Slashdot Mirror
Japan's War On E-Waste
Stonent1 writes "With the increasing number of high tech devices in Japan filling landfills, Japan has taken a proactive approach to E-waste. BBC News has an interesting article on Matsushita's electronics recycling plant. For example, TV and monitor tubes are opened with a special tool and separated into leaded and unleaded glass, melted and reused in new displays! The plastic housing is also melted down and reused. Sounds like a good idea for the U.S., too."
There should be a deposit on all computer components to handle the recyling. A lot of the stuff gets shipped overseas to become other peoples problems.
I think it's rather unlikely for this to happen in the US anytime soon. The time it takes to disassemble electronics properly to separate them out into the varying material types would make the process very expensive, and seeing as how companies are already cutting corners in every way they can, I find it hard to believe they would bother pouring money into device disposal.
KappaStone
Christmas Shopping Via Dumpster Diving.
When you live on an island, you think about waste more. Japan has been running up against the limits of it's geography for centuries (arable land, timber, etc.) so they are in a better position to tackle these kinds of problems.
Although when you shop at a 7-11 in Tokyo, and they double bag your overly packaged Pocky, you might not think so.
I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
For example, TV and monitor tubes are opened with a special tool and separated into leaded and unleaded glass, melted and reused in new displays!
Hey this display looks like Regular unleaded....she needs premium dude... premium
$cat
Why dont we just shoot this stuff into space? There are 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Stars Out There, you can't tell me there is no room for this stuff.
I don't remember the exact title of the article, but a study was commissioned by the UN to see how much resources it took to create a single processor (or memory chip) in Tawain and the results were startling. It's amazing how chips so small, require such a huge chemical and mineral investment in addition to the need for dams for power etc...
Many people don't think of the environmental costs of producing such devices, since they are so ubuquitous now. But soon it will be on everyones minds, just like recycling cans. And someday we might all be tempted to by "green" processors.
I think some of the bigger companies (Dell and HP) are already doing this since Europe will be requiring end of life plans. However all companies should be doing this!
I also thought there was a recent article about this and how Dell is using prison labor to handle recycling in an unsafe manor.
Please recycle your electrons responsibly. It's a great shame that our e-landfil sites are filling up with so many bits and bytes that could otherwise be reused.
If we don't take care to conserve our resources now, in 20 years time there might not be enough free data to allow any new films, music or even slashdot posts, thus crippling society as we know it.
Beep beep.
When you buy a new device how long before new technology makes it rubbish? I'd like to see life expectancy warnings on products.
Omnis amans amens
After the manditory search for possible resue of these electronics these three proccesses seem to be being done manually from what I read of the article. Can't these tasks all be acomplished by one well controlled set of furnaces and conveyors, and automated sorters? Much like an oil refinery sorts out differant types of hydrocarbons? Through heat control and filtering?
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
Along with recycling the waste we're currently creating, I think we should go into a proactive recycling of old waste. Along with reusing the glass and plastic, we should look at using techologies such as >TDP </a> (Thermal Depolymerization Process) to better break down the waste.<p>It frustrates me as an American to see what a wasteful society we are. <i>Everything</i> is desposible. I'd be okay with that if everything was being recycled as well. If there was some synthetic ecosystem of waste and reuse, I wouldn't have to feel the massive guilt I do everytime I purchase something that's whole purpose is to be used one and then discarded.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I wonder just how many E.T. cartridges are in that "Waste."
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
After reading the article this sounds almost as efficent as the recycling plant /. has set up for their dupe stories.
:p
Or maybe they did take a cue from us?
Sounds like a good idea for the U.S., too.
:-) Just kidding.
I don't think that the U.S. has any shortage of landfill space. A Florida company that owns a landfill in Michigan sells the space to Toronto, for crying out loud! Of course, people in Michigan blame the Canadians for that... but whatever.
In Japan, I imagine that landfill space is at a premium, and recycling this junk makes sense, but I just don't see it being economically feasible in North America.
When I was in Oklahoma City in 2001 they didn't even have recycling, and I think they had a push going to generate more waste because they were piling it in this landfill near town and it was the highest point for hundreds of miles. It's probably been renamed to Mount Oklahoma by now.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Perhaps it is a good idea for the US from an environmental point of view, but I don't think it will be done. Why not? Because it costs money. Land is money, how much it is depends on how much there is available. In the US there is more than enough land, so it is not worth much. In Japan on the other hand, land is very scarse and thus worth a lot. If the japanese can make sure they need less waste dumps this way, then they will do it. The US doesn't care about waste dumps. They'll just build their houses/industries/... somewhere else.
Sounds like a good idea for the U.S., too.
Is it bad for everyone else?
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
While I support this idea, is this really a problem? I have a hard time believing that even gadget crazy Japan is throwing away enough electronic crap to compare with the volume of everything else that gets thrown away.
Duffman can never die! Only the actors who play him!
Won't anyone think of the electrons??
simply dump it into the next landfill site...
when there's plenty of landfill space? Japan doesn't have all the free space we do, which is why they tend to be a bit better at these sort of things.
Dell is using prison labor to handle recycling in an unsafe manor.
Why the hell are prisoners being housed in a manor? They belong in jail!
There's a company that I just recently found out about called Resource Concepts in Texas. Their whole business is refurbishing, remarketing, and recycling electronics. Their website has all the details. Looks like they even deal with individuals, not just big corporations.
-Ansel.
G=C800:5
I remember IBM offering something like this for IBM or non-IBM machines, and I found a link:
IBM PC Recycling Service for $29.99
Here's the link in their store:
IBM PC Recycle / Recycling Service
From an old press release, it looks like they are sending the machines to Envirocycle, an electronic recycler--maybe it is possible to send stuff to them directly, but I didn't see anything like that on their site.
If it was profitable we already would be.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
We won't recycle unless
1. Its very profitable
2. We are having such a land issue that it mandates recycling.
3. Its legislated
This should be clear by some of the eastern states railroading their garbage out west.
Don't get me wrong I love the idea of recycling and should be doing more of it myself but just don't think I will see a big push for it till one of those things happens
***I GOT NUTHIN***
I fear that "fragementation" of earths resources by components becoming smaller and smaller will soon threaten the economy.
:P ) being picked at by small children.
i recently visited a junkyard to obtain a part for my father's car, and realized that we currently cannot do this with comptuers! we can canabalize car parts, they are large enough to take a wrench to and transplant, but computer parts are too incompatible, become outdated way too fast, and are too small to canabalize.
i also saw a special on next@CNN a few months ago which highlighted this problem elsewhere -- asia. Asia has had a great leapstart on technology, and goes through technology much faster than we do in the "western" world. As a result, they have huge piles of waste of which they are mostly unable to "harvest" recycled material from. They showed footage of huge piles of circuitboard in Taiwan (or Thailand... one of the "T" countries
Even what they CAN salvage material from is hard, involving harsh chemicals and lots of work. Child labour is involved of course (its Asia..) and children are being routinely exposed to lead (in monitors) and chemicals to dissolve components on circuit boards.... very sad.
so kudos to panasonic for doing this!
Newsie, Moderator, www.tauniverse.com
The link is here
A snippet:
The Georgia Institute of Technology in partnership with Dell Computer Corporation of Round Rock, Texas is pleased to announce a one-day computer equipment-recycling event in Atlanta. The event will be held at the Alexander Memorial Coliseum parking lot on the Georgia Tech campus on Saturday, July 12, 2003 from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM. The Coliseum is located on 10th Street off the I-75/85 Connector in downtown Atlanta. Participants are asked to enter the Coliseum via Fowler and 8th Street. The general public is encouraged to bring any brand of old computer-related equipment--computers, computer monitors, keyboards, mice, printers or other peripherals to the site for collection and recycling by Dell.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
While landfill space may not be a priority in the United States, the toxic chemicals found in CRTs and other computer components should be. I remember seeing a news report regarding landfills with toxic runoff that caused health complications in nearby schools and neighborhoods. THAT is something to worry about.
Is food waste f-waste? Email is fine, ebusiness was tolerable. Give it up. It's old.
It is a little different burying paper/food waste vs. electronics. The paper/food will break down fairly harmlessly, but electronics have all kinds of nasties (arsenic, lead, a bunch of stuff I can't spell) that can easily leach into the water supply.
Besides, it's expensive getting metals out of the earth (as in mining them). Doesn't it make more sense to save money and recycle them?
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Preserve and restore nature's precious electrons!
"Recycling is only one part of a product's lifecycle"
this is the way it should be seen. too often american manufacturers see the end of the lifecycle as the minute it leaves the factory doors. the only thought given to what happens when the consumer is finished is in terms of when they will buy the replacement.
!(^((ri)|(mp))aa$)
Why would we do this. We've got MONTANA to fill up.
Check out this "related" article!
Environmental Group Fears Growing Problem of Digital Waste
"I'm not, like, that smart. I, like, forget stuff all the time." -- Paris Hilton
We've done other stuff, like take oil from backwards countries. Be careful, you are next.
Wow, this is a brilliant post. "We don't need to recycle 'cuz we still have plenty of room to put our massive amounts of garbage!". Seriously, that has to be the most unbelievably ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I don't *care* if there's lots of room to throw more garbage... it shouldn't go there in the first place. Especially things like circuit boards, etc, which contain many toxic chemicals (eg, lead, mercury, etc). Do *you* want this stuff seeping into your water table in 50 or a 100 years when the landfill lining breaks down (something which has happened at other sites already)?
Raw materials are something, for the most part, will run out eventually. If people are not concerned with the filling of Landfills in the US or any other country with lot's of free land, then they should be concerned with using all of the earths precious materials. Were going to have shortages in a lot of items, even in our lifetimes. Let's look ahead
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they have a "National Holiday" in Japan where people throw away old stuff, simply because it's old, even though it still works? I think this was what they used to fuel the 'full employment' they used to have.
Secondly, about
<I> Interestingly, all washing machines contain a balancing component filled with salt water to keep them on an even keel while spinning. This, too, is recovered to prevent it leaking and causing steel to rust before it can be removed. </I>
How come we don't do this here? My machine is awals walkong around the laundry room becaus of uneven loads. Can this be retrofitted?
Yeah, but Dubya will probably get it the wrong way round and start dropping old computer monitors on Baghdad.
"With the increasing number of high tech devices in Japan filling landfills, Japan has taken a proactive approach..."
huh? Clearly they are taking a reactive approach.
I hate the way people use buzzwords like proactive without stopping to think what they actually mean.
That's easy!
rm -rf *
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
The last thing I could be confused with is a "tree-hugging hippie," but we still need to start thinking ahead and come up with some better alternatives than creating more landfills.
The USA doesn't care about the environement. They only care about short term profit.
realkiwi
Besides, it's expensive getting metals out of the earth (as in mining them). Doesn't it make more sense to save money and recycle them?
If it did, there'd be a recycling station on every corner. So obviously, no, it's still cheaper to mine for "new" metal than to recycle.
GE Medical systems has a salvage operation, where they take field returns of computers, circuit boards, monitors, x-ray tubes, and traded-in equipment. They test items that have a demand, and resell them if possible, and then the rest goes into the process.
There is a group of people who snip the gold contact fingers off of circuit boards - the gold contacts go to one process, the boards go off to China for reuse of the components (so, that cheap Chinese toy you buy, might have 15 year old resisters that used to be in an Xray machine!). The CRTs are, as the article mentioned, separated for leaded vs. unleaded glass; chassis are stripped, steel & aluminum go off into their own recycling places.
Some of the more intersting stuff is the tungsten rotors from the Xray tubes - some seriously heavy stuff, and the mu-metal from inside of some monitors and image intensifiers. Some of the scrap they come up with is painfully expensive stuff, some of it is toxic, and all of it would end up in a dump somewhere if they weren't doing it.
Of course, GE being GE, they're not doing this just because it's a good thing to do, but I understand that they actually turn a profit at all of this. I'm guessing other GE businesses do it to, and I'd be surprised if there aren't dozens or hundreds of places in the US doing it already. If there aren't, maybe it'd be a good thing to look into.
This has been hammered down our throats since we were in grade school, but we often forget that Reduce and Reuse come first. Reduction isn't really an option these days, as everyone "needs" the fastest machine, and for most people scared of upgrades and custom-built systems, that means a brand new computer.
Instead of throwing them in landfills, spending a lot of money to recycle them, or leaving them to be smashed to bits by 10 year old Chinese girls trying to earn 15 cents for a teeny bit of copper, why can't we just set up an effective reuse program?
You can't tell me that there aren't millions of people all over the world who could make effective use of a 486 with a dot-matrix printer and open-source software, let alone the number of Pentium I & II's that are being abandoned left and right by the upper middle class in America.
It would cost less to ship them overseas than pick them apart, and actually HELP people.
Reduce, Reuse, THEN Recycle.
Actually, a lot of junkyard/recycler places in the US are starting to figure out they can make big bucks on recycling almost all of the parts from computers and other electronics. It used to be they would extract all of the metals and plastics, which would net them a few cents a unit. Now they can get a few bucks a unit by pulling chips and reselling them on the refurb market.
They just had a show about junkyards (I think it was Modern Marvels on the History Channel) which talked about this.
Recycling is actually big money in the US. Most people think we send vast quantities of junk to be dumped overseas, but in actuality a lot of that junk is scrap metal that is sent there to be recycled.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
"It's probably been renamed to Mount Oklahoma by now. :-) Just kidding."
:/
Why not? Wouldn't be much worse than a current effort to rename the North Canadian River the 'Oklahoma' River. FYI the North Canadian comes close to being an open sewer at various times during the year.
BTW, I'm a native Okie and not very proud of the actions of certain fellow citizens.
A government mandate requring manufacturers to recycle 50% of the parts of new televions will encourage manufacturers to continue making older, better understood, CRT based TVs.
New TVs based on LCD technology use much less than 1/2 the raw materials, but those components probably aren't as frequently recycled.
Therefore, consumers don't get the technology that they prefer, and more waste is generated. Thanks, government!
The answer: Charge a fee based on how nasty the stuff is to dispose of properly. Those components that get recycled are free of fees. The higher the fee - the more stuff that gets recycled - or not built in the first place, as people switch to other products not so environmentally damaging.
The problem with the answer: What would be the fee on a gallon of gas or a TV? No one can really be sure.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
Currently cheaper, yes. Given economies of scale, and adding in the cost of cleaning up dumping grounds full of poisonous metals, the answer might be different.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
The city of New New York has been garbage free for centuries, mostly because the city got rid of all its garbage in the 21st century by compacting it all into a big ball and firing it into space. The porn movie "The Great Garbage Crisis of NY" gives the historical details to this.
But later on when the giant garbage ball was discovered to be on retour course to hit Earth, something had to be done. After a failed attempt by the Planet Express crew to blow up the ball, Philip J Fry came up with the idea of constructing another ball of garbage, and firing it at the one in space in an effort to send it reeling off course. All of New New York did their part to make garbage, and Fry's plan was a success.
Thanks gotfuturama.com!
Here in California, we have a tax on many recyclable products (soda cans and bottles). The tax is called CRV and is usually something small, like $0.14. They refund the tax when you recycle the bottle or can. I think they should have a CRV for electronic components. That way, you might have more incentive to recycle them.
This message brought to you by Jack Schitt's Previously Shat Shit
Why does everything have to be called a war?
...abuse of which is a serious and growing problem
e .h tml
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2003/07/digital_wast
Maybe once every item has an RFID tag* embedded in to it, this automatic sorting will be no problem.
* the one potentially valid use for them after they leave the store
No Disassemble! Johnny Five Alive!
Electronics need to be designed for recycling. I'm sure that when a chip manufacturer is designing a new chip, recycling isn't even a consideration in the design. There are several elements that are ever increasing in the American economy faster than elsewhere in the world: energy prices, property taxes, health care expenses, living expenses, and entertainment. We are headed for the "Artificial Intelligence" future where we have to be mindful of the total cost of manufacturing something and looking at the value we get from that product. Is "X" product really that useful for society? How will it affect the environment (land fill or otherwise) after its usefulness is gone? Are there other uses for the material in that product? Are those materials easily disassembled or dismantled into component parts? This type of thinking will eventually persist in the USA one day, but not anytime in the near future. Let's face it, human existence is starting to get expensive. Why the hell do you think all those manufacturing and white collar computer science and science (chemistry, biology, etc...) jobs are moving to overseas markets?
If as typical, this article gets posted 3 times, is that recycling e-waste?
-Iowa
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
The discussion thusfar seems to have identified two major issues (and one minor one) that must be overcome before such a program could exist in the United States.
1. Land - We've got a lot of it over here, but the bottleneck to starting something like this is probably not so much a question of whether or not its easier to make landfills. The question is one of transport. How can any recycling operation afford to ship 22 pounds (10 kg) of monitor from an office in Lemmon, SD, once every 6 months, and still hope to turn a profit? Japan has the "advantage" of being compact. We don't.
2. Law - Landfills are cheap & easy. Recycling is less profitable. Will we be trying to implement this state by state? Does the federal government have any authority to mandate such a disposal regime under the interstate commerce power?
3. Will the RIAA object to anyone recycling a DRM enabled device under the DMCA?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Why not combine this with a computer-show type idea? Collect a bunch of crap to be recycled, then stick it on display on tables, and let the geeks comb it over? There's got to be a market for that sort of thig.. The more geeks take, the less Dell (or whoever's hosting) has to pay to recycle...
- DRFSR
Only the US does bad things.
Please report to your local slashdot reprogramming center.
Micheal and Tim will be with you shortly.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Maybe their landfills wouldn't be full of discarded electronics crap if they didn't manufacture useless, stupid "fad" electronic devices that sell by the million and get discarded a couple months later when the novelty wears off tamagotchi.
value of 468: 20 bucks.
cost of shipping overseas: 50+ bucks
cost of organizing all this: 20 bucks a mcahine
cost to refurbish, repair, wipe etcetra: 30 bucks a machine
Wild guesses, but you get teh meaning.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Mod up parent above! Totally agree!
Seriously.
bohanjim@ysaphaomo.com
Remove the spam.
First someone will get elected because they push the recycling initiative. Then they will discover that poor people are making more than thier minimum starvation wages. Then they will discover it is cheaper to ship it overseas than to build a recycling plant in West Virginia.
Then they will charge a deposit. Then after two years someone in the company was embzeling the money so the company goes out of business.
Or they will charge a deposit. The company goes public, stock shoots through the roof and then discover it's lucarative to charge even more for the depsoit.
I just don't see it being economically feasible in North America.
Thats what the government is for. When the raw, slimy greed starts to ooze out of capitalism and corrode the "American Way of Life(tm)", the government should step in and get people's and companies' acts cleaned up.
The government should say "Look, we know its going to cost you, and we know you're going to pass the cost onto the consumer, but you better start a recycling program, and stick to it." They've done the same to stop child labor, to enforce minimum wages, to increase air quality, and so on.
Of course, it doesn't work that way since our government sank into the slimepits, but thats another story. Its clear whose side the current government is on, what with the abolishing of overtime and (perceived?) failures in the punishment of enron and microsoft.
On the other hand, I know that several manufacturers have in fact begun recycling programs. Such as Dell, HP/Compaq, and even Gateway which was the hardest to turn up.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
* the one potentially valid use for them after they leave the store
Do you know how to think critically, or do you just believe everything you read in a +5, Insightful comment?
First, there is a shortage of landfill space for certain communities. The communities selling landfill space are merely reducing the landfill space for future generations.
Second, some things should not be land-filled because they are toxic to humans. It is pretty much impossible to design a landfill that will be safe for a significant amount of time. Most rational communities have recycling programs set up so these waste do not end up in the landfill. These are often funded out of the public purse.
The reason recycling efforts, and clean manufacturing efforts, tend not to work in the US is because commercial interests are allowed to externalize disposal costs to the government and future generations, and therefore not make the cost of clean up part of their business plan. Therefore, dirty operations are often artificially more profitable than clean operations.
The problem, as we seem, comes later when the mess has to be cleaned up and a new generation is asked to pay. We see this now with the superfund cleanup status of a number of defunct commercial entities.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The paper/food will break down fairly harmlessly
Food, yes, paper not really. Newspapers in landfills from the WWII era can still be read. Also, food is not really the problem, its all the packaging. Especially, if your like me and get single serving foods all the time.
Doesn't it make more sense to save money and recycle them?
If it were cheaper, yes. How long do you think it would take to get 5 tons of, say, copper from a mine vs. getting it from used electronics? I'm no mining expert, but I would imagine that its much easier to separate the valuable metals from dirt, etc. than it would be to separate them from other metals, plastics, glass, etc.
Why not!?! That big ditch needs to be filled sometime, and what better purpose than our IT waste! ;P
They should've gone with the radioactive approach and have Godzilla take care of it all in one breath.
"You know Myra, some people might think you're cute. But me, I think you're one very large baked potato."
HP also has a recycling program which was promoted recently on ScreenSavers. According to the HP representative they had on the show, they do much of the same as what was described in the main article above.
It was specifically stated in the interview that that was an official company benefit! Get yer grubby Chuck Taylors outta that dumpster!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What are you talking about? After this RFID buzz hit /., I was thinking about it quite a bit, and that was the only valid use I could see for them. I didn't read it on /. - in fact, I posted it here a while back.
Knowing how long a "disposable" product remains in the field after purchase would be invaluable information to have.
We're (US) to cheap to manufacture the stuff from a business stand-point do you think, unless federally mandated, there would be any recycling efforts here? Nope. Not to mention if we don't have the space to landfill it we can ship it somewhere else cheaper. Shitty additude but the truth.
I just don't see medical costs being economically feasable either, doesn't mean it isn't necessary. It all comes down to do you
A) Want to live in a non polluted clean environment
B) Want more cash in your pocket to purchase more shit.
In your case, its more shit to replace what's leaking out of your ears. Fuck off you cantakerous anal wart.
for years i worked for a non-profit who specialized in taking donated office equipment (read junk) and refurbished what was usable...
the trick is, what to do with all the stuff that isnt reusable? (cga monitors and the like)
for a long time we sent it to China, until we found out what happens to it in China (thrown in a large ditch for children to pick through)
We then looked into building our own demanufacturing facility (exactly what this stories poster is talking about, breaking down stuff to its components for recycling)
Problem is, safely breaking down CRT's for recycling requires a huge expensive machine. When we went to the State and Federal govts asking for funding for this the reply was "great idea, good luck finding the money"
so, its not like theres noone in the US willing to do this, its just that theres noone in the US willing to fund it.
I wonder if there will ever come a day when we're so short on resources that we start mining all own landfill to stuff to "refine" into raw material again.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Which Japan has started using as the plastic parts in Walkmans for instance a little info.
Don't know how viable it is, or how much it will catch on, but since they been talked about for a while and are now starting to be used, it could get interesting.
So, will the first alien contact be made by them coming to drop our shit off at our front door?
Or, imagine someone's saliva on something survies space travel and a whole new lifeform is put into another ecosystem.
Ideally, if we shoot into 'space' I'd like to see it shot directly into our own sun to burn up there.
Screw 'early release based on good behavior'... you should be able to cut your sentence down by providing accurate trash sorting without using a barbie leg to shank a fellow inmate.
Where I live, we used to have recycle bins that we sit out next to the curb on trash day. I usually had a full bin of glass containers, pop cans, and plastic items every week. Then one day, the city stopped doing that. So now I just toss all that stuff in the trash, because I am surly not going to take a 15 minute drive to the recycle place once a week.
Let's face it. We're too lazy to go out of our way to recycle our trash, and rightfully so, a lot of us have better things to do. So make it easy to recycle and I'm all over that. Make it difficult, and nobody will recycle. Pretty simple.
T
Most plastic (would say "all" but I'm not 100% sure 'bout that) doesn't recycle all that well. Something breaks down in the process such that the resulting plastic isn't as good as that newly produced. So most plastic ends up being reused in ways such as insulating filler for pillows and jackets. I know plastic soda bottles are used for that purpose; can computer plastics be used in a similar manner?
Anyway, until this is resolved, plastic will not be recycled as much as we'd all like. I for one hope that someone finds a way to prevent the degradation.
- Leo
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
"Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs."
Wow, this is a brilliant post. "We don't need to recycle 'cuz we still have plenty of room to put our massive amounts of garbage!". Seriously, that has to be the most unbelievably ridiculous thing I have ever heard.
Wow, I can't believe the flaming I'm getting. I'm a Canadian; I grew up with recycling and I live by it. I think it's stupid not to make an attempt to recycle everything you can. However, I was just trying to point out that economically it isn't feasible because there's little economic incentive to recycle this stuff, unlike in Japan.
I was making fun of the OKC landfill, not saying it was a model plan.
Sheesh, people! Calm down!
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Hmmmmm.I thought we were shipping all the waste from the good ole USA to Chiner. When the piles get big enough, somebody will figure out how to extract the valuable parts. Heck, maybe GWB and Tricky Dick will negotiate a secret contract with Haliburton to do this....
We are a society of extremely wasteful people. Just look at the way products are packaged these days with all sorts of non-biodegradable plastics with infused chemicals. My parents just bought a set of the gardening gloves but they were packaged in a horizontal manner that consisted of dense plastics. They used to tie gloves in a bundle now they incase them in plastics for loss prevention.
I would have to say a lot of products these days are packaged in a way that's best to reduce theft. As far as technology goes I doubt much thought goes into designing a pc that can best be recycled unless it's already running windows.
I think compartmentalizing the hazardous material parts on any device in it's design would be of some service. That way if you chose not to sell your pc or whatever else you could just seperate the parts and drop them off at a technology device recycling center with a bin for each type of part. We need some of those as I have yet to see one...although they might have them somewhere.
So what I'm saying is in terms of pc's they don't have to design them to be biodegradable because that won't happen. Compartmentalize in an intelligent manner that is best suited for easily recycling the parts because there are a lot of lazy people out there who'd rather throw it away than deal with it.
Hopefully when the disposable dvd's come out they have recycling centers for those and they should be funded by the companies who developed the technology. Those who develop wasteful practices and methods in the days of trying to reduce the problem should be responsible for collecting and recycling their wasteful products.
In all actuality I just hope that consumers reject that idiotic disposable dvd shit but as I said before laziness could make it a massive success. I bet if they throw in a free Big Mac then that would almost guarantee success...
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
...I like to think we are on headed in the right direction.. see here and here I have frequently visited Bo Brodie's company, Computer Recyclers Inc., an Ottawa company that deals in electronic junk. Brodie's firm takes in about half a million pounds of electronic junk a year. Not only will they take your old junk off your hands but they sell the stuff people get rid of that is still good. Win win if you ask me.
For example, TV and monitor tubes are opened with a special tool and separated into leaded and unleaded glass
I have a special tool for that too... it's called a sledge hammer! (!!!)
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
If recycling is unprofitable, what does that mean? It means that economic effort is being poured into it, poured down the drain and gone. That effort converts into energy use, resource use, time use, ingenuity use. With actual useful resource returns from recycling nowhere near 100%, are good resources being poured after bad?
Green-minded people seem IMO seldom to think that far.
Shhh...
Don't give him ideas now!
No, you can't wash your face in my sig!
Actually it's too dry to break down. Most of the stuff just sits there waiting for the cost of extracting the raw materials to drop enough to justify that use for them. It is still much cheaper for almost all materials, except aluminum, to be recreated rather than recycled. As technology improves this will change and there will be huge demand for old landfils which will be the next strip mines.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
OK, now that's just a nifty expression.
at some point, it may be co-opted, mass marketed and then overused into extinction, but for right now, really cool.
ed
The enviromental cause, like all causes needs an enemy. If one is not available, one will be fabricated. To this ended, the extreme pro-enviroment camp, who are also the most vocal, continue to promote the notion of the evil polluting industrialist. This, despit the decline in the population of this type of industrialist and the decline of their impact on corporate policy. That has left the extreme enviromental activist in a tough spot. Their usual responce is to vehemetly attack any corporation attempting to do anything pro-enviroment with the desire to derail such activities. This tactic has been quite successfull. Today, most buisness realise this, so tend to keep their activities out of the news. The semi-manufacturer I worked for did just this, which is why most people do not know about it.
This has got to be a supply/demand issue. Real estate drives the cost of disposal up enough to make it sensible to recycle versus mine. The only straightforward way for this to occur in the US is to have a government subsidy to make the cost of recycling equal to the cost of mining raw. Alternatively, time will drive the cost of mining raw material up and technology the cost of recyling down, so the cost-benefit ratio changes. Technology as salvation!
How is PCB made of and how toxic is it?
EvilCON - Made Famous by
I have a ton of old CD's, not just AOL, but things like old backups, etc... I'm not sure what's in CD's, so I don't like the idea of throwing them in the trash...
Hey... is it just me or can't we redirect all e-waste to /dev/null? Seems like the simplest/most cost effective way to me.
# fuser -v
#
In the European Union, any company that sells electronics have to also take care of it when the consumer dispose of it. The reseller then sends it back to the producer for recycling/disassembling.
The consumer in the end of course pays for this with higher prices on products, but as all producers that want to sell on the EU market have to do this, it doesn't favour any producer. In the end it favours all mankind as dangerous material get taken care of.
Computer equipment contains massive amounts of anti-flame chemicals so it will not cause massive fires. But these chemicals are highly toxic and get stored in animals and in the end cause cancer to humans that eat the animals.
They're opened with a special tool ... commonly known as a "hammer" :)</OnTopic>
Unfortunately what they don't tell you is that about 80% of the collected e-waste is shipped to third world countries. See export harm at:. htm
http://www.svtc.org/cleancc/pubs/technotrash
Dell uses prison labor to do their recycling. Recycling is usually pulling some parts which have little value and sending the rest overseas and to landfills.
However, there are systems such as plasma torch processes at ~8000 degrees C that are non-polluting
(everything is closed cycle) which can recover all the raw chemicals. Japan has these plants for household waste. Unfortunately no venture capitalist in the U.S. will back one (~10M) since they only have good profit returns rather than 10X returns in 2 years. I know, I wrote a business plan for one and found out disinterested they are in plants with just 'good' profit returns. My own university 'venture office' laughed and said come back when I had a biotech or computer idea.
Besides, it's expensive getting metals out of the earth (as in mining them). Doesn't it make more sense to save money and recycle them?
Unfortunately in some cases it doesn't (at least not to the corporations.)
I'm just wondering how long it will take for it to be economical to recycle, and who knows, cost of raw material may eventually go so high we'll start mining landfills, not to clean up the land, but to reclaim disposed materials.
Hopefully if we reach this point we'll do come cleanup at the same time, but I don't expect any corporation to do this in the United States unless they think they can make money doing it (or are following laws that force them to do so.)
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
pulling the valuable bits and depositing the trash after hours at their gate is pretty sleazy... do you leave them your egg shells and coffee grounds too? With any luck this will get you arrested for dumping, or at least littering... ps--if you're so proud of your town's free trash pickup, why not just USE it?
yum---extra benzene!
The technology is great, but there are obsticals to deployment here that have to be considered. One factor is transportation. If transportation costs can't be overcome, it might be best to toss things into a landfill. Another is how to justify the idea and how it would actually be implemented.
I would expect recycling to cost much more here becase we are so relatively spread out. Japan has half as many people as the US does, squezed into a space smaller than California with a large portion uninhabitable. They are predicting a cost of $25 to the end user who wants to get rid of something. You can't do so much as ship a fridge for that kind of money here, even all smashed up into scrap that has value.
Local manufacturing can make use of segregated scrap, but agian transportation for other feedstocks can hurt them. A secret ingredient of a cast iron drain maker in South Florida was oil filters. They had both steel and fuel! That is a local industry making use of something directly. It can work and it does.
The economic option for the US might just be to make things last longer and repair them. It would be just as easy to force makers of large appliances carry replacement parts for 20 years as it would be to force design changes for recycling. Stability like that would foster a secondary market for parts and support repair men rather than junk men. Either way you look at it, you are interfereing with the free market in a big way.
The justification for this inteference is that mass producers of heavy objects are creating waste that all of us must deal with. Makers of refidgerators and washing machines have been relatively free to profit off sales of tons of toxic materials that must be disposed of. Their feedback from the individuals who purchase may not be strong enough to promote responsible manufacturing. Cars that fall apart in five years are a prime example. Free market forces that worked to the advantage of makers of more durable vehicles have been thwarted by protectionist legislation. The solution may not be to make things easier to knock apart and thus less durable.
Think what the creators of planned obsolescence can do with legislation like this before you back it!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Can someone tell me how, exactly, lead that's locked up in CRT glass can possibly leach into the water supply?
I mean, we're not exactly talking soluble salts here, are we?
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
What does this have to do with harm? No one claimed that paper breaks down quickly, only that it breaks down (fairly) harmlessly. i.e. even if it takes a million years for your newspaper to break down, at least lead isn't getting into the groundwater.
I thought that in Japan you were supposed to feed old cellphones to your Aibo.
*shudder* That would involve helping organized religion.
Considering that virtually all electronic waste in the US is from deviced manufactured in companies overseas, I'm not sure how this will "work" in the US. Do you mean that we ship every single device back to japan, korea, thiland etc? Or do we do the melting down here and sell them the leaded glass and plastic etc?
In my first job, one of the customers was a glass recycler. They wanted to sort out the tubes by metal-composition for resale.
I have a special tool for that too... it's called a sledge hammer!
Gallagher's got a Slashdot account now. There goes the neighborhood.
ASA
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Designate an area around Seattle as an E-Dump. Dig lots of holes and bury any junk that will not run Linux because of Ms proprietary hardware. Then attach a new product recycling fee to all electronic communication devices and MS windows software itself. Wow the value of moded versions Xboxs might even go up! Canada can designate an area just north of the 49th about half a mile from the Peace Arch, and do the same thing.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
In Switzerland, you pay an "Anticipated Recyling Tax" on all electric and electronic equipment at the time of purchase, about 5% of the price of the item. I don't believe that you get that money back; it probably goes to subsidize the cost of recycling.
Considering that all electronics will eventually be disposed of at some time, it's smarter to collect the fee up front. It reminds the consumer of the eventual environmental impact that the item will have by factoring it into the price. Collecting the fee at the time of the sale is also more logistically workable than trying to collect it when the item is being thrown away.
The E in E-whatever stands for "electronic" not "electronics". Hence E-mail means "electronic mail" and E-business means "electronic business". The media and massively stupid people have forgotten what the E actually stands for and misuse it constantly. Remember E-machines? I always wondered how the hell they box an electronic machine. For Gods sake, would all the stupid morons of the world stop misusing E to mean anything "computer". Japan is recycling its electronics, not its E-waste! Grrrr, I'm so angry now.
Japan is a very crowded country; most Japanese live in large urban areas where the average home has approximately 800 square feet of interior space. (In Tokyo that number is reduced to approximately 660 square feet). As a result there is simply no space for anything unnecessary, making recycling a necessity. People in Japan tend to buy things, use them for a while, then dispose of them when the newest, latest, greatest thing is affordable. As a result the Japanese have become very good at recycling. We can learn a lot from their knowledge. Of course, it would probably be better for the planet to be a bit less acquisitive.
...than Japan burns nearly all of it's waste, creating huge downwind dioxen fallout areas of hundreds of thousands of square kilometers. ...and after thinking about it for a good long while, you come to realize that, if China is going to take our jobs, they can damned well take our toxic waste too.
Maybe something like ebay could help out then. something like the old coupon clippers/swap clubs used to operate. People would swap around their "recycling rebate" coupons to get what they wanted. A modern equivalent with the recycling credits maybe would work. Especially if it was universal. I have zero problems with mandated recycling to manufactureres, domestic or imports. If people could get back 10 or 20 bucks per electronic toy, they WOULD hang onto the devices and then make a trip to the recycling centers. Suppose you waited until you had several items to get the recycling rebate back from, make a trip, get the cash, buy a new toy. Sounds like a winner to me. I remember I was in a state when they started a 5 cent per soda and beer can thing. The time previous, the roadsides were covered with casually tossed out cans, within a month or so after the nickle law went into effect, you hardly saw a can, and the companies didn't "go out of business" like they kept claiming. The same for virtually all manufactured durable goods would work, IF the recycling rebate was high enough, and if it applied to all the manufactureres, the prices (and society) would adjust quickly. Well, IMO, of course. Creates useful jobs also and helps reduce pollution, a triple win.
I remember seeing a show on PBS, I think it was a Frontline. We take our recyclables and sell it to China. One town was littered with the stuff. The towns people melt the gold and other metals out in homade cauldrens and dump the rest in the local rivers.
Yeah, go ahead and mod me down, bastards.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
If Matsushita(Isn't that AKA Panasonic?) would just move their industry over to the west of Japan, it would be a win/win situation. More stuff to recycle = more profit from recycling, and the locals (though many of them make a living digging in the waste heaps) would probably appreciate the cleanup.
E-Waste recycling is only in very specific cases profitable. Plastics used with electronics usually use flame-retardants which makes it very costly to recycle. Chips are pulled for refurb, but remember that technology goes out of date really quickly. There are still big barrels of chips that get processed for the metals. But this is barely profitable, and only when the chip can be easily removed from other parts. The worst are CRT's, which average about 8lbs of lead a piece. There used to be a couple plants in the States that would pay to melt down the leaded glass, but I believe they went out of business. The vast majority of these monitors end up in China, where they're taken apart by villagers (including children) in extremely unsafe conditions. Check out Exporting Harm, by the Basel Action Network for more info on that. If recycling E-Waste were so profitable, then organizations like StRUT would not be on the rocks. I've visited their warehouse, and I'll tell you they run a tight ship. But they only use vendors who recycle materials responsibly, and that requires lots of money. Beware companies that will take your electronics for free, especially monitors. It's a sure sign they're sending stuff to China.
continue to promote the notion of the evil polluting industrialist.
I've worked in the waste industry. I've seen what happens when you allow companies to self-police themselves. Your semiconductor manufacturer could have been injecting acid into elementary schoolkids' lunches and as long as you kept out of the news and didn't get caught, everything was just fine.
And on the odd event that an EPA inspector does come by, you've probably already spent years forging the kind of relationship where a few thousand dollars will let him overlook the "special sauce" you're donating to schools. After all, thats the FDA's jurisdiction, right?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
My company sells the equipment used in recycling electronic scrap and I can tell you for a fact there are over a hundred firms involved in recycling electronic scrap and making money doing it.
You can check out a typical system for electronic scrap recycling at: http://www.rossmach.com
One sad fact is this domestic industry's biggest threat is competition from low-wage labor shops in asia who will buy the material loose in sea containers.
www.hiredinsight.com
You have know idea what you are talking about. Your comment reeks of ignourance and unsupported predjudace. I have found that your type is best ignored because the last thing you want are facts. So go back to garbage collecting. Its what your best at. The lack of critical reasoning skills in some of the /. readership is apalling. Obviously you did not even realy read my post. "Oh no, he's defending industry. ATTACK! ATTACK". BTW, I've seen what happens when politician do the policing. I've also seen the results of knee-jerk enviro-wacko activism.
Considering that we get like 90% of our electronics from Asia anyway, we don't have to do anything over here.
Oh gee, what now...
You claim If one is not available, one will be fabricated. To this ended, the extreme pro-enviroment camp, who are also the most vocal, continue to promote the notion of the evil polluting industrialist. So, in one sentence you imply that there are no enemies available. In the next sentences you say that the pro-environment camp are making up the "polluting industrialist" notion, when the "polluting industrialist" camp is "declining in population".
I simply pointed out that in the current set of affairs its possible that the population is quite steady, but they've just gotten less honest and quit turning themselves in. In terms of Garbage Collection, my job is hazmat waste stream approvals (Can company X dump stream Y into landfill Z which is rated for certain classes of materials?). I've seen everything, from companies who send us the exact same sample reports year after year (you don't think we check them against each other? Do you honestly believe we think you can get the exact same volatiles to 5 decimal places year after year?), companies who have forged analysis reports, companies who report one waste stream and ship another (we do check the trucks at the landfill gates, you know. If we approve displaced "construction debris and soil", it better not show up glowing green). I've even been called by a landfill because I "misspelled" my signature on an approval (it was forged, badly). So don't tell me what I do or do not know. I know that on a daily basis, corporations are trying to put things into the dirt that don't belong there without treatment first. But shareholders don't like having to spend that money.
Do I think corporations are out to get me personally? Hell no, they're just after the shareholder's bottom line, is all. I mean sure, if I approve something and it turns out to be toxic, then I'm the one facing the federal charges (pfft, like I think my company is going to shield me, its got its shareholders to worry about too), but thats ok, because some shareholder somewhere got a few extra cents on the dollar. This is what I'm talking about when I talk about capitalist greed.
And yeah, politicians doing the policing sucks too. Which is why, once upon a time, the government actually spent the money to get real engineers, and important decisions were made by real engineers, and not by managerial pencil pushers who have never done any research into an environmental impact statement beyond reading one already prepared for them by their staff. Now, the government is run by two groups: Managers, and Lawyers.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Besides, it's expensive getting metals out of the earth (as in mining them). Doesn't it make more sense to save money and recycle them?
If it did, there'd be a recycling station on every corner. So obviously, no, it's still cheaper to mine for "new" metal than to recycle.
And as an addendum to that, money is usually a fairly good estimate of the amout of overall energy invested in something. If it costs $1 to mine and $10 to recycle, where do you think that $10 came from? Why is it 10x as much? Does it require 10x the amout of energy to extract the goods (i.e. burning more fossil fuels)? Does it require costly chemicals that are 10x as dangerous to manufacture?
At some point that money translates to an energy input from the environment (some company has to sell 10x the number of widgets, and those widgets use up 10x the amount of raw do-dads and those raw do-dads require 10x the cubic feet of rainforest to be cut down), which mean it actually are probably hurting the environment by recycling more than helping it if you are paying more for recycled goods.
Wow, this is a brilliant post. "We don't need to recycle 'cuz we still have plenty of room to put our massive amounts of garbage!". Seriously, that has to be the most unbelievably ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I don't *care* if there's lots of room to throw more garbage... it shouldn't go there in the first place.
Until it's cheaper to recycle than to build anew, any attempt a recycling actually makes the problem WORSE. How can this be? Follow this line of reasoning and you'll see:
Say it takes $1 to mine a block of tin and $5 to recycle a block of tin of the same size.
Now, there are two questions here. First, why is there a difference in price? Does it require more power to run the machinery? If so, where does that power come from? (Hint, Oil!) Does it require more expensive chemicals or parts? If so why are those things so expensive? (Hint, probably higher energy costs, thus Oil again)
The second question to consider is, how is the company buying the tin going to pay for it? They can't just make money out of the blue, they've got to sell more of whatever they make. Selling more means spending more money, using more energy, and sucking up more raw and recycled resources by implication. Selling more also means more garbage in the long run. The other option for reducing costs in order to pay for recycled materials is to cheapen the quality of the goods being sold. This usually ends up meaning more disposable packaging and goods with a shorter life span, and even more garbage.
Until you reach the point where recycling costs the same or less than getting the raw material, recycling doesn't neccessarily help the environment.
You blast the company I worked for without knowing anything. Your opinion is actualy not all that valid as it is based on a very distorted data set. Its like a Cop, who thinks everyone is a criminal. It was a knee-jerk reaction that I usualy associate with the enviro-wackos, though I don't think you are one. Actualy, I think your just yanking my chain. Enviro-wacko is the term I use to describe the reactionary activist driven by spoon-fed propaganda and not scientific fact ( damn I need a new keyboard, this thing sucks). I use this term to distinguish them from eviromentalist whos concerns and activities are based on scientific data and understanding. This group gets very little airtime ( though they are the majority) as the are not nearly as fun as the envior-wackos.
I had planed on responding to your responce with some details. But I don't think I can. If you realy do what you say you do, wich I have no reason to doubt, then almost anything I say will give you enough clues to identify the company. From your other post I suspected that you were involved with material disposal. My brother was also invoved withit at one tiem. That why the garbage collecter jibe, which obviously worked.
Unfortunatly, the current buisness climate, is removing the decision making from company execs and giving it to a facless collection of institutional stock collectors, driven by the Wallstreet reality distortion field. In other words, groups of individuals are not at the reins any more but rather an abstracted collective consciensnes incapable of enviromental concerns. You want an enemy, there's your enemy. All of the progress made by individual corporate execs twords enviromental protection are slowly being eroded away. The enviro-wackos are helping to accelerate this. They also provide an enviromentalist stereotype in the minds of wallstreet types. Execs need to be very carfull not to be associated with enviromentalism or the stereotype will be applied to them, kiss the corporate ladder goodbye. I have a feeling that the company that I had worked for is not the same company as when I was there. The BOD apperanyly has concolidated its grip. This makes leaving clues to the identity of the company even touchier ( and not only does my keybord suck, I can't spell and am getting tiered).
What I will say is that the company was founded by scientist and engineers. It was ran by engineers and scientist untill very resently. Being scientist, they had an appriciation for scientic matters, including enviromental science. They always tried to do the right thing. These guys were not out to make a killing, they just wanted to make the best stuff. But it turns out that in the long run, doing things the right way, in an enviromental sence, also make buisness sence ( though short sighted buisness types fail to see this). Well while doing things the right way there was an incident. It scared the shit out of a lot of people. Corporate managment decided that following the rules was not good enough. I was directly involved with some of the activites that followed. I spent a year running around tracking down chemicals usage and disposition, i.e what chemicals were used, why were they used, how were they used, what alternatives coulds be used, what biological effect, what enviromental effect, what was done with the chemical after they were used, what els
Ok, I admit choosing to attack your company was in poor taste, I should have thought harder when coming up with an example. Honestly, I have no intention of trying to look up your company or do anything of the sort. The entire reason we can have a discourse like this is because of the anonymity of the internet and I'd like to keep it that way. I'm sure if someone figured out I was going on about all the things here at work I'd be out of a job as well.
No hard feelings?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Now, there are two questions here. First, why is there a difference in price?
Its called economies of scale. In general, I'd wager that recycling, while more expensive in small operations, can be profitable on a large scale.
Moreover, unless recycling becomes more prominent, there simply will not be enough dollars put into optimizing existing recycling processes or inventing new, efficient methods of recycling currently unrecyclable products. Thus, we have a bit of a chicken and egg problem. How you wish to solve it is your problem (I'm a Canadian, and we recycle quite a bit of our waste... here in Edmonton, we have one of the largest recycling facilities in the country). One way is government regulation, another is things like tax breaks for corps doing work in the area. I'm sure there are many other solutions.
The second question to consider is, how is the company buying the tin going to pay for it?
There are many ways... for example, you can pass the cost onto the consumer in the form on a small additional tax/levy on the product. Combine this with things like government incentives (tax breaks, etc), and there are many solutions to this problem. So, no, you don't have to sell more or cheapen the goods (which ends up being the thesis for the rest of that paragraph).
What you said sounds really interesting - I'd heard about plasma torch disposal of waste a year or two ago, but never any more about it. I'd really like to see what you had put together for a business plan for your university. Our town in NH is in the middle of closing our landfill and building a transfer station to the tune of a total cost of ~23 million. I'd love to present a better option to our city council. Please drop me an email (I'm hoping you read this) to bsh@inforonics.com so I can learn more. Thanks.
here are many ways... for example, you can pass the cost onto the consumer in the form on a small additional tax/levy on the product. Combine this with things like government incentives (tax breaks, etc), and there are many solutions to this problem. So, no, you don't have to sell more or cheapen the goods (which ends up being the thesis for the rest of that paragraph).
Yes, you are absolutly right, because people can make money out of thin air and never have to deal with the consequences...
So, you have just moved one run down the ladder, but the question still remains.. How do the people pay for the more expensive goods? Do they work longer hours (Sucking up food and electricity)?
So, you have just moved one run down the ladder, but the question still remains.. How do the people pay for the more expensive goods? Do they work longer hours (Sucking up food and electricity)?
Oh puhlease! Yeah, 5 cents on each can or bottle you buy is a *real* hardship. Yup, I'm really gonna have to work longer hours for that. Phew! Honestly, were you able to type that with a straight face?
It takes more energy and resources (electricity, water, etc...) to recycle a tree's worth of paper, than it does to harvest a new tree and process it into paper.
I don't know who told you this, but it's a complete and utter lie. In fact, the energy savings are what makes paper recycling enconomically viable in the US and Canada--raw material costs are often actually *higher* for recycled fibre than for virgin fibre, but the savings in energy and effluent treatment costs more than make up for that.
Caveat: producing fine paper grades with high brightness requirements (e.g. office paper) from recycled fibre will probably never make sense economically. But as far as newsprint, Light-Weight Coated (magazines, catalogs), paperboard (cereal boxes, book covers, etc.), tissue paper and corrugated cardboard are concerned, it most certainly does make sense to use as much reclaimed fibre as possible. The factors limiting recycled content are tensile strength requirements (recycled fibres are on average shorter than virgin) and the availability of waste paper.
Here's an example from recent news, which gives details on the energy cost savings in one specific case: Abitibi-Consolidated's Deink Line Innovation Moves Thorold to 100% Recycled Newsprint
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!