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The Chinese Town Where Old Christmas Lights Go
retroworks writes "Shanghai based reporter Adam Minter visits where recycled Christmas Tree lighting goes in China. Visiting Shijao, the town known as the Mecca for Christmas tree light recycling, he finds good news. The recycling practices in China have really cleaned up. Plastic casings, which were once burned, are now recycled into shoe soles in a wet process. Minter concludes that even if you try to recycle your wire in the U.S., the special equipment and processes for Christmas light recycling have been perfected in China 'to the benefit of the environment, and pocketbooks, in both countries.'"
Not really. Ever hear of RoHS?
That means that every toy you buy has a planned obsolescence, and that it will be less harmful for Chinese villagers to wade through your garbage.
Everybody wins! Corporations get to sell you the same thing every 2 years, Chinese peasants get cancer later in age, and, well, that's it. But keep buying that crap - you are the pillar of the American economy.
Indeed, if there's a weak environmental link in the chain, it's the American consumers who start it by buying tens of millions of pounds of Christmas tree lights every year, only to throw them into the recycle bin, guilt free, when a bulb breaks. But Li, for one, doesn't mind: that waste is the raw material for his green business.
The real story is that Americans are so wasteful that they'll throw away a string of lights for the sake of one bulb.
BTW wonder how their process will deal with LED lights?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Exactly. Human soles are eternal after all.
Ever hear of RoHS?
While I'm sure there's a US equivalent, this is an EU directive. And while I've made the occasionally entreaty for Europeans to pay for our (US's) boondoggles, they aren't putting out. For some reason, it isn't going the other way either.
Surely in this case "the Jerusalem for Christmas tree light recycling" would be more fitting?
Surely in this case "the Jerusalem for Christmas tree light recycling" would be more fitting?
No, Mecca is the better word - there's a reason we use it. We say something is the 'mecca' for an activity or industry because of the Hajj. Almost two million foreigners a year visiting one city for one specific ritual makes a pretty good metaphor for colossal, single-minded undertakings - the kind of single-mindedness you see in one town recycling billions of pounds of electrical waste, for example.
Evoking Jerusalem would be a confusing and less accurate metaphor for the sake of being cute.
Now we'll get to listen to conservative bitching about overregulation and how without so many damn environmental laws that recycling could happen here. Then the liberals will answer that corporations would never pay a living wage, or even minimum wage, to do that here when it can be done by miserable overworked hut dwellers in China - environmental laws or not.
They're both probably right, and both answers make me equally depressed. Exporting work and materials that American liberals won't allow here because of well-meaning but often moronic regulations, but which American conservatives probably wouldn't do here anyway because they're cheap fucks.
I need a drink.
I trade the market and this was always a question for me, can the Chinese be innovative. And here we have it, they can be innovative. Not that I thought they couldn't. I was just wondering WHEN.
Here is the problem that the US faces, less so in Europe. WTF does America do anymore? I mean really?
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Could you have come up with the idea of watering down milk and then adding a poisonous chemical that shows up as protein in some tests to cover it up?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
From the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:
"Mecca (as n. a Mecca) a place which attracts people of a particular group or with a particular interest: Holland is a Mecca for jazz enthusiasts."
Mecca in the dictionary has two meanings, as A noun and as a proper noun. We're using one form here, the other form being completely irrelevant. But I wish you all the best of luck in getting a correct and common use of an English word changed.
"CHICOM propaganda ... unfortunately, the CHICOMs still use a single 9mm in the back of the head for dissidents"
Too bad we don't do that for financial crimes. Ever see pics of Chinese executions?
Our smug Wall Streeters who just blew up our economy would look less smug facing shame and shooting. THAT would be an edifying spectacle.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
They are connected in series in ORDER to fail. THAT'S THE POINT.
I wonder why should two different people waste mod points on an AC who spews bullshit like this.
They are in series because it saves a lot of copper. In series you use one thin wire and no transformer is needed. You add enough low-voltage bulbs in series to get the line voltage and the current is that of one single bulb.
If they were in parallel you'd need two wires thick enough to transmit the total current of all the bulbs added together, plus a transformer to lower the voltage. Those tiny bulbs cannot have too much voltage because the filament must fit inside them, the higher the voltage the longer the filament must be. There's a limit on how thin you can draw a tungsten filament, so ultimately it must be made longer to have the needed impedance.
well-meaning but often moronic regulations
There are people who don't realize how immensely detailed regulations must be to work. When regulations don't let recyclers release some toxic waste the result is that everything becomes toxic waste.
Unfortunately those people didn't learn from history. The theory was that a well planned and regulated economy would be more efficient than capitalism, and too many people cannot see that things don't work that way.
Countries with planned economies could never make detailed enough plans for it to work efficiently. If you do not produce enough six-millimeter bolts with hex heads you will not be able to make enough 1/4 HP electric motors so you will not have enough refrigerators.
When you consider all the different products an industrial economy needs you would need the whole population of the country working in the plans to make sure all the items needed will be available.
That's what's called "capitalism". A feedback system where the production of the economy is dynamically adjusted as needed. There's a control variable to allow one to compare the relative urgency in producing each item, this variable is called "price".
Government regulation should be limited to overall guiding principles, not detailed specifications.
Auto manufacturing, aviation manufacturing, nautical manufacturing, space manufacturing, and high tech manufacturing. Grain production, dairy production, meat production, fruit production, and vegetable production. Software, movies, books, websites, music, and television.
And it all sucks. Yes, I generalize... but my point is valid:
Our automobiles are a total and outright embarrassment.
We're making evolutionary (rather than revolutionary) advances in aviation (if you call over-complicating them an advance - fly by wire, anyone?) but who's going to buy them, who wouldn't already be manufacturing their own?
Nautical manufacturing? For, pleasure boats? No; that chapter is clearly coming to a close as there'll soon be no middle class left to sustain that. Commercial fishing? Right! Cargo freighters and oil tankers? Perhaps for a little longer, but it's hardly a growth industry; the days of cheap goods and affordable oil (subsidized by the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency) are coming to an end and anyone with a brain cell can see that.
Our food production? Sure... if you call that pesticide-ridden, nutritionally-devoid, utterly-without-flavor sludge "food," then you're absolutely right.
Books, movies, software? Pfft. How much do you think those "industries" are actually contributing to this country (as opposed to the corporate coffers conveniently located in tax shelters?)
No, we're fucked... and anyone who says otherwise is either a total moron or has an agenda.
I can't remember the last time I was offered an electronic device that doesn't purport to be RoHS-compliant. Even electronic components are almost always RoHS now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"