How much Eco stuff can we afford?

[nobbie48]

What would it cost to run an EV if the driver had to pay XX cents per Km at licence renewal for road tax?

What if there were no free charging stations? Pay at the plug at premium rates.

What about the billions it would cost to outfit every residence with a charging outlet?

What about the disposal costs of batteries?

What do you do with your vehicle when they go beyond lithium?

Appliances may be more energy efficient but IMO many manufacturers are using the technology to bring in planned obsolescence. Scrap and buy again has a cost. DIY becomes impractical due to programming and parts sourcing.

Similarly for cars. You can buy a new power window switch and install it yourself but it won't work unless you have the programming system or you pay someone else to do it.

Recycling IMO is a joke.

"

Plastic​

This will likely come as no surprise to longtime readers, but according to National Geographic, an astonishing 91 percent of plastic doesn’t actually get recycled. This means that only around 9 percent is being recycled. As if that weren’t enough, nearly all of that plastic that does get recycled is actually downcycled, which means it gets less and less useful every time, eventually becoming so flimsy that it can no longer be recycled properly.
As it is, that 91 percent just sits in landfills, piling up and breaking down slowly into arguably more dangerous microplastics. National Geographic reports that by 2050, approximately 12 billion metric tons of plastic will be sitting in landfills across the globe. For scale, that amount of plastic weighs approximately 35,000 times more than the whole Empire State Building."

Recycling here in Ontario seems to be tied to a decades old agreement between the government and those responsible for making the stuff that was filling the dumps. The industry gave set up money to the government and the government would reap profits from all the recycling of newspapers and tin cans.

Decades ago one would see bundles of newspapers at every house put out on trash day. Not any more, click, scroll, click.

A lot of tin cans are being replaced with plastic or have plastic content.

Some people went to the extent of washing their glass jars and tin cans when they were going to be melted down at thousands of degrees in temperature. Make sense???

Remove labels. Easier said than done.

Composting: I can buy a year's output from my composter for $10-$15. Does it make sense to give up $2000 worth of my property and collectively days of labour feeding and nursing the thing?

Are sink garbage disposal units good or bad? Send the sludge to the treatment plant or compost it yourself as noted above. What is the effect of the load on the municipal sewage system?

There is talk of banning single use plastics. Does that mean milk in glass bottles? Does that mean taking a shower and trying very hard not to drop the slippery glass bottle of shampoo on your naked foot for fear of it shattering? No more squeeze bottles.

I'm not suggesting we scrap the scrap system but the BS from multiple levels of government and special interest groups along with the general ignorance of the public has the system working at negative efficiency.

 

[GreyGhost]

What would it cost to run an EV if the driver had to pay XX cents per Km at licence renewal for road tax?

What if there were no free charging stations? Pay at the plug at premium rates.

What about the billions it would cost to outfit every residence with a charging outlet?

What about the disposal costs of batteries?

What do you do with your vehicle when they go beyond lithium?

Appliances may be more energy efficient but IMO many manufacturers are using the technology to bring in planned obsolescence. Scrap and buy again has a cost. DIY becomes impractical due to programming and parts sourcing.

Similarly for cars. You can buy a new power window switch and install it yourself but it won't work unless you have the programming system or you pay someone else to do it.

Recycling IMO is a joke.

"

Plastic​

This will likely come as no surprise to longtime readers, but according to National Geographic, an astonishing 91 percent of plastic doesn’t actually get recycled. This means that only around 9 percent is being recycled. As if that weren’t enough, nearly all of that plastic that does get recycled is actually downcycled, which means it gets less and less useful every time, eventually becoming so flimsy that it can no longer be recycled properly.
As it is, that 91 percent just sits in landfills, piling up and breaking down slowly into arguably more dangerous microplastics. National Geographic reports that by 2050, approximately 12 billion metric tons of plastic will be sitting in landfills across the globe. For scale, that amount of plastic weighs approximately 35,000 times more than the whole Empire State Building."

Recycling here in Ontario seems to be tied to a decades old agreement between the government and those responsible for making the stuff that was filling the dumps. The industry gave set up money to the government and the government would reap profits from all the recycling of newspapers and tin cans.

Decades ago one would see bundles of newspapers at every house put out on trash day. Not any more, click, scroll, click.

A lot of tin cans are being replaced with plastic or have plastic content.

Some people went to the extent of washing their glass jars and tin cans when they were going to be melted down at thousands of degrees in temperature. Make sense???

Remove labels. Easier said than done.

Composting: I can buy a year's output from my composter for $10-$15. Does it make sense to give up $2000 worth of my property and collectively days of labour feeding and nursing the thing?

Are sink garbage disposal units good or bad? Send the sludge to the treatment plant or compost it yourself as noted above. What is the effect of the load on the municipal sewage system?

There is talk of banning single use plastics. Does that mean milk in glass bottles? Does that mean taking a shower and trying very hard not to drop the slippery glass bottle of shampoo on your naked foot for fear of it shattering? No more squeeze bottles.

I'm not suggesting we scrap the scrap system but the BS from multiple levels of government and special interest groups along with the general ignorance of the public has the system working at negative efficiency.

Plastic recycling is a joke. It is a smoke screen created by plastics industry to obscure how wasteful the entire industry is (although plastic is undoubtedly convenient).

Most recycling is a money loser in a big way (I think maybe only aluminum is profitable now). The rest is a money pit where we waste time sorting it (at home and at depot), send separate trucks to pick it up and end up sending much to the dump anyway.

My parents have a composter. It attracts trash pandas and bears and produces little useful output (they put it out of the way visually so it doesn't get enough sun).

Sinkerators are bad. Most municipalities ban them. Increase load exponentially on the plant. You don't want to discharge nutrient rich water from the plant so you need more digestors to deal with the load. Like plastic, they are convenient but make a bigger problem than they fix.

Milk in glass bottles is a pain in the ass. Most stores are not setup well for people to return them and recover the deposit. Probably environmentally friendly as you can get away with a wash instead of a remelt. Easy enough to solve the issue with a vending machine looking thing at the store (it could even rinse and palletize the bottles with no labour if they wanted).

Douggie said he was going to make waste producers pay. Not sure what became of that. Reduce is many orders of magnitude better than recycle. If I buy an SD card, I don't need or want three layers of plastic in the garbage. A piece of cardboard does the job. That is where douggie's system could work. If a store chooses to keep SD cards behind the counter to control theft with cardboard packaging, that may be viable if the layers of plastic drew a surcharge of a few dollars.

 

[Baggsy]

I look at the way we swap challenges, and am not a happy camper.

Since the advent of covid, I've been walking past discarded masks and gloves every day.

Can we not merge the old with the new?

They should keep the mini SD sleeves behind the counter and give them out for free if you need another, and sell just the micro SD cards.

 

[nobbie48]

Plastic recycling is a joke. It is a smoke screen created by plastics industry to obscure how wasteful the entire industry is (although plastic is undoubtedly convenient).

Offer a person a piece of dog poo and they barf. Offer to grind it into dust and mix it in with your burger patty and they might understand biodegradable as defined by the plastics industry.

 

[Mad Mike]

What would it cost to run an EV if the driver had to pay XX cents per Km at licence renewal for road tax?

Still less than an gasoline or diesel car.

What if there were no free charging stations? Pay at the plug at premium rates.

Still less than a gasoline or diesel car, they may someday be as ubiquitous and cheap to use as a bank machine.

What about the billions it would cost to outfit every residence with a charging outlet?

Owner's problem. ROI is probably less than a year.

What about the disposal costs of batteries?

Cheap compared to other types of batteries that contain toxic metals such as cadmium. Metals in lithium-ion batteries are cobalt, copper, nickel and iron, all safe for landfills & incinerators (lithium-ion batteries contain an ionic form of lithium, no lithium metal).

What do you do with your vehicle when they go beyond lithium?

They can be repaired and have their life extended as they age.

Appliances may be more energy efficient but IMO many manufacturers are using the technology to bring in planned obsolescence. Scrap and buy again has a cost. DIY becomes impractical due to programming and parts sourcing.

TIC TOK has some good hacks.

Recycling IMO is a joke.
....

Composting: I can buy a year's output from my composter for $10-$15. Does it make sense to give up $2000 worth of my property and collectively days of labour feeding and nursing the thing?

Yup. I no longer compost - my town gives me a green bin for compostable waste. They pick that up weekly along with brown bagged yar waste. Each spring they give me back a cubic yard of fresh compost.

Are sink garbage disposal units good or bad? Send the sludge to the treatment plant or compost it yourself as noted above. What is the effect of the load on the municipal sewage system?

Good. I think it's probably a nice change for the sewer workers to see a watermelon peel as opposed to a post buffet dump and toilet paper come down the line. Seriously, the volume from sink disposals is been proven to be a negligible load on waste treatment.

There is talk of banning single use plastics. Does that mean milk in glass bottles? Does that mean taking a shower and trying very hard not to drop the slippery glass bottle of shampoo on your naked foot for fear of it shattering? No more squeeze bottles.

Milk in paper cartons, use your soap-on-a-rope to lather up the beard and mullett.

I'm not suggesting we scrap the scrap system but the BS from multiple levels of government and special interest groups along with the general ignorance of the public has the system working at negative efficiency.

Maybe we just scrap the gov't?

 

[LePhillou]

Maybe we just scrap the gov't?

This right there.

But back to the topic
We're looking at it the wrong way. The following meme kinda summarizes my idea

We have to rebuild, reformat cities (dense ones at least) to focus less on car centric mentality. Make other alternatives more efficient than they are and more appealing. Most of the roads aren't getting bigger as there isn't more space for them, but we're still trying to cram more people in. We gotta encourage more of that work from home when possible, i know so many people who were forced to go back after 2 years of better productivity at home. Make transit less $hitty. Make e-mopeds less $hitty. Heck for all the people who do under 5km on most of their trips, make cycling less confusing and $hitty.

There's a person in my area that was asking on a fb group the best way to get from point A to point B; about 10-12km by bicycle but that person isn't comfortable cycling in traffic. So since i know the trails in the area and what not (since i ride with my kids) i was able to give a few suggestions and she started riding to work almost daily. That's one less car on the road and one more person getting exercise while commuting. But she shouldn't have to ask to know the best route, it should be easy. Google maps makes you ride on the road with traffic which only a small percentage of people would be comfortable with. Riding on sidewalks is illegal for adults.


All this to say, people need a wide variety of options because the way things are designed the car is the easiest, fastest, most reliable way.

EDIT) i do realize that not everyone can use transit, or bikes or alternatives..but i'm saying that there's a huge percentage of people that could make the switch whether with current state infra, and even more if we improved the infra to not be a maze, or unreliable

 

[crankcall]

What if bicycles get really popular? no road tax, dont buy fuel, no insurance claims, few horrific accidents for body shops and tow vehicles.
All the cyclists get fit and we have less obese and diabetic? the health care industry folds up. Less heart conditions and no EV charging stations.
Most cyclists dont need paid parking, the bikes need few repairs relativly speaking. Most people dont finance a pedal bike over 5 yrs. or trade every 5 since its beat.
The carbon footprint to make a bicycle is zip compared to an F-150. Be afraid.

 

[Baggsy]

This right there.

But back to the topic
We're looking at it the wrong way. The following meme kinda summarizes my idea
View attachment 56226
We have to rebuild, reformat cities (dense ones at least) to focus less on car centric mentality. Make other alternatives more efficient than they are and more appealing. Most of the roads aren't getting bigger as there isn't more space for them, but we're still trying to cram more people in. We gotta encourage more of that work from home when possible, i know so many people who were forced to go back after 2 years of better productivity at home. Make transit less $hitty. Make e-mopeds less $hitty. Heck for all the people who do under 5km on most of their trips, make cycling less confusing and $hitty.

There's a person in my area that was asking on a fb group the best way to get from point A to point B; about 10-12km by bicycle but that person isn't comfortable cycling in traffic. So since i know the trails in the area and what not (since i ride with my kids) i was able to give a few suggestions and she started riding to work almost daily. That's one less car on the road and one more person getting exercise while commuting. But she shouldn't have to ask to know the best route, it should be easy. Google maps makes you ride on the road with traffic which only a small percentage of people would be comfortable with. Riding on sidewalks is illegal for adults.


All this to say, people need a wide variety of options because the way things are designed the car is the easiest, fastest, most reliable way.

EDIT) i do realize that not everyone can use transit, or bikes or alternatives..but i'm saying that there's a huge percentage of people that could make the switch whether with current state infra, and even more if we improved the infra to not be a maze, or unreliable

Megacity. What if you're 10km from City Hall? 25km? 50km? Not everyone has the work time, or work showers.
Should the poor peasants of us have to walk?

 

[jc100]

This right there.

But back to the topic
We're looking at it the wrong way. The following meme kinda summarizes my idea
View attachment 56226
We have to rebuild, reformat cities (dense ones at least) to focus less on car centric mentality. Make other alternatives more efficient than they are and more appealing. Most of the roads aren't getting bigger as there isn't more space for them, but we're still trying to cram more people in. We gotta encourage more of that work from home when possible, i know so many people who were forced to go back after 2 years of better productivity at home. Make transit less $hitty. Make e-mopeds less $hitty. Heck for all the people who do under 5km on most of their trips, make cycling less confusing and $hitty.

There's a person in my area that was asking on a fb group the best way to get from point A to point B; about 10-12km by bicycle but that person isn't comfortable cycling in traffic. So since i know the trails in the area and what not (since i ride with my kids) i was able to give a few suggestions and she started riding to work almost daily. That's one less car on the road and one more person getting exercise while commuting. But she shouldn't have to ask to know the best route, it should be easy. Google maps makes you ride on the road with traffic which only a small percentage of people would be comfortable with. Riding on sidewalks is illegal for adults.


All this to say, people need a wide variety of options because the way things are designed the car is the easiest, fastest, most reliable way.

EDIT) i do realize that not everyone can use transit, or bikes or alternatives..but i'm saying that there's a huge percentage of people that could make the switch whether with current state infra, and even more if we improved the infra to not be a maze, or unreliable

Years ago I went for an interview for a start up company. It was going pretty well actually but I wanted an answer to a question “where do you see yourself being based eventually?” because I assumed they would stay here in K-town as it was associated with the University. The answer I got was “oh we would move to Toronto due to corporate density”….which translated to a few things, one was some of the board of directors were from the GTA and the other was that they felt they would be taken more seriously if they were on the same industrial campus as more well established companies. So a kind of corporate FOMO if you like. I turned down the position there and then as I said I had no interest in moving sorry. It also struck me as strange as the kind of work we would do is location independent but this is the corporate mentality and it’s one that ensures there’s always going to be traffic snarls to get to these “industrial villages”. Change that kind of mentality and that would be a start. Maybe make smaller campuses on the outskirts of big cities and near cheaper housing or locate to smaller towns/cities and that would help. If you jam everything together in one place then everyone will head there in the morning then head out in the same direction at night.

 

[Baggsy]

Years ago I went for an interview for a start up company. It was going pretty well actually but I wanted an answer to a question “where do you see yourself being based eventually?” because I assumed they would stay here in K-town as it was associated with the University. The answer I got was “oh we would move to Toronto due to corporate density”….which translated to a few things, one was some of the board of directors were from the GTA and the other was that they felt they would be taken more seriously if they were on the same industrial campus as more well established companies. So a kind of corporate FOMO if you like. I turned down the position there and then as I said I had no interest in moving sorry. It also struck me as strange as the kind of work we would do is location independent but this is the corporate mentality and it’s one that ensures there’s always going to be traffic snarls to get to these “industrial villages”. Change that kind of mentality and that would be a start. Maybe make smaller campuses on the outskirts of big cities and near cheaper housing or locate to smaller towns/cities and that would help. If you jam everything together in one place then everyone will head there in the morning then head out in the same direction at night.

It might be thought that the above would encourage urban sprawl, and loss of farmland and green space.

Our mega city kind of started out as a bunch of villages, connected by streetcars.

 

[jc100]

It might be thought that the above would encourage urban sprawl, and loss of farmland and green space.

Our mega city kind of started out as a bunch of villages, connected by streetcars.

Probably it will do some of that but hopefully not too much. Better if there’s a decent mix of industry and living space in each location though. For instance, how many residents of Oshawa and Whitby travel out to the GTA for work that could be done in Oshawa or Whitby?

 

[Mikedezo44]

Most recycling is a money loser in a big way (I think maybe only aluminum is profitable now). The rest is a money pit where we waste time sorting it (at home and at depot), send separate trucks to pick it up and end up sending much to the dump anyway.

Pretty sure cardboard does alright, Way back when I worked at Zellers we had the big machine to make bales and a company would come pick them up and write them a cheque. Not sure how big. Also the privately owned dump I go to 5 times a week has a separate building where they bale up cardboard as well, must be worth their time. Owner is a smart guy, really turned the place around.

 

[nobbie48]

Pretty sure cardboard does alright, Way back when I worked at Zellers we had the big machine to make bales and a company would come pick them up and write them a cheque. Not sure how big. Also the privately owned dump I go to 5 times a week has a separate building where they bale up cardboard as well, must be worth their time. Owner is a smart guy, really turned the place around.

Sonotubes and Pringles packages

 

[LePhillou]

Megacity. What if you're 10km from City Hall? 25km? 50km? Not everyone has the work time, or work showers.
Should the poor peasants of us have to walk?

When i started doing it, both my wife and i worked downtown (from living in mississauga). We had 2 kids.
I'd take the bicycle and the trailer in the morning, bring the 1 kid to daycare (2km one way), bike back home, bring 2nd kid to the bus stop. Then take the bicycle to work 23km one way. I'm About 5'9" and weighed about 200 lbs so i wasn't in great shape (and i get back to that shape most winters, still lol).
I couldn't do the round trip every day as i wasn't fit enough at first, so i'd take bus and then go train in the evening while i kept the bicycle parked at secure bike parking and i'd come back the next day by bicycle, but eventually i got to the point where i could do the round trip the same day. She would use our car to go to the go train and she would take care of picking up the kids after school...so she started earlier at work (8ish), i started later (9-930ish). Obviously if i REALLY didn't feel like it, i'd take the motorcycle to commute.
During winter she'd take the bus and i'd use the car in the morning for drop offs and parking at the go train. It worked pretty well actually. We still manage with one car, several years later.

The bicycle ride took me the same amount of time as the motorcycle ride unless there were bad headwinds (or if there was an accident on the hwy). The bus + go transit took me less time overall thanks to the express line if we didn't run into any issues but it was pricey.
Driving the cage would've taken the most time and cost the most. In my books, 2 cars cost a lot, especially at the current price of gas. Insurance isn't cheap in Peel, maintenance isn't free either as the car gets old and god forbid you get something newer with a payment on it on top of that. But i get it, not everyone can be lucky like me in terms of location. But a lot of people are lucky but don't know it, or won't care to look at options unless they're made very conveniently available to them.

Years ago I went for an interview for a start up company. It was going pretty well actually but I wanted an answer to a question “where do you see yourself being based eventually?” because I assumed they would stay here in K-town as it was associated with the University. The answer I got was “oh we would move to Toronto due to corporate density”….which translated to a few things, one was some of the board of directors were from the GTA and the other was that they felt they would be taken more seriously if they were on the same industrial campus as more well established companies. So a kind of corporate FOMO if you like. I turned down the position there and then as I said I had no interest in moving sorry. It also struck me as strange as the kind of work we would do is location independent but this is the corporate mentality and it’s one that ensures there’s always going to be traffic snarls to get to these “industrial villages”. Change that kind of mentality and that would be a start. Maybe make smaller campuses on the outskirts of big cities and near cheaper housing or locate to smaller towns/cities and that would help. If you jam everything together in one place then everyone will head there in the morning then head out in the same direction at night.

It does seem @ss backwards. Imagine how much cheaper rent is out there compared to the GTA. Imagine getting people to do more work from home instead of "coming in the office in the GTA". We received another email where they mention that they want to get people to come in the office more, when work is getting done without issue remotely for the past 2 years. I totally understand that money is being lost (real estate rental wise) and businesses that depend on that traffic are dying but... the $15 by bus + go train i'd spend every day, i don't feel like i miss paying it.

 

[jc100]

When i started doing it, both my wife and i worked downtown (from living in mississauga). We had 2 kids.
I'd take the bicycle and the trailer in the morning, bring the 1 kid to daycare (2km one way), bike back home, bring 2nd kid to the bus stop. Then take the bicycle to work 23km one way. I'm About 5'9" and weighed about 200 lbs so i wasn't in great shape (and i get back to that shape most winters, still lol).
I couldn't do the round trip every day as i wasn't fit enough at first, so i'd take bus and then go train in the evening while i kept the bicycle parked at secure bike parking and i'd come back the next day by bicycle, but eventually i got to the point where i could do the round trip the same day. She would use our car to go to the go train and she would take care of picking up the kids after school...so she started earlier at work (8ish), i started later (9-930ish). Obviously if i REALLY didn't feel like it, i'd take the motorcycle to commute.
During winter she'd take the bus and i'd use the car in the morning for drop offs and parking at the go train. It worked pretty well actually. We still manage with one car, several years later.

The bicycle ride took me the same amount of time as the motorcycle ride unless there were bad headwinds (or if there was an accident on the hwy). The bus + go transit took me less time overall thanks to the express line if we didn't run into any issues but it was pricey.
Driving the cage would've taken the most time and cost the most. In my books, 2 cars cost a lot, especially at the current price of gas. Insurance isn't cheap in Peel, maintenance isn't free either as the car gets old and god forbid you get something newer with a payment on it on top of that. But i get it, not everyone can be lucky like me in terms of location. But a lot of people are lucky but don't know it, or won't care to look at options unless they're made very conveniently available to them.

It does seem @ss backwards. Imagine how much cheaper rent is out there compared to the GTA. Imagine getting people to do more work from home instead of "coming in the office in the GTA". We received another email where they mention that they want to get people to come in the office more, when work is getting done without issue remotely for the past 2 years. I totally understand that money is being lost (real estate rental wise) and businesses that depend on that traffic are dying but... the $15 by bus + go train i'd spend every day, i don't feel like i miss paying it.

Working from home means middle management lose a lot of what they are paid to do. Add in the mistrust of older senior management who equate being seen with being seen working and not being seen as slacking off. This is the thing, if your business is saying “you must come back to the office” when your productivity was just fine working from home, what they really mean is “we don’t trust you”. Then you have to wonder if you want to work for a company that doesn’t trust you?

 

[crankcall]

The work is getting done , depending on your industry. It is very difficult to mentor and grow new employees remotely and there is an energy missing when workers are not in the same office space , idea sharing falls flat .
I see both sides, and some industry is much better suited than others .


Sent from my iPhone using GTAMotorcycle.com

 

[LePhillou]

In the end, it's not just mistrust..they want a culture of people getting together.
On some projects i've worked on, working in close proximity saved us SO MUCH time. And in the end, the employer in my case pays to have decent working quarters and facilities on the premise (like bike lockers lol)
And lets be real, those real estate companies like oxford, they want their money, and im sure they have lobbies to push for that kind of stuff to happen... offices being empty means they're losing tons of money. I also feel bad for all that cleaning crew that must've gotten fired.

 

[backmarkerducati]

Work from home has some interesting sociological impacts. Since it is typically professional office work it is in many cases people with higher income that can take advantage of it, in turn saving money in the process. People in much of service, manufacturing etc. still need to be in person and in many cases have lower income and they still have commuting expenses. People not going into the office also impacts many of them as they served this crowd, jobs are gone or changed. Just creates greater divide, just what it is not a reason to not or to do it.

There is also a mental health impact to many people just being holed up at home. Creativity is also significantly impacted in many fields, how much depends on the job.

 

[jc100]

Work from home has some interesting sociological impacts. Since it is typically professional office work it is in many cases people with higher income that can take advantage of it, in turn saving money in the process. People in much of service, manufacturing etc. still need to be in person and in many cases have lower income and they still have commuting expenses. People not going into the office also impacts many of them as they served this crowd, jobs are gone or changed. Just creates greater divide, just what it is not a reason to not or to do it.

There is also a mental health impact to many people just being holed up at home. Creativity is also significantly impacted in many fields, how much depends on the job.

Have you met many programmers? The socially awkward buggers love working from home! Basement/gamer chair/fluffy bunny slippers/manga porn on the walls….

 

[killvino]

Notjustbikes on youtube has a ton of great watch on good city planning but in NA it all boils down to NIMBY and selfishness.
I would not give up a detached home with a garage, driveway and backyard. Most people wouldn't. Hence the large detached lots and urban sprawl which then creates a car-centric culture.