India is also buried, rather than recycled.

 

[Sukerkin]

It's been an open secret for years, CC. An expensive exercise in wasteful futility (no pun intended there but, hey, I'll take it ).

 

[Sukerkin]

This might do some good tho:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22062122

 

[Drasken]

This is why I always say that recycling is not effective. Couple that with emissions from recycling plants etc. And you have a system doing more harm than good.

I do think that we can improve things, and all effort should be made to do so. However it takes time, planning, and a group effort to come up with plans that would be successful. Then a group effort to enact these plans as a society.

Don't see it happening anytime soon though. :/

 

[Drasken]

Double post. Ignore...

 

[jezr74]

Mind you, recycling is only as good as the sorting done. If you put an incorrect item in the wrong bin it contaminates the whole batch. (So I was once told by the garbo, because I had plastic bags in with the recycling)

I think land fill is a good idea, is a long term breakdown of waste. Can ever get rid of uranium waste and polystyrene.

Definitely some interesting pics..

 

[billc]

Oh, I thought this was going to be about the Fisker company going bankrupt....guess not...

 

[Steve]

Regarding recycling, a lot of it is feel good. Drasken, we aren't required to separate it at all. We have three bins: recycling, garbage and yard waste.

The problem as I see it is that technology is intentionally disposable. Whether it's phones, DVD players, computers or anything else, we expect to move on after a few years. We want the newest thing that does the cool stuff. Bottom line, the activities are less important than the implications, which are that we are creating a whole lot of garbage, and we need to figure out some innovative, creative, practical things to do with them. Whether it's batteries, bottles, paper, plastic bags, or anything else, we live in a disposable society and at some point we'll run out of room.

Regarding Fisker, nothing will keep a company afloat if all you have is crappy product and a crappy business model. Tesla is doing better, with their high end boutique sales coupled with a much more practical alignment with Toyota (an established auto builder.) Here's a good summary of why Fisker is sinking: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...res-furloughed-employees-preps-for-bankruptcy

Another key distinction between Fisker and Tesla is that Tesla makes money selling their patented EV drive train technology. Fisker consumes tech, buying it from other companies, such as the A123 Battery company mentioned in article above... the one that also went bankrupt.

Bottom line for these small companies is that they will not survive unless they have a big brother company with deep pockets, or they are bought out. Look at how the computer industry works. Small companies innovate and then become absorbed. They are either bought out by a big fish or they band together and swim in a school. Or they go extinct.

 

[arnisador]

Yeah, unfortunately, household recycling is way oversold--a feel-good activity to a large extent. Good idea in principle but hard to scale in an economically effective way.