Inexpensive hull construction materials

[gonzo]

'All recycling uses more energy and is expensive' is neither a fact nor an opinion. It is a falsehood. If you think that is true you are still living in 1994.

Aluminum, for example, requires 96 percent less energy to make from recycled cans than it does to process from bauxite. Recycled glass uses about 21 percent less energy. Recycled plastic bottles use 76 percent less energy and newsprint about 45 percent less.

The economic debate is hard because it is impossible to separate out government subsidies and the public willingness to pay more for recycled products for ethical reasons. Even if I were to say it costs more to recycle on average, that doesn't mean it does for every example nor does it mean it will in the future.

Re-read my post. I never claimed that "All recycling uses more energy and is expensive". I don't mind you quoting me, but I really have a problem with you fabricating quotes and claiming they are mine.

 

[fpjeepy05]

Some recycling is more cost effective than others.

But are you factoring in all of the associated costs to recycle an item, or just the cost of melting and reforming the product in the manufacturing process.

If the cost was actually lower, then there wouldn't be surplus of recyclable products being collected, then sent to land fills.

That cost includes all associated costs.

You are confusing the cost to make products and the cost to dispose of products. If I sell aluminum scrap, I will collect it and sell it when I can get the most money. The market will fluctuate. There are situations when due to the conditions of the market it is better economically to trash a collection rather than pay for storage while markets return. China does most of the recycling into new products since they have the highest raw material demand. Ships destined for the US usually go back to China relatively empty, this gives buyers/sellers a discounting transportation method. There are a lot of moving parts. Because some recyclable items get landfilled once in a while doesn't mean none of it works.

Oil prices went negative this year. Does that mean we should throw in the towel on oil?

 

[fpjeepy05]

Re-read my post. I never claimed that "All recycling uses more energy and is expensive". I don't mind you quoting me, but I really have a problem with you fabricating quotes and claiming they are mine.

I didn't claim that was your quote. Your quotes are in gray. I was paraphrasing a mantra that lots of dinosaurs subscribe to. I used single quotes intentionally.

 

[fallguy]

More energy to make a bin sort clean transport store process make special equipment to make garbage usable. Etc. Generally speaking recycling programs are bad for the environment.

a silly statement John

when you start building a boat; you'll realize even you are recycling bits and pieces of unuseds

there are certain problems with recycling, but in general, it uses less energy, if you can scale it

 

[DogCavalry]

No, that is what you have been told by a salesman, which is to say a professional liar.
Glass bottles: wash it with soap and hot water, at a cost to you and to the environment, and put it outside in a bin that was made at an environmental cost.
Then a huge diesel truck, built and operated at an enormous environmental cost picks it up on it's basically empty trip around the city -I say basically empty because recycling is bulky but light- and drops it off at the depot, where once no one is looking, they put it back in the garbage stream because there is not , and may never be, a market for used glass bottles, and then it goes in the landfill at a much much higher environmental cost than if it was just thrown out honestly.
Some plastics are recyclable, but many are not, and if they contaminate the first bunch even slightly, it turns it into a pile of garbage that has a much higher environmental cost than if it was just burned. Metals are totally recyclable, but we've been recycling them for thousands of years. Cardboard is good, but the environmental cost of cleaning used pizza boxes is higher than the cost of making new ones. Is it more important to harm the environment more while paying higher taxes, while agreeing to pretend to be doing good, or is it more important to protect the environment in reality?

 

[fpjeepy05]

No, that is what you have been told by a salesman, which is to say a professional liar.
Glass bottles: wash it with soap and hot water, at a cost to you and to the environment, and put it outside in a bin that was made at an environmental cost.
Then a huge diesel truck, built and operated at an enormous environmental cost picks it up on it's basically empty trip around the city -I say basically empty because recycling is bulky but light- and drops it off at the depot, where once no one is looking, they put it back in the garbage stream because there is not , and may never be, a market for used glass bottles, and then it goes in the landfill at a much much higher environmental cost than if it was just thrown out honestly.
Some plastics are recyclable, but many are not, and if they contaminate the first bunch even slightly, it turns it into a pile of garbage that has a much higher environmental cost than if it was just burned. Metals are totally recyclable, but we've been recycling them for thousands of years. Cardboard is good, but the environmental cost of cleaning used pizza boxes is higher than the cost of making new ones. Is it more important to harm the environment more while paying higher taxes, while agreeing to pretend to be doing good, or is it more important to protect the environment in reality?

No, that is what you were told by the salesman. You paint a great picture, but the numbers don't match. Show me a study.

Glass bottles are recycled into glass bottles because it is cheaper to make a glass bottle out of recycled glass bottles than sand.

You know there is a monetary and environmental cost to extracting a gallon of crude oil and turning it into a coke bottle as well right?

 

[fallguy]

Is it more important to harm the environment more while paying higher taxes, while agreeing to pretend to be doing good, or is it more important to protect the environment in reality?

I am gonna start to call you a spinner John. You have presented a fallacy. The false premise is recycling is harming the environment.

The landfill next to me is pretty big. That is a pretend environmental win.

Each item that goes into that landfill we pretend has no environmental cost.

But we do it, not to protect the environment, but for simplicity.

In certain places, they recognize the environment differently. Here, we have about 30 garbage trucks a week go by so garbage haulers have better competition. But the reality is the $$ costs are higher because the trucks travel firther between stops and the environmental costs are higher due to more pollution. Fairly ridiculous watching all the garbage services driving above the speed limit cause the routes are so long. Some effort at climate. Recycling does have that issue.

 

[DogCavalry]

I didn't claim that was your quote. Your quotes are in gray. I was paraphrasing a mantra that lots of dinosaurs subscribe to. I used single quotes intentionally

Sorry. Nope. Much of recycling bad. Starry eyed children of all ages prefer comforting fairy tales.

 

[fallguy]

Sorry. Nope. Much of recycling bad. Starry eyed children of all ages prefer comforting fairy tales.

I had a girlfriend years ago that didn't want to do the separating work because someone else was gonna make the money.

It didn't work out.

 

[DogCavalry]

Call me what you like. Facts are immune to nicknames. But do make an effort at reading carefully. No one has suggested that there is no environmental cost integral to things in landfills. Its a question of learning to count, as opposed to trusting the sales rep from the recycling busjness, or the opportunistic politicians posing as environmentalists. If one option is more harmful than another, it's the wrong answer. Don't try to accuse me of not wanting change, but at the moment we are trying to put out the fire with gasoline, and the gasoline salesman is encouraging you to call me a dinosaur or a apinner.

 

[BlueBell]

Recycling doesn't work.
It's a feel-good falasy, a myth.
I have it from several, local PhD's who work in the field.
It raises awareness but makes for a poor carbon footprint.
Reducing and reusing are key, not recycling.

 

[DogCavalry]

It's actually much more harmful that just the minor harm it does. It makes people think they are already doing enough, so they resist doing more stuff that would actually work. We enrich salesmen and polititions, harm the environment, and smugly assure ourselves that we are ethically superior.

 

[fallguy]

I am the person, pre-Covid who picks up the cans others throw in the ditches.

Sans recycling, the ditches are the landfills.

Keep in mind some of the other benefits of recycling before a full on poopooing. You discount littering as an alternative.

Everything is not about full on profiting.

 

[ondarvr]

This subject was just covered in depth locally, I'll look for a link.

The subject was why are we continuing to recycle, when there's no market for the majority of what's being picked up. There were markets for a few things like aluminum, but the prices were very low, frequently not covering the cost of handling.

Paper and glass had no market, plastic rarely had a buyer.

The thought process that went into continuing the program was that it took decades to get to the point where recycling was the norm, and people accepted it.

They didn't want to lose that way of thinking and the ingrained habit.

The hope was that eventually there would be a market for these materials, and at that time no further training, education or habit conditioning would be require.

Without those cultural habits in place, it may take another decade or two to reestablish them.

I think recycling is great, but deciding to promote it when the materials aren't actually being recycled is a bit of a concern, but I can understand the reasoning.

Whether it's actually a good plan won't be known for a long time.

 

[cracked_ribs]

That's fairly well known in the recycling business, actually. It's very frequently a net loss and most of the products just end up in landfills in Asia. Anything that's actually worth recycling on its own will end up with a deposit on it, because the market will want those materials.

But the plastic and paper fibers and so on...it mostly just gets turned into more environmentally destructive garbage, because we invest a ton of energy into hiding it in other countries.