[–] Grospoliner ago
Okay. It's called economy of scale.
What happens is to recycle a pound of printed paper (newsprint, home computer paper, etc) requires X joules of energy to process (so 1 lb paper = X joules of energy). Due to economy of scale, the current state of the industry is that that recycling paper (1 = X) operates at a cost deficit, or it costs more money for 1 = X than it does to produce an entirely new fresh batch of paper (Y = 1). This is quite simply, due to the efficiency of the recycling input (all the shit they take for recycling) vs the efficiency of producing new paper.
To put it even more simply, there is always an energy cost involved in recycling (an energy deficit) which cannot be avoided.
This is, however, a short term understanding of a problem (loss leader problem). Which can be over come with long term investiture. Ultimately, eventually, the amount of material recycled will reach a balance point where the input energy to produce new material will be greater than that of the recycled material.
[–] 0fsgivin 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
there are many examples I dont really know how to ELI5...Sometimes its not about being green its about being profitable or litterally some guy hired for 80k a year job as a managing director of reasearch and development of green technologies. Having to keep coming up with new ideas and pitching them as gold or if he doesnt people start asking him what the fuck hes being paid for.
Its not just the green companies guilty of this...Some new guy 4 years out of college gets his big promotion in a plant that makes staplers. He better fucking make an imporvement to it to earn his 60k a year job. The words "Actually everything is optimized as far as the current staffing/technology is concerned but we need to be on the lookout for possibilities of imporovement and in fact it looks like in 2 or 3 years or so we might be able to try..." Gets his ass fired.
[–] InfoTeddy 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
So they actually pressure people to try to be more “green”? Interesting…
[–] 0fsgivin ago
yah and hey...Im not a manmade climate change denier or anything...And hey if the EPA wasnt corrupt as fuck id support em.
But yah...theres a lot of money getting made know what im saying? That does NOT mean the whole movement is bad in fact it certainly vital to our survival of a species just take it with a grain of salt ya know?