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posted by takyon on Tuesday June 23 2015, @09:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the wasting-away dept.

Aaron C. Davis writes in the Washington Post that recycling, "once a profitable business for cities and private employers alike," has become a "money-sucking enterprise." Almost every recycling facility in the country is running in the red and recyclers say that more than 2,000 municipalities are paying to dispose of their recyclables instead of the other way around. "If people feel that recycling is important — and I think they do, increasingly — then we are talking about a nationwide crisis," says David Steiner, chief executive of Waste Management, the nation's largest recycler.

The problem with recycling is that a storm of falling oil prices, a strong dollar and a weakened economy in China have sent prices for American recyclables plummeting worldwide. Trying to encourage conservation, progressive lawmakers and environmentalists have made matters worse. By pushing to increase recycling rates with bigger and bigger bins — while demanding almost no sorting by consumers — the recycling stream has become increasingly polluted and less valuable, imperilling the economics of the whole system. "We kind of got everyone thinking that recycling was free," says Bill Moore. "It's never really been free, and in fact, it's getting more expensive."

One big problem is that China doesn't want to buy our garbage any more. In the past China had sent so many consumer goods to the United States that all the shipping containers were coming back empty. So US companies began stuffing the return-trip containers with recycled cardboard boxes, waste paper and other scrap. China could, in turn, harvest the raw materials. Everyone won. But China has launched "Operation Green Fence" — a policy to prohibit the import of unwashed post-consumer plastics and other "contaminated" waste shipments. In China, containerboard, a common packaging product from recycled American paper, is trading at just over $400 a metric ton, down from nearly $1,000 in 2010. China also needs less recycled newsprint; the last paper mill in Shanghai closed this year. "If the materials we are exporting are so contaminated that they are being rejected by those we sell to," says Valerie Androutsopoulos, "maybe it's time to take another look at dual stream recycling."


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  • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday June 23 2015, @03:32PM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday June 23 2015, @03:32PM (#199928) Journal

    Insightful? Really mods? Lets try thinking about this logically, mmkay? Lets say his "20 years instead of 2" was applied......would you REALLY want to run a PC from say 1997? A phone? Hell even TVs have come a pretty long way since then!

    Lets use myself as an example...I just replaced my 4 year old phone and my 6 year old PC, now did I HAVE to replace those? Nope the Phenom X6 and HTC Evo both worked....but the FX8 and BLU Studio both do more useful work while using less power allowing me to get more done in less time and thus use less power overall. Of course I didn't just shitcan either device, the X6 is now being used by my oldest while the Evo has gone to the wife's daughter whose phone got trashed, but I sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to stay on either for the rest of the decade, much less 20 years!

    So I'm sorry but I call bullshit, we are still coming up with new ideas and innovations, especially in mobile, that makes those every other year upgrades worth doing. in other fields where this isn't the case? Things have slowed down, just look at PCs where a Phenom I or C2D from 2007 is still a perfectly usable office box or web surfer and will probably still be so by the end of the decade. But if you thought about it for just a second? You'd see keeping things 20 years when technology is improving so rapidly is just nuts. I mean would you REALLY want to still be watching a 25in CRT TV with some uber lousy resolution that blew through 150w+ when you could be watching on a 40in LCD that does 1080P for less than a quarter the power?

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 23 2015, @04:07PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 23 2015, @04:07PM (#199950) Journal

    Yeah, the progress is fast, sometimes blazing fast - considering the consequences of not doing it [abc.net.au], sometimes really worth replacing your washing machine before the 2 years elapsed.

    Look, mate, this life isn't made only from mobile gizmos.
    I have no problem with the progress rate, all I'm saying I'd appreciate things that are functioning fine well beyond 2 years; what I do with them is my business, if you don't like it, that's your business.
    For instance, I might still be tempted to use my 12y old 22" CRT monitor just because 2048x1500 resolution is about 4 times your 1080x768. The solar panels on my roof (guaranteed for 20 years) surely offset those 150W; and no, I don't even dare to think I'd go change those solar panels next year just because... progress or fancy nuts

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  • (Score: 1) by WillAdams on Tuesday June 23 2015, @05:26PM

    by WillAdams (1424) on Tuesday June 23 2015, @05:26PM (#199992)

    I was still using my Fujitsu Stylistic ST4121 until very recently --- 933MHz Pentium III w/ 768 MB RAM and a 4GB SSD running Windows XP.

    Still works fine, except that web sites run too much Javascript for it to manage them (and the lack of security updates makes browsing anything other than known sites w/ adblock chancy).

    Still haven't found a replacement for its daylight viewable transflective LCD though, so still using it to control my CNC machine, or to do light editing and design work when traveling by car during the day.

    • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday June 24 2015, @05:21AM

      by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday June 24 2015, @05:21AM (#200233) Journal

      And I bet my last dollar that if you slapped a kill-a-watt on that system and compared it to a system built with this chip [newegg.com] you'd find you are blowing through 5 times the power while not getting 1/20th the amount of useful work per cycle!

      I'm sorry but every PC before the Athlon X2 and the Core Duo? REALLY need to be shitcanned, as from 1993-2005 or so we were in the "MHz war" and power usage was not given a single fuck about by the OEMs. The PSUs wasted lots of power as heat, the chips? Just look at the benches of a P4 3.06GHz some time and then look at the power usage (hint: The above chip curbstomps while using a teeny tiny portion of the P4s idle power) or even the chip you named...they sucked.

      So I'm sorry but some things CAN be easily kept, like washers or can openers, but PCs and mobile? Yeah...not unless you just like wasting power and time. Oh and FYI that is the chip I use in HTPCs, it does 1080P over HDMI with an average power draw of just 12w, its a truly great chip and miles ahead of what we had back then.

      --
      ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
      • (Score: 1) by WillAdams on Wednesday June 24 2015, @03:57PM

        by WillAdams (1424) on Wednesday June 24 2015, @03:57PM (#200438)

        The thing is, the embodied energy / carbon impact of most electronics is at the time of manufacture, so it's better to keep even older gear running.

        If I could pull the display out and use it in something more modern, I'd be glad to --- similarly, I'd be glad to buy a new machine which had a transflective LCD, but no one is making one anymore, save for a few niche rugged units for military/LEO/construction --- but none of them have the stylus which I need.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mechanicjay on Tuesday June 23 2015, @05:45PM

    It depends on the product. Using an example of Computer which is still a maturing technology to invalidate the entire concept is ridiculous. In my own life, The HotPoint refriderator that my Grandparents bought for their first house in 1954, then moved with them, then put in the basement as a soda fridge, that my uncle used in his first house, I in my apartment and now my brother uses still works great. You can't buy a fridge that'll last you 20 years now, never mind 60. The 33 year old pickup truck that I drive, was bought new by my FIL, given to his FIL and given to me. It's still totally functional as a truck to haul stuff and get me from place to place.

    I tend to get 10+ years out of my daily use computers. I'd happy try to get 5years from a smart phone, but they're too damn fragile. As with everything there is a trade off between cost of replacement, difference in running costs, technological improvements etc etc. I think if as a society we cut out "ooh shiny!" reaction a bit, we'd probably be doing the planet a favor.

    --
    My VMS box beat up your Windows box.