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[–] 0fsgivin 0 points 16 points (+16|-0) ago 

probably a frank discussion on the economics of the recycling industry...There are some studies showing even the recycling of paper causes MORE pollution than it prevents.

When you factor in everything...The power the recycling plant needs, The gas of the work trucks, even the gas of the workers driving to work. When you start adding it all up you find out its a pointless exercise at best and possibly even wasteful.

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[–] christy 1 point 12 points (+13|-1) ago  (edited ago)

As with many green programs, they do more harm than good. My company wants me to get LEED accredited, I really do not follow the logic. All locally sourced materials from the same state because of the emissions to transport... unless you're china. If you're China you don't green points for local materials, you get green points for buying materials from the US.

New Seattle building codes: You need occupancy sensors, I'm sure we can all get behind that, right? They turn the lights off when nobody is in the room, saves electricity. IN THE SAME ROOM they now want you to have vacancy sensors... which do the exact same fucking thing. Photoelectric sensors which will dim the lights when it's bright outside... and 50% of the outlets have to turn off if nobody is in a room.. like you have your phone plugged in, go to a meeting, come back and the shit isn't charged. In my opinion, that'll just lead to people daisy chaining surge protectors from the outlets that do work making a fire hazard/overload. The new codes add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the price of a building, the parts have to be manufactured, shipped, installed, powered and so on which cancels out the supposed greenness of it.

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[–] ForgotMyName 0 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago 

In my opinion, that'll just lead to people daisy chaining surge protectors from the outlets that do work making a fire hazard/overload.

That is exactly what will happen. We are troubleshooters. That's how we got this far. We see a problem, we find a solution. Sometimes the solution is brilliant, sometimes it's "hold my beer." Regardless, we'll come up with something. There's no way I'd put up with my stuff getting turned off in my office without me doing it intentionally. The only smart use of that kind of thing that I've seen is my UPS, which will turn off all of the other attached devices when the main device's load drops to almost zero.

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[–] somethingissmarmy 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

now there's ONE way to get builders and companies looking to other states.

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[–] h0m 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Jesus, what a huge pain in the ass. How difficult would it be to disable these sensors, realistically? Say, for someone who knows enough to set tile, framing, most drywall, minor electrical etc - i.e., enough to get himself in trouble.

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[–] Broc_Lia 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

The new codes add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the price of a building

Not to mention huge barriers to entry. Where I live shit like this is causing a housing crisis: It's literally uneconomic to build new houses and the existing stock is being regulated out of existence. The last appartment I moved out of had to be knocked into the one next door to make it legal to rent again, and the price of the new place (which I found only weeks before my moving out date) was €100 more expensive. It's €200 more expensive now.

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[–] InfoTeddy 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

Uh…ELI5?

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[–] 0fsgivin 0 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.

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[–] 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.

[–] [deleted] ago 

[Deleted]

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[–] 0fsgivin ago 

that is a very good point.

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[–] KoKansei ago 

Exactly. In a free market, if recycling saved on anything (money, resources, labor, etc.) it would be done voluntarily. The fact that some types of recycling need to be subsidized suggests they are not economically efficient and actually more wasteful than simple disposal.