Thanks GG. If things firm up and we actually get the house, I will reach out.
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Carbon emissions
- Thread starter TK4
- Start date
Also not so bad because I paid 50% income tax on the money I get paid for the solar I sell to the grid on my older system
Sent from the future
I know we beat the heck out carbon emissions debate and didn’t want to open a separate topic on climate change.
Here is a video on something I believe is very important and I am pretty diligent about sorting my recycling and do get annoyed with the large amount I need to handle every week. Plastics and recycling. It’s a real problem and it’s growing. And there doesn’t seem to be a real solution other than bury or burn and we keep making the stuff.
I really enjoy this YouTube contributor.
Here is a video on something I believe is very important and I am pretty diligent about sorting my recycling and do get annoyed with the large amount I need to handle every week. Plastics and recycling. It’s a real problem and it’s growing. And there doesn’t seem to be a real solution other than bury or burn and we keep making the stuff.
I really enjoy this YouTube contributor.
Ontario switching to producer pays recycling theoretically is a good step as it cheaper for a producer not to include five layers of plastic on an SD card than it is to pay to recycle it on the back end. As with all things politicians do, they probably screwed it up and we won't see any positive change.
Yeah - share your concern about plastics... annoys me every time I crack a ramen packet. Even when I try to buy stuff in glass ...most are now plastic bottles instead.
I thought there was a way to burn plastics in cement kilns - it is after all solidified fossil fuel.
I thought there was a way to burn plastics in cement kilns - it is after all solidified fossil fuel.
A water bottle has three plastics, the bottle lid and label are different. And there is the label glue.
Coloured plastics create a catch 22 problem. In its own chemical family, plastics can often be recycled by regrinding and mixing in with new material. However coloured plastics can't be made white or clear. They can be made black by dumping carbon pigment into the mix. It only works once because black can't be converted back to white or light colours.
Packaging colours are a big thing in marketing and shades of grey (Or pink or blue) are important. We want white for a lot of our food trays etc. If we made the trays out of blends of colours they would literally look like feces. Ick.
I'm not sure where we stand on throwing the problem back at the producers. My understanding is that the provinces each made their own deal with the devils and Ontario and / or the municipalities took a wad of cash to set up the existing program. Revenues from selling the scrap was supposed to run the system. That was when almost every house had a newspaper subscription. Glass and metal containers were a bigger part of the mix.
Stuff that came in cans and glass jars now come in plastic pouches. Baby foods, non carbonated drinks, soups etc.
Does the deal ever expire or were we Homolka'd?
Could the federals enact a law overruling the provincial one?
Quebec, I think, got a better deal on some aspects of recycling, deposits on cans etc.
I have no idea about the details. The intent is that the producer is incentivized to reduce crap on the front end. Maybe you go with soluble glue so it is easier to process the bottle for instance.
The big ones that need hit imo are things like SD cards with 5 layers of plastic up to the size of your hand before you get to the durable card the size of your fingernail inside. While they make up a small percentage of the material thrown out, all of that plastic has very minimal benefit. If you can solve the theft problem (eg no self-serve SD cards which most stores do anyway), you could reduce packaging to a piece of cardboard to aid handling and provide the required protection.
Deposits are good in theory but a huge pain in practice. For many, they are just inflationary as they throw them out which increases the price of goods by ~10%. Who has the space to separately queue booze, cans, glass, bottles from a dairy, etc etc as they all need to be returned to different locations (and counted). You either need to do a trip every week to get your $2 back or have a whole shelving unit just to keep them separate while they accumulate.
It's complicated. Package design includes fill time, breakage, shipping weight and size, warehousing rigid empty containers, shipping bottles of air to be filled instead of rolls of plastic pouches.
Here an old guy with a shopping cart comes along every recycle day and sorts through the bin for booze empties and aluminum cans. More power to him.
Pop cans are ten cents in Quebec and a fraction of a cent here for the aluminum as the cans are plastic lined.
Consumer level recycling has a poor ROI especially when the consumer's time comes into it. I don't see G Weston spending his time sorting the trash.
Lots of improvement in recycling can still be made. From what I have seen food has improved significantly. Non-food items like @GreyGhost pointed out are still a disaster IMO. Input side is better IMO.
For plastics, Thermoset vs Thermoplastics, Thermoplastics are easier to recycle. Thermoset not so much. From what I see most packaging these days is thermoplastic but I have noticed many examples where it is not. To the average person plastic is plastic and have no idea on this one.
Black plastics that get tossed as the automation cannot see them on the black belts (I notice many places have now switched to white FF containers due to this). I see water bottles are much thinner these days, etc.
The other issue is combining materials (not easily separated) that make packaging difficult to recycle.
The next challenge, there needs to be consistency in what can and cannot be recycled city to city. Can bottles have lids on, lids off (some places toss everything with a lid on, others do not). Black plastic... etc.
Manufacturers have little motivation to change as they will seek the best cost--benefit (like the giant USB stick package example sells more USB sticks and reduces theft) unless regulations change the economics for them.
For plastics, Thermoset vs Thermoplastics, Thermoplastics are easier to recycle. Thermoset not so much. From what I see most packaging these days is thermoplastic but I have noticed many examples where it is not. To the average person plastic is plastic and have no idea on this one.
Black plastics that get tossed as the automation cannot see them on the black belts (I notice many places have now switched to white FF containers due to this). I see water bottles are much thinner these days, etc.
The other issue is combining materials (not easily separated) that make packaging difficult to recycle.
The next challenge, there needs to be consistency in what can and cannot be recycled city to city. Can bottles have lids on, lids off (some places toss everything with a lid on, others do not). Black plastic... etc.
Manufacturers have little motivation to change as they will seek the best cost--benefit (like the giant USB stick package example sells more USB sticks and reduces theft) unless regulations change the economics for them.
Shaman
Well-known member
When the stats were released that Kingston (I'm north of that but use the same plant) only recycles an estimated 10% of the intake of recycle bins .. that's when I stopped caring about recycling. If the recycle bin is full, I just throw the can/bottle/whatever into the garbage. Sorry, not sorry. There are so many @#$% liars in every level of government that it's sickening.
Oh, and Google etc. are sure to give you the official links to their recycle programs before any news articles show up at all, no matter what you type into the search bar, so finding the article became enough of a pain in my ass that I welcome you to confirm what I said.
Oh, and Google etc. are sure to give you the official links to their recycle programs before any news articles show up at all, no matter what you type into the search bar, so finding the article became enough of a pain in my ass that I welcome you to confirm what I said.
Recycling plastics basically doesn't work. Decades ago came the idea to mark anything made of plastic with what type of plastic it is, to facilitate sorting into separate presumably-compatible types. Doesn't work.
IMO the best things to do with plastic are to either (A) reprocess them into hydrocarbons that can be used for something else or (B) use them as a substitute for other fuels in applications such as cement manufacturing or waste-to-energy. PVC and teflon (and a few other related compounds) are troublesome due to the chlorine and fluorine that end up either contaminating hydrocarbons or being emitted as airborne nasties. "Use less of the stuff" is the simplest first course of action ...
edit: The environmental lobby resists both (A) and (B) because they are not "perfect". Perfect is the enemy of good ... specifically, the inability to achieve perfection is the enemy of good enough for now until we come up with something better.
Glass bottles. Basically mason jars. Make 'em all the same shape and clear or in a few different sizes. No brand differentiation allowed. Stick-on paper label with biodegradable glue is allowed. You go to the store and fill up the jar from bulk bins with whatever you want. If you're lazy you return the mason jar for cleaning and buy a new jar filled with whatever you want. Our great-grandparents would have recognised this process. They didn't have plastics 100+ years ago.
IMO the best things to do with plastic are to either (A) reprocess them into hydrocarbons that can be used for something else or (B) use them as a substitute for other fuels in applications such as cement manufacturing or waste-to-energy. PVC and teflon (and a few other related compounds) are troublesome due to the chlorine and fluorine that end up either contaminating hydrocarbons or being emitted as airborne nasties. "Use less of the stuff" is the simplest first course of action ...
edit: The environmental lobby resists both (A) and (B) because they are not "perfect". Perfect is the enemy of good ... specifically, the inability to achieve perfection is the enemy of good enough for now until we come up with something better.
Glass bottles. Basically mason jars. Make 'em all the same shape and clear or in a few different sizes. No brand differentiation allowed. Stick-on paper label with biodegradable glue is allowed. You go to the store and fill up the jar from bulk bins with whatever you want. If you're lazy you return the mason jar for cleaning and buy a new jar filled with whatever you want. Our great-grandparents would have recognised this process. They didn't have plastics 100+ years ago.
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Back to decades of lobbying. If plastics had been categorized as garbage that takes forever to break down from the beginning (which is pretty close to the truth for post-consumer), they would not have become such a major industry. They are sold to the public as better for the environment even though they are probably the worst option in most cases.
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We use it. Much better than the recycling program. Most municipalities let you buy the compost (and many have a free day once a year). No idea about the cost effectiveness or positive benefits. Probably makes the dump less smelly. No real downside for us. Mostly trimmings from meal prep and bread stumps. My old landlord would fill most of the bin with garbage and then food on top as garbage needed bag tags. That would make a mess of the program if many people did that.
On the flip side, green bin program makes it pretty easy to guess which houses have garburetors (which almost every municipality prohibits but doesn't enforce). Tons of food cause trouble in the pipes and at the treatment plant.
Never used it, never will. And no garburator as indicated in another comment. We have little food waste and what we have goes in the garbage.
In my opinion recycling is kind of a joke, very little of it is actually recycled, it seems more about image/taxes than anything else.
If we had proper and proven facilities that can show real results I'd be more on board, but for now.. not so much..
IMO it works in general and they sell the compost but there are exceptions and no idea on the cost effectiveness. Downside, for example in Toronto you put your (kids') diapers in the green bin but they are 100% not compostable. So they get diverted to garbage at the destination. My guess is garbage is every two weeks and green bin is every week.... two week old diapers in the bin in summer...not fun so they just say put them n the green bin.
It is not that difficult in TO: Toss food waste in the green bin. Walk it to and from the curb once per week with the other bin. If nothing else less smelly/rotting stuff in your garbage, specially if the garage is every two weeks. We are of course not 100%, if I eat one strawberry the top is not going outside to the green bin. We have very little food waste (do not over buy) so it is only 5% to 10% full per week.
I have no interest in self composting due to smell, rats etc.
New condo's are using tri-sorters so everything goes down the chute (although it takes some time to switch between the three so I suspect many people will just throw it all into garbage. Older buildings with a garbage chute and hoping that people carry recycling/green down to the basement probably have an abysmal diversion rate.
York also allows diapers and dog poo in green bin. Simcoe is no for both (probably too much dog poo in plastic bags and even compostable bags take far too long to break down).
My parents used to compost but they put it in the trees so you didn't need to look at it which also meant it didn't get warm enough to work well. Frequent visits by skunks and occasional visits by bears killed the project I think.
Mad Mike
Well-known member
Don't use green bins anymore.
My first choice is the in-sink garburator --quick and easy.
My second choice is the composter hidden in the corner of the yard. I'll use this for bigger organics or when I have a pile of fibrous waste that might clog pipes when I use the garburator. I also toss my paper from my shredder into the composter, it breaks down fairly quickly and doesn't bother the gardens. The downside is the raccoon parties that happen when I feed the composter.
Yeah, when I was in a condo or apartment (older ones) pretty much everything went down the chute...
In a house it is really not too much effort in TO (specially now recycling does not need to be separated) to do green or blue bins even if it is a low percentage play at the destination. If nothing else it saves smell and saves money as we pay by garbage bin size. They may be more effort in other areas.
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