Inexpensive hull construction materials

Glass and metal can be recycled. Plastic can be reused but not recycled. Each time the polymer chains get cut or broken and the material degrades. Unlike glass and metal, each generation has worse properties.

 

Convince the rest of your group about glass and metal.

Many plastic products don't need to be top quality.
Plastic is directly tied with the price of oil, which is at a 150 year low (inflation-adjusted) I won't pretend to know the future price of oil, but if it goes up again, plastic recycling will be much more profitable. Also as landfills get filled. The distance traveled to trash disposal will get further and more expensive. The largest expense in plastics recycling is the human component i.e. sorting and cleaning. I suspect we'll train AI machines to do this in the future which will reduce that cost, which only points to increased profitability.

 

Can be recycled, and is recycled, are two different things.

Glass has similar problems as plastic. The many types and colors mixed together lowers the value of the finished product.

After all the handling costs of picking up my old pickle jar it tends to be a loss.

Metal is a different story, markets are there, but with huge price fluctuations. I used to collect it and make runs to the recycler, eventually it was difficult to even cover my fuel costs.

In the 80s I think I was getting 32 cents a pound for aluminum cans. It's 34 cents today, which is more than other aluminum.

Yes things could change, but we're talking right now.

My parents were way ahead of their time, they recycled a great deal.

They would load their VW with news papers and drive 300 miles to my sister's house so her kids could recycle them for their church. I could never convince them that they would have been better off just sending the church the gas money and dropping off the news papers at a local drop box on the way to town.

 

This was from 2017

Machinex’s Pierre-André Mongeon at the Quebec City glass recycling facility.
Machinex’s Pierre-André Mongeon at the Quebec City glass recycling facility.
Recycling Product News recently had the opportunity to ask a series of questions about the factors behind scrap glass market prices, and the nature of scrap glass as a recycled commodity, to Pierre-André Mongeon, Machinex's glass recycling solution specialist and an active member of the Glass Recycling Coalition (GRC).

Recycling Product News (RPN): What are major factors that affect market prices of scrap glass?
Pierre-André Mongeon (PAM): Demand and quality would be the two major factors. Demand remains fairly high for clean cullet (reclaimed ground glass) and fine-grind glass for insulation and sandblasting. Glass manufacturers are usually eager to find clean cullet, since they are using only about 33 percent recycled glass, and they could potentially be using up to 95 percent.

Contamination levels of glass are a main factor affecting its price. At 80 percent of purity, glass can sell at a negative $35-$50/metric tonne (mt) as landfill cover. At 95 percent purity, some markets can be found for $0-$10/mt. Further treated glass, with up to 99.8 percent purity, and fine grind, can find markets at $70-$100/mt. Colour-sorted and high-purity glass cullet can be sold at $60-$80 USD in Canada and the U.S. (taking into account variation in cost per tonne for hauling, from $5 to $20 per tonne, depending on distances.)

 

Not really a study. It's a news interview with a guy that sells a product in the glass recycling industry. But from that same article...

"The industry now fully understands that using cullet allows furnaces to operate at lower temperatures, which extends furnace life, reduces costs and lowers stack emissions. We also know that using glass cullet in the process of making new bottles will decrease energy requirements by three percent for every 10 percent of cullet used, and that recycled glass can be substituted for up to 95 percent of raw materials."

"Going forward, cleaning glass a little more (moving from 80 percent to 90 percent + purity) would be the cheapest way to improve markets.
It does not cost a lot to install a Machinex pre-cleaning system, and purity of over 90 percent is easily achievable. Machinex has recently developed, with its partner Krysteline, several advanced solutions to remove the contaminants in glass, to obtain a marketable product that can reach up to 99 percent. Glass manufacturers will be more attracted by the cleaner glass and will see the benefits. So will recyclers."

 

People please, why all the drama? When it comes to "environmental impact" the numbers can be cooked to show whatever you like, there is no "one and only" accepted method of calculation. For example I can show you that plastic bottles are better than glass, or the opposite.
The underlying problem is simple, the planet is a closed circuit system, everything we do stays here. The goal is to not make it poisonous and uninhabitable in the long run, and that means keeping things contained and reusing the same materials over and over.
The economics depend entirely on the price of raw energy, and at the moment oil is cheap enough to make most recycling unprofitable. But, if we do not invest in commercial scale recycling technology the future inhabitants will not have a head start when the need truly arrives. When that time comes todays landfills will be treated as raw material mines. How far away that moment is nobody knows, but our goal should be to make sure there are still people on this planet when it does arrive, and that those people have the technology to survive.

 

It was only to reference the cost of recycled glass. From minus to positive based on purity.

And it sounded like finding the purer glass required for the higher value was tough to come by.

 

I'm thinking some of us are also referring to the actual additional pollution involved in creating a recycling program that doesn't recycle anything.

The original topic was for excess and unused fiberglass. Neither the cost or the pollution aspect plays out. Yes it makes people feel better, but there's no value in it, it's a net loss on both fronts.

 

Foam core recycling.

sort of a high risk adventure

But I am really good with sharp tools.

I am nearing the end of my build. I need only a small bit of core for some kitchen stuff. So, I tool all my lousy core scraps and ripped them to one and two or three inch pieces and reconfigure them into a panel. I am pretty fast; not dangerous. This is a kitchen upper cabinet base 73" by 14".

I didn't landfill it. I used a bunch of raptor staples. I saved around 2 sheets of core this way or more during the build. Add freight and I saved about $600?

 

This is about 1/3rd of the trash foam I created building a 10m powercat. Sure wish I could grind it all. Makes a good filler.

Full trashcan. Pieces are all too small or odd shaped to safely recover. I suppose I could try and knife cut a straight edge on a few of them. But I use joiner and table and chop saws.

 

all recycling is subject to scaling issues

 

It's not that simple. Even if the material is not recycled now, it is collected and stored separately for future use. Yes shipping it to some far away place is stupid, but that is because right now it's cheaper to store it there. There are a lot of approaches to this, and none is proven to be better than the other.

Glass (fiber or otherwise) is a poor example anyway because it's one of the few materials that are truely inert and can be stored forever without problems. Recycling it is a matter of local economic conditions, for example glass to "dirty" to be used in glass manufacturing is often used as aggregate for asphalt and concrete since it can be cheaper than mined sand in some areas. I have personally been in a bottle factory that over time has gone from heavily using old glass from collectors (they were using virgin material only to keep the product in spec), to 99% virgin stock (only recycling their own refuse) and back to using collected old glass in a more moderate quantity. This was dictated by changes in local economic conditions, and the struggle to stay competitive. When they (and the few other factories survived those times) switched to virgin material collectors were going broke left and right, there were warehouses full of old glass.

 

Hire some kids to puzzle them together using a knife. The scraps you can put in a blender.

 

Fallguy, that's not recycling.
Repurposing, reusing, and reducing are the ways forward.
Recycling doesn't work.

 

Yeah, I have to agree: using the brand new stuff you bought isn't recycling, that's using brand new consumer goods.

If I cook a chicken and pick the bones clean, I'm not eating recycled food. I'm just eating the chicken I bought, and not deliberately choosing to throw it in a landfill.

There's always going to be economy in using the brand new stuff you bought instead of throwing it in the garbage. Nobody would dispute that.

The question is: is there actual energy savings in separating different types of garbage and sending them to recycling facilities.

Generally no, that's not an energy savings. And the recyclables usually just end up in landfills in the Philippines etc.

I'm in favour of reducing the global footprint but to my knowledge, most recycling programs increase it.