HeyBub spake thus:
Well, I was asking about freecycle.org. But since you mentioned it, FreeStuffAtTheCurb.yourtown.org is actually, to me, a better method of exchange than freecycle. At least there's always plenty of stuff to choose from, and no stupid "moderators" to deal with.
Goedjn spake thus:
Like Urban Ore, in Berkeley, CA, which, while not exactly a "junkyard", is a store with items that would otherwise be in the dump. There are many places like it sprouting up all over the country, and, I'm sure, the world. I've gotten all kinds of good stuff there.
Interestingly, UO started as an operation *at the dump* way back in the good old days, where people would retrieve potentially useful items before they were bulldozed under, lay them on tables, and you could go and take them for free. I heard that this system lasted a couple of years before it was shut down by the "sanitary landfill" authorities.
You are correct that it is all relative, but unfortunately, the responses are not relative pro rata, which was my point. No one would disagree that if you get lead into your body in sufficient quantity, it's not gonna do you a lot of good. The point is that it is actually quite difficult to get lead into your body in sufficient quantity to do damage. Lead in gasoline was a good way. Lead in solder or CRT glass faceplates, is not. Tin / lead solder is a stable substance. No matter how much you run water over solder, the lead ain't gonna leach out of it in sufficient concentration to be a problem. Even if you factor in acid rain - and there's a lot less of that now that there are laws against noxious airborne waste discharges of nasty stuff like sulphur dioxide - you still have a hard job washing lead out of solder into the water table.
Europe is renowned for having committes and workgroups and think-tanks who come up with hysterical reactions to non-problems. Lead in solder is a good example. Don't get me wrong. I am not against recycling per se, but for the right reasons. Whilst on the surface, any actions that genuinely contribute to " saving the planet " are laudable, and indeed desirable, you also have to look at the other side of the coin which is often forgotten, and that is the energy budget to carry out the recycling.
By the time you have collected your goods, sorted them in a heated and well-lit worker-friendly warehouse that you had to custom build, dismantled them, recovered any reusable materials, repurified them, remanufactured them, and finally disposed of whatever is left, you may well have used more energy, and contributed more to pollution, than if you had not bothered. Just looking at lead free solder. I wonder how much additional energy is now being used worldwide, to heat all of those solder baths up another 40 degrees, heat up all those rework stations another 40 degrees, heat up all those millions of hand soldering irons another 40 degrees ? How much additional transport energy to get goods suffering from lead-free bad joints back to a repair centre, and then back to the customer ? Quite a lot I would wager, and certainly more than a few wind turbines can make up ...
Arfa
Thanks, but I already have three Teacs. I paid $1 for the first one, at a church rummage sale, in 1992. No one could make it work. It was missing the shorting plug in the back where the hardwired remote control plugged in. I added a lead shorting the two appropriate pins, and it worked flawlessly.
The next Teac was left out for the trash. I saw it on one of my after-dinner walks. I picked it up, intending to carry it a mile back home. I had to stop a few times on the way to catch my breath. Do you know that a 7" three-motor Teac weighs 55 pounds?
I already have one. I call it "home."
I'm a member of that group too. I used to put a lot of stuff on Freecycle, but I found it much easier just to put things out at the end of the sidewalk with a sign on it, "FREE - GRATIS." That way, people who don't own computers have a crack at having my old stuff. It disappears in broad daylight; it disappears after dark. All I care about is that it disappears.
AMAZED at what I find on the curbs when I visit family in NYC! Always want to take stuff home to CA, but not much room in the overhead bins for filing cabinets, etc.
because most apartments are small
And you probably READ them! More power to you.
Just to mention: If one wanted to take the time & trouble, one could collect and donate to "minority/disadvantaged" public (and perhaps parochial?) schools that have tiny budgets than the Beverly Hills-type public schools with their higher property tax base.
I've done that; called schools and arranged to take them boxes of books and magazines. Eager, alert kids* can mine these donations for information that is not in their canned textbooks. And overworked/underpaid teachers can use these materials for lesson plans, clip art, etc.
Closing anecdote: Years ago I was on (camera) safari in Kenya. We'd stop at these villages - basically wide places in the road -- and visit the schools. Pathetic facilities; almost no basic supplies & teaching materials. I just boil, all these years later, thinking of how materials -- from paper to computers to AV equipment -- are disrespected and WASTED!
Grrr...people should see how the other 1/2 -- or rather 7/8 -- lives.
Aspasia
Quite right.
Actually,WE are recycled from star material. The original "bits" from the Big Bang are still around, whether as matter or energy (or dark energy E=MC2.). Kopf hoch!
Aspasia
Tell that to the Romans, whose much-lauded plumbing systems-- a marvel of the ancient world -- were made with lead pipes, which many historians have indicted as one of the reasons for the Decline and Fall (crazy emperors, etc.)
Aspasia
But you see this is just the sort of unsubstantiated hearsay that perpetuates these myths, and gets the eco-crazies going in the first place. " Which many historians have indicted etc ". These people are just that - historians with an idea, not scientists with facts. All of the water in the UK was distributed by lead pipes up until a few years ago. In some rural areas, and certainly within many houses, it still is. My generation, and certainly up to mine, weren't crazy. Judging by what I see of kids now, including my own, we had a far higher level of inherent intelligence. The current craziness of the society here, could be said to have commenced with the introduction of plastic water pipes, so perhaps we should jump right on the bandwagon here, and start making all sorts of unsubstantiated claims about brain-destroying substances from oily plastics such as polythene, getting into the water supply. And just maybe, I've got something there, with all the current stuff about short term memory loss that everyone claims to be suffering from - even to the point where Nintendo or whoever it is, have brought out a memory exercising game for busy execs on the move ... !!
As far as lead in the water from lead pipes goes, again, in general, this is nonsense. I sincerely hope that for the most part, the water treatment company supply me with water that is largely pure and neutral. This will not cause the lead to break down and wash out in any quantity that is a problem. If there is anything else in the water in substantial quantity, it is likely to be some flouride compound, added by the water company, and thus representing *definite* proven, and government-sponsored pollution of the water supply with a harmful substance ( no one is really sure what the real long-term effects of poisoning people in this way are ), or calcium compounds which were in the water in the first place. As we all know, these rapidly precipitate out of the water, and coat the insides of the pipes as limescale, be them copper or lead. Once this has occured, there can no longer be even any perceived threat, let alone a real one, from the lead that the pipe is fundamentally made from.
Arfa
There were several overhead projectors thrown in the dumpster behind a branch of my city's public library last week. No one in the school or library system has any use for them. I assume that they made no effort whatsoever to find them a good home. I doubt that they even thought of offering them on Freecycle. If they had, though, it's possible that whoever took them would turn around and place them on eBay.
Apparently, some people would see that end result as a bad thing. For myself, I can't quite figure out why.
Gee, thanks -- I guess - for filling up the little free time I have! Great article.
That Encyclopedia Romana looks so fascinating, I want to follow each link!
Aspasia
Thanks also for this link.
Chuckle. I resemble that remark, or at least my house does. It runs in my family- when my grandpa passed, it took us a month to empty the basement.
aem sends...
That's a fine story, but it refers to a lead compound, deliberately introduced to a foodstuff that the Romans were consuming, not to lead pipes dissolving as a result of drinking water passing through them ...
Arfa
This is a better reasoned piece ...
Arfa
Got to wondering whether -- with all this encyclopediac (pun intended) talk about whether the pipes were earthen or lead -- hasn't there been any serious archeology, digging up said pipes for analysis?
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