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Earth Day And Lifecycle Environmental Costs
MountainLogic writes: "With Earth Day April 22
now is a good time to Ask SlashDot reader what are you doing to keep mother earth alive and well. Sure, every cube prisoner has a recycling box under their desk, but the decisions that technical people make can have wide reaching effects on a company and the environment. How often are the environmental effects of a technical decision discussed? How can environmental consequences be brought onto the table? Do formal procedure such as ISO14000
help or are they just full employment acts for consultants? Is there a better way to evaluate the full lifecycle environmental cost of a product? Is it as simple as each of us putting in the extra effort to find greener solutions?"
So do you throw the paper cup away or do you recycle that too? =) I've recycled aluminum cans (or anything else for that matter) not because I have some desire to protect the environment. I am a cheap-skate. [I drive a 10yr old econobox because it gets good mileage and doesn't cost me much to operate it. Some enviromentalists see SUVs as Global Warming Vehicles, but I see them as vehicles that rape and pillage ones bank account. Being a cheap bastard is another reason why I run Linux.] To me throwing away something that could be used again is a waste of time, energy, and money. That and I could get paid for turning in bottles and cans. =) Seriously, I do think it's a shame to thow something away when it could be used for something else. That's also why I turn things into Goodwill too.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Nothing.
As far as I see it, the Earth itself can screw up the environment better than I could ever hope to. That being said, I still try to keep things clean because:
- I'd rather live in a nice clean place than a shithole. Unfortunately, other lots of other people don't see it that way and there isn't a license to kill idiots. [and I don't have the money to move]
- it would take more time, energy, and money for someone else to clean up after myself than it would if I just did it. I'd rather have those resources go to something useful.
But that has more to do with not being a lazy slob than anything else.I suppose the closest thing I did that could be twisted into honoring Earth Day was listening to Blackened
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Gots to disagree with you on this one. Many landfills do not have adequate seepage protection at the ground level. As a result, many chemicals find their way down to the water table and end up contaminating the local water supply. Largely, this doesn't happen, but when it does the damage is fairly significant
If the plastics were breaking down, that would be true. There is a prof in Arizona that's been doing landfill studies for years. He takes core samples from old landfills to see how the percentage of materials being thrown away changes over the years as well as how the materials behave in the landfill. According to him, paper takes up the most volume (50% or better in some cases) of any single material found in landfills. The percentage of plastic over the years has been decreasing since they have been getting stronger and thinner. What is really interesting is that in a good landfill, there is very little decay. He's pulled out newspapers and hot dogs from the 60s that haven't changed much since they were thrown away. In the cases where water and oxygen were able to get to the materials, it's paper and other organic materials that are decaying and causing inks and other chemicals to move into the water systems, not the plastics.
I'm waiting for the day that materials separation technology becomes good enough that people will want to dig up old landfills to extract the paper and other metals for recycling. Will there be protesters opposing the strip mining of landfills?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Counterpoints:
Plastic seepage: Not an expert on degradation of plastic, but is it really that horrible? You might have a point there, but without some data I can't decide either way.
Incineration: This is the wrong thing to do. Our big problem now is the buildup of CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere. Burning plastic makes that problem even worse. My solution of landfilling plastic tries to fix that by putting the carbon that came from the ground back into the ground.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Someone marked me as a troll? Idiot. That's actually how I think.
Some people hate you if you disagree with their stupidity that everything must be recycled. It's too hard to come up with an argument, but it's easy to click a little checkbox and mod me down. Cowardly.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
A quick quote from the Emmy-winning host of Smart Line:
"Well, if 70-degree days in the middle of winter are the `price' of car pollution, you'll forgive me if I keep my old Pontiac."
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I wish there was a WRONG button in the moderator options, because this post's parent is wrong. Of course, never rely on /. to be correct on any techinical matter whatsoever.
The fact is plastic and all other hydrocarbon products are distilled from the stuff they drill up. Oil refineries are basically big still s for the hydrocarbons. You heat up your crude and the more volitile compounds rise to the top. Those tall towers at oil refineries are where this process takes place. You fraction off the stuff near the top to make jet fuel, then little lower down to make gasoline, then lower still to make lubricant type oils and at the bottom is the stuff for tar. Some where in there is the correct level to pull off material to make plastic from.
Long story short: plastic comes from a different part of the crude oil than the stuff you burn.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Will there be protesters opposing the strip mining of landfills?
Golly! What will become of our lovely park?
"Smear'd with gumms of glutenous heat, I touch..." - Comus, John Milton
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
When we get hacked, I maje sure to answer "yes" to power savings mode when reinstalling solaris.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
I walk only on sidewalks.
(Adapted from Charles Schultz's Peanuts)
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-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I recall in high school a group of friends who represented Canada in Model UN. They pitched for pro global warming accords. Among the benefits they included - extending the warmth north would introduce low cost beach resorts and other great economic benefits to Canada.
I once heard an argument saying global warming was *good* thing...
We burn fossil fuels to heat ourselves when its cold. Burning them makes the Earth heat up. So if we burn all fossil fuels now, by the time they're all gone the Earth will have heated up so much we won't need them any more.
Someone's logic chip isn't properly seated...
I didn't recycle aluminum cans before, but I do now. I pour the contents into a paper cup and toss the can in the Recycle bin right there in the kitchen.
/. because it saves power here. My posts take up space on some other company's server, so I really don't sweat it.
I also leave my computer on 24/7 because I know that boot time is perhaps the most power intensive part of running the computer.
I leave the lights on for the same reason, they are fluorescent so turning them off and then back on would just waste power.
I also post inanities to
Dancin Santa
throwing plastic into landfills puts carbon into the ground.
But it does not return it in any way that the ground can reclaim it within the next 100 million years. That's the problem.
Other than that, plastic is a great material that's immensely versatile and can actually lower the total amount of waste produced just as a byproduct of its usefulness.
Environmentally, mother nature will treat a pile of plastic covered with dirt as just another hill.
Gots to disagree with you on this one. Many landfills do not have adequate seepage protection at the ground level. As a result, many chemicals find their way down to the water table and end up contaminating the local water supply. Largely, this doesn't happen, but when it does the damage is fairly significant.
The best long term solution for handling garbage is incineration, but that too is objectionable for the amount of pollutants released into the air. Improvements are being made, though.
aluminum. Use it, recycle it.
Stack it in a big pyramid in your office.
Build the Great Wall of Coke.
Make ninja stars that really work.
Dancin Santa
it's paper and other organic materials that are decaying and causing inks and other chemicals to move into the water systems, not the plastics.
This is what I meant, if I wasn't clear in the original post. Plastics to not break down at any measurable rate fast enough to contaminate the table water. It is the contents of the plastics, along with other organic materials that may seep into the ground water. The large plastic seal underneath the trash may prevent most of the chemicals from draining, but then you come up with the problem:
What is really interesting is that in a good landfill, there is very little decay
In a way, this is the essence of the problem when it comes to landfills. This lack of decay is the main reason new landfills must be opened. If the trash would biodegrade, landfills could be sustained for a much longer lifespan.
Dancin Santa
Still in favor of incineration