OT: Looks like reality has caught up to recycling....

[gfretwell]

I doubt you can process glass cheaper than mixed aggregate dug from the ground. Your local waste company is not going to do it so that is one more truck and one more plant that crushes and grades it. You still end up with an inferior aggregate.

The segment NBC is carrying says that exact thing. If you are recycling wrong, you should just put it all in the trash. The problem is they originally sold this as ":recycle everything", when the reality is only a few things can really be recycled in any economically sensible way. Our waste/recycle company says they look at the load that gets tipped and in more than half of the cases, they just push it over into the trash pile with a Bobcat because it is too dirty. They have a showcase recycling operation for the news but it is a small fraction of what they actually collect. We burn a bunch of "recycle" in the waste to energy plant. It is no accident that they are right next to each other.

[trader_4]

Oh, and then we have which contradicts your article about durability.

The use of crushed waste glass as aggregate in concrete is problematic because of the chemical reaction between the alkali in the cement and the silica in the glass. This alkali-silica reaction (ASR) creates a gel, which swells in the presence of moisture, causing cracks and unacceptable damage of the concrete. It can also occur in regular concrete, if the natural aggregate contains certain reactive (typically amorphous) silica. ASR in uranyl acetate treated concrete, visualized under UV-light This phenomenon is particularly vexing, because it is a long-term problem, and the detrimental consequences may not show for years. Predictions of the susceptibility of naturally occurring aggregates are uncertain, as they require accelerated laboratory tests, which are of limited reliability

[trader_4]

Four decades? Try 8 decades. ROFL. I shall add that one to Rod's hole of ignorance list. Expect him to double down on it and start with the usual name calling.

[thekmanrocks]

trader_4:

China reduced import of U.S. recyclables thanks to someone in Washington threatening to impose tariffs on Chinese goods imported here.

[Rod Speed]

None of ours are, they use clay instead.

[Rod Speed]

Nope, its always going to be expensive to clean the emissions from the incinerator.

Bullshit. There is a reason that incineration was given up on, the very high cost of the contamination.

Easier, sure, but with the real contamination downside.

We've just introduced a container deposit system which only applys to the sort of containers used for drink, but not all drink. It doesn’t apply to big milk containers or even to beer etc for some reason, mostly to softdrinks.

Fucking great machines as big as a bus in supermarket carparks and barcodes on the containers. They pay you

10c for the container and can obviously sort the containers by barcode to separate the metal cans and plastic and glass bottles.

Hasn’t been going long enough to see if it will reduce the number of containers chucked out of car windows as people drive down the road etc with kids and other scavengers collecting them for the 10c paid for them.

And it wont be clear for a while what happens to the containers, whether they do get recycled well with the machine able to sort them automatically using the barcode.

Looks mad to me but time will tell if it works.

[Rod Speed]

Yep, there is nowhere near enough surplus glass to allow it to be used in most concrete and not enough to warrant the special treatment it needs to be viable in concrete.

Its just more virtue signalling, not economically viable.

[invalid unparseable]

Not true. This would violate EPA leachate rules.

[gfretwell]

It is another case of big city problems driving policy across the whole country. There is no shortage of places to bury trash in this country.

99.9% of it isn't even hazardous. Maybe that is where we should be doing the sorting. Stop throwing batteries in the trash. They just don't give the homeowner an easy way to dispose of things like that.

[gfretwell]

Didn't you hear. Plastic bottles are leaching poisons into the contents. Dr Oz couldn't say it on TV if it wasn't true ;-)

[angelicapaganelli]

Yeah, I voted for that law back in the day. Now I don't seem to drink anything with a deposit on it. Usually just water or coffee.

It definitely cleaned up the roadsides of deposit bottles and cans. There's still a ton of other trash, though. (I think there's some kind of sweet spot where pickup trucks gain just enough speed as they drive down from the main road for stuff to blow out of the back onto my lawn.)

Cindy Hamilton

[trader_4]

+1

And one of the most wasteful is bottled water that's in small plastic bottles, trucked hundreds of miles. Or worse yet, from Fiji.

[trader_4]

And don't forget the water and hot water wasted at home by people cleaning them there too. I rinse them reasonably, but don't get every last bit out. If it's mayo, I chuck it. Some people I see run lots of hot water to really get it clean. Then it goes into the single stream and gets somewhat dirty again anyway from all the other crap that people send in there that shouldn't be.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Correct, plenty of land. How do you get it there at reasonable cost? No one wants the dump in their town.

[gfretwell]

Nobody wants a paper plant or a plastic plant either and you still have the trucking problem.

[hubops]

Politicians are not supposed to be scientific experts in anything - they are supposed to be honest - and able to select honest experts to advise them on these critical issues - and communicate effectively. ... rather than take gifts and donations from the wealthy special interest lobby groups ... John T.

[Rod Speed]

Nothing even remotely like the mountains of rock that ends up as concrete aggregate and under the roads. Or even the mountains of crushed concrete after the demolition of a major thing like a stadium etc.

Your sig is sposed to have a line with just -- on it in front of it, f****it child.

[trader_4]

I guess we're getting it their at reasonable cost by railroad. NJ, NY ship some of it it south. Locally ours goes recycling and the rest into the county landfill that we generate methane to electric from.

[Rod Speed]

Plenty do here and there.

Nowhere near as far. This is the latest utterly mad scheme for the landfill for Sydney. There's an old tin mine at Ardlethan.

the change from rail to bus, the rail line does go direct, but its only grain wagons past Coota.

Just discovered another nuttiness on Tuesday when having a skin cancer excised. The local hospital no longer bothers to sterilise the stainless steel surgical scissors and grippers, its cheaper to get new ones from china every time. Dunno what they do with the used ones,

[Rod Speed]

I've never bought that, they can use their phone and facebook etc fine.

They don’t need that to be technically literate.

Hardly anyone does with that last.