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Beijing Sweetens Rubbish With Giant Deodorant Guns
An anonymous reader writes "Beijing plans to install 100 deodorant guns at a landfill site on the edge of the city in the hopes that it will dampen complaints about the capital's rubbish crisis.The giant fragrance sprayers will be put in place by May at the Asuwei dump site. From the article: 'Municipal authorities say they will also apply more plastic layers to cover the site in response to furious protests by local residents who have to put up with the stench when the wind blows in their direction. The high-pressure guns, which can spray dozens of litres of fragrance per minute over a distance of up to 50m, are produced by several Chinese firms and based on German and Italian technology. They are already in use at several landfill sites, but they are merely a temporary fix.'"
Now it will smell like rubbish and perfume! Two great scents that go great together!
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I wonder how much of that landfill is recyclables? Dunno if that's a stock photo of a landfill or something, but I see a lot of plastics there...
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slashdot goes dead while all geeks in world rush to be the next in line...
I don't get it.. what is the point of this story on the front page?
There's no tech angle to it, nothing remotely nerd worthy to discuss.
Can we focus on something real here?
This is like when people smell horrid after they come out of the gym full of other horrid smelling people, have somewhere to be and just take a cologne bath.
When you do that it just smells like the bathroom after someone comes out waving their spray can.
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They should instead spray on biological reactants to absorb odors and/or biodegradation accelerators to speed up the process.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
The high-pressure guns, which can spray dozens of litres of fragrance per minute over a distance of up to 50m
I'm just counting the days until department store cosmetics departments get this. In the arms race between perfume demonstration ladies and shoppers passing through the department, I think someone has just gone nuclear.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
News at 11: Researchers discover the deodorant was actually a mutagen. Half of Beijing is dead. The other half have turned into mutant zombies...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
I am not deluded (or I should probably say 'optimistic') enough to be one of the "Let's save the planet!!" types, but seriously, with our modern technology shouldn't there be a way to break down various forms of 'garbage' into its rawest state for productive use in something else? If not, what about just breaking it down to where it doesn't take up so much space so that we can postpone the inevitable for a few more decades so that our posterity can languish in it for slightly longer?
And no. I am not talking about recycling. That is one of those voluntary things that so few people participate in. I am talking about the tried proven method of paying some poor sap to clean the crap up so that we don't have to be bothered with finding a specially colored wastebin (which itself will probably end up in a landfill as opposed to being 'recycled').
/.'s stuff that matters is also about the matter that stuffs.
This matter we produce, stuffs us, we don't know what to do with it. Futurama of-course tackled this problem, all that is needed is a giant rocket to take every piece of garbage off this rock and dump it into the space. Later, when more garbage is created, all we do is throw the second pile at the first. One of them will fly into the Sun.
On the other hand it looks like soon enough there will be a huge opportunity for new ways of recycling this shit by turning it into energy by applying various types of bacteria that eat it and burp or poop up carbons.
You can't handle the truth.
You end up with char, oils, combustible gases, energy and more space.
Deleted
Is it just me or is anybody else worried about what they'll end up putting in these sprayers? It doesn't help much if it's something loaded with CFCs or something. Also, is covered the thing in plastic a good idea? If they starve the landfill of air wouldn't everything decompose more slowly?
They are actually spraying a relabeled version of Axe: New Jersey Breeze. With Jersey's fiscal crisis, they could no longer afford it. Jersey's loss is China's gain.
reeeally? so they'll dump thousands of liters of chemical spray (hello febreeze knock off) and this is somehow better than either making or enforcing a few basic rules on landfill usage?
china just gets more interesting by the minute as a benchmark for human tolerances to just about everything.
Wasn't there a company that built a $400 million trash factory that burned trash into a tiny, inert substance, generating enough energy in the process to generate income and pay for the factory? Whatever happened to them? I would think China would love to use their tech.
Car analogy? Maybe!
When I was a mechanic we used Brake Cleaner for all sorts of things. It left no residue, removed most nasty crud that needed to be removed and worked wonders removing moisture from electrical circuits. The problem was that it was pretty nasty smelling stuff. It completely evaporates leaving most of the chemicals floating around the shop for awhile.
Then one day I open a new case of the stuff and start using it on a brake job. Whoa! New smell! Apparently, the manufacturer thought it would be a good idea to add fragrance to the cans to make it more acceptable.
The problem was that the FRAGRANCE did NOT evaporate. It hung on to whatever it was sprayed on. We actually had several customers return their cars because of the smell (especially once the brakes got hot from use).
I returned the rest of the case, and the vendor took it back without question as they had been getting numerous complaints...the fragrance ended up being worse then the original problem.
On another note, I don't even go to the local mall anymore because all the vendors pump fragrances out the front doors of the individual shops. I usually have a doozy of a headache after being in there for more then 10-15 minutes.
is this deodorant reducing stench by adding an odor, or does it kill the bacteria that is decomposing the waste? or both?
I have friends that are allergic to fragrances. That would suck to live close to these land fills and go from a horrible smell to constant congestion.
This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my entire life, okay maybe not but it's up there. Maybe they need to learn to stop throwing out so much trash.
mixed with the rancid scent of garbage is a pleasing scent of lilacs. From that point forward lilacs will have the scent of garbage and lilacs in the minds of everyone whom smells it. yummy yummy so good for my tummy
"The laws of science be a harsh mistress." --Bender
This seems pretty appropriate for Chinese Society and Government at large. I have to wonder if logic enters into the decision making process at all.
Take for example when I was living in an Apartment in Beijing where we were having issues with a light fixture in one of my roommates room. After several weeks of prompting to repair guy to sort it out, he comes over at 7am, while I'm getting ready for work, enters the roommates room... Stands on his bed (with his dirty shoes on) WHILE my roommate is still sleeping, and begins dismantling the fixture, dropping paint flakes etc from the ceiling onto the bed... all while smoking.
Or a more direct comparison is the Chinese solution to pollution right before the Olympics: Turn off the factories for a few days...
Didn't think "Hey, maybe we should keep the factories from polluting so much ALL the time..."
They're even censoring the smell of rubbish!
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
It would be our problem! At least that's what I remember from one of my childhood bedtime stories.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
great, instead of ass smell, now they get lemon ass...
to go the x-tremegeek website and look up product 2800582, or do a search for Kobayshi
leave a bottle with a post-it to "please use"
You could totally use this technology on slashdot readers! /the missing step?
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
...that trash is a mix of valuable resources, already digged out of the ground and preprocessed. You only have to filter what you want to take out, and recycle it. A good machine that can sort the pulverized stuff by mass and perhaps other chemical properties, might be able to recycle nearly all of that stuff. Biodegradables become mineral-rich earth. Glass is obviously useful. Metals even more so, and often very valuable. Plastics can also be recycled nowadays. I bet with all the electronics, that landfill contains more gold than a normal gold mine.
All that is an opportunity to make money from it. As long as it’s not transformed to something less useful than what’s digged out of the ground, there’s money in it.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
So what kind of substandard shit will China be spraying all over Beijing?
Now if only I can convince the Chinese government to install one in my boss' office.
Febleeze
Rather than address the problems at the source - Reduce, Re-use, Recycle would be a start - the complaints and proposal is about covering up the problem at the end of the chain. This "cure" is if anything worse than the disease.
China's enthusiastically converted their country to one big foul toxic wasteland, but this is our shared fate, if such backwards responses to the problem are the best we can do.
Start with Use Less. Don't buy overpackaged goods or small packages. Re-use packaging and bags. Do recycle. Humans were resourceful enough to make (and keep on making) the mess; now we have to be smart enough to change our ways.
There is no Planet B.
you had me at #!
Just cover up the problem and it will go away. Classic.
If the trash over there is a big enough problem to require deodorant guns it sounds like it's also big enough to use those high-volume plasma incinerators.
Wouldn't this be better used on protestors at any world summit???
Finally, a correct use of the tag for once!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Many fragrances are toxic.
Thus this is adding insult to injury.
Worse fragrances in "everything" are implicated in the epidemic of childhood asthma.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
I can get a migraine attack if I am subjected to too much perfume, and there are a lot of other people with the same problem.
I (we) already have to avoid perfumed people at work, when travelling and standing in line for something. Now, all of us with the same sensitivity are being locked out of that chinese neighbourhood completely.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Next, they will have their citizens stand downwind so that they can also avoid taking showers.
Why oh why don't these countries use incinerators? Incinerators can generate energy out of garbage, and pollution is no longer an issue with modern filters. The metal bits - even nonmagnetic metals like copper and aluminum - can be easily recovered out of the ash and recycled. The remaining ash takes up a fraction of the landfill space otherwise required, and doesn't stink. Landfills are primitive and wasteful.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Sure...setting up high power machines that can spray dozens of liters of "fragrance" per minute over a distance of 50m sounds safe. I totally trust that it is safe to breath that stuff.