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Old June 15th 19, 11:20 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
jOHN b.
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Posts: 2,421
Default Protecting yourself

On Sat, 15 Jun 2019 12:58:21 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 6/15/2019 12:20 PM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Saturday, June 15, 2019 at 11:40:15 AM UTC-4, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 6/15/2019 12:36 AM, news18 wrote:
On Fri, 14 Jun 2019 21:27:03 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Fri, 14 Jun 2019 22:37:02 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

But, said my friend, money made by recycling was not taxed.
(Californians may want to chime in on whether that was true - for me,
it's just hearsay.) So the guy spent all his time bicycling around,
collecting roadside aluminum cans to supplement his income.

I don't know, and could not find anything definitive with Google.
However, the continuing decline in the number of recycling centers in
California seems to indicate that recycling is NOT a thriving business.

It all depends on what industry will pay for the collected goods./rubbish.

In my youth, t was rofitble for various community groups to hold paper
drives, bottle recycling, etc. Now it isn't worth the effort. it costs
far more in fuel then you'll ever get for the product.

The major changes of the massive production of raw materias like
newsprint, lastic nurdles,etc couple with rock bottom international
shipping prices.

I've wondered about the overall energy balance of recycling efforts. On
one hand, recycling aluminum uses far less energy (and must certainly
cost less) than refining new aluminum from ore.

At the other extreme, driving your SUV five miles to drop a PET bottle
in a bin is probably a net loss. Most overall recycling processes must
fall between those extremes, but I wonder where the break even point is.

BTW, thanks for the new vocabulary word. I used to be an engineer in a
plastic processing factory, but I never heard the word "nurdle." We
called them pellets.


--
- Frank Krygowski


Don't you have curbside recycling pickup like you do with your household garbage?


Yes. But curbside recycling has energy costs, and I'm sure much of the
stuff we recycle has little monetary value.


Over here they certainly do re-cycle PET drink bottles and some home
owners (my son) do save their plastic bottles for re-sale and they are
collected by those who pick over garbage cans, but plastic bags are
ignored probably because they are valueless.

By "Sunday Ride" is over a major highway here and I normally see two
garbage pickers (riding bicycles) who pedal slowly along the highway
picking up every plastic bottle that they see while ignoring all the
plastic bags.

The largest department store chain in Thailand - "Lotus Tesco" - has a
policy of giving buyers a small rebate for NOT requesting bags and you
do see quite a lot of people who bring their own shopping bags so
apparently the policy does work. However whether it results in a
significant reduction in disposable plastic use is debatable.


My guesses (with no research): Aluminum is probably highest value. Steel
and glass may be next. But I suspect PET, polyethylene and newsprint are
low enough in value that recycling them may be a net loss.

I've mentioned this before, but we can "recycle" shopping bags only by
dropping them in a big bin at the grocery store. The manager of the main
township recycling center said those are actually never recycled; that
there's no practical market for those, so they're actually dumped.

Perhaps he was mistaken, but I'm sure it's not easy to design processing
machinery that wouldn't be prone to clogging, jamming, etc. by that thin
film.

--
cheers,

John B.

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