Turning Garbage into Gold 127
bart_scriv writes "Entrepreneurs are creating companies that exploit the creative opportunities in other people's junk, sparing the environment in the process. The article looks at green entrepreneurship in general and profiles some specific companies, whose products range from recycled printer cartridges to rubber sidewalks. It also includes a slideshow on the process of making rubber sidewalks. From the article: 'While innovation has always been the entrepreneur's trademark, a growing interest in the green movement is propelling small business owners to create new products and services that also happen to be inventive recycling solutions for the country's vast waste heaps. 'The sustainability and restoring of our environment are providing opportunities in many fields of small business,' says John Stayton, co-founder and director of the Green MBA program at San Francisco's New College of California.'"
Yeah (Score:1, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Already tried, succeeded, then failed (Score:1, Funny)
A cmputer which works (Score:2)
I've also had two works-forever Linux bozes go DOA when 'Doze was installed on them.
No, I don't make this up. I don't need to. This is Real Life®.
wow-wee (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:trash to treasure (Score:3, Interesting)
Be a pal, bless my server. [i-bless.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re:trash to treasure (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:wow-wee (Score:4, Interesting)
I posted about rubber sidewalks in another forum... here's better links:
Christian Science Monitor story [csmonitor.com]
Rubber Sidewalk company page [rubbersidewalks.com]
Economical? Not yet, and not far away from California. Maybe if you're a streets & sanitation manager for a rich town and have money to blow in exchange for lower maintenance cost down the road. But that's why I appreciate small businesses in America and worldwide; they can be effective in their own niche and take risks that bigger companies wouldn't make.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do citizens suffer when you cut taxes and cut services? They can then use their money to buy said services, and do it a lot better than some random guy in an office.
If you want your money invested in something worthwhile, invest it. Why would you want it to be taken from you and invested in whatever organization has the be
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps the government can meet more needs per dollar because it has more money to spread around (so much that economies of scale start to kick in)?
Re: (Score:2)
Government inefficiency and corruption will take away any advantage of it buying in bulk, not to mention your freedom in choosing what you want and where you want to get it from.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you really and honestly believe that you'll get the best possible deal from a large company?
I don't.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you think that even if you could get things slightly cheaper, it would be worth the loss in freedom?
Re: (Score:2)
I believe that when my rights begin to trample on another's, then my right either isn't worth having anymore, or it's application must be modified.
I believe that all people have a basic right to certain services - and some people (for whatever reason) just can't afford them. While it might feel really good for me to be able to go out and pick and choose how I can get the services I need, economic factors dictate that some people cannot get them on their own.
If my slight loss of the freedom to cho
corporate responsibility (Score:2)
A large company has one and only one motivation. Profit. (In fact, if they're a publically traded corporation, they have a LEGAL responsibility to maximize profit.)
Wrong! It's hardly ever since now but originally corporate charters were established to further the public good. As for maximizing profits, I guess you've never heard of Whole Foods. It is one of the fastest growing grocery chains in the US and part of it's charter or bylaws is to help the local communities it operates in and stockholders s
Re: (Score:2)
I have a few for you.
Enron. Worldcom. Hell, our favourite target here on
Look. My point is not that corporations are evil. It's that putting your complete faith into the 'free market' is sometimes a losing proposition. Corporations have their place. Governments have theirs.
Re: (Score:2)
Look. My point is not that corporations are evil. It's that putting your complete faith into the 'free market' is sometimes a losing proposition. Corporations have their place. Governments have theirs.
I agree both corporations and government have their places. And they intersect, they are both supposed to improve the public good. Corporations, and more generally businesses and organizations can do this by providing goods and services to others. The government's job, well there's two really, is to def
Ever heard of buying in bulk? (Score:2)
Perhaps the government can meet more needs per dollar because it has more money to spread around (so much that economies of scale start to kick in)?
Why should I do forced to buy something I don't want? That's what government does. I don't mind groups getting together to buy in bulk, I buy in bulk when I can and I'm a member of two coops. But that is voluntary not by force of arms.
FalconRe: (Score:2)
-Peter
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
"The rubber in car tires is typically about 40 percent natural--i.e., made from latex; there's even more latex rubber in truck tires. Putting a fine dust of latex into the air is a serious concern to those with latex allergies. Somewhere from 1 to 6 percent of the U.S. population has some sensitivity to latex, which can take the form of rashes, inflammation, asthma, and worse. (H
Those who aren't latex-sensitive don't get a break (Score:2)
People don't get breaks from radon, which can cause lung cancer, in concrete either. So what's left to make sidewalks with? Bricks are used but they have the problem of breaking up just as concrete does and can cause falls and such. How about dirt? There was dirty there to begin with but people demanded they be paved. As far as the health problems with breathing are concerned that you list desiel exhaust causes the same problems.
FalconRe: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Dear sir,
I find your ideas interesting, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Check the cost. Labor ain't cheap. (Score:3, Insightful)
The trick to recycling is to do so in an economic manner.
Re:Check the cost. Labor ain't cheap. (Score:4, Informative)
And don't get me started on the fact that plastics only last 1000 years in a dump if you bury it like an idiot. Plastics are photosensitive and will decay rapidly if just left where they can get sunlight.
Re:Check the cost. Labor ain't cheap. (Score:4, Interesting)
The paper issue is interesting though because you might consider discarded paper as a carbon sink.
As for not burying plastic... What do you suggest we do with it? Fill desert areas with trash? What kind of chemicals does decaying plastic leave behind?
-matthew
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Really? I'm pretty sure the electricity I use comes from hydropower. But maybe those big ol' dams are just for show.
-matthew
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Check the cost. Labor ain't cheap. (Score:4, Informative)
Not true. From our experience (in Brazil), this monoculture aproach using non-native species leads to as much wildlife wipeout and soil/underground water spoiling as the damned "Queimadas", wich is the practice of burning the forest to give way to soybean crops and/or bovine pasture.
Re:Check the cost. Labor ain't cheap. (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with your logic is that the tree you just "planted" by throwing out paper (wtf?), is not going to provide: shade or habitat or prevent erosion or breathe in a comparable amount of carbon dioxide. There are lots of other externalities you've neglected to account for, such as the chemical treatment it takes to produce paper pulp from wood (more so than recycled pulp). Nobody counts that because it gets dumped into the air, oceans and rivers.
According to some reports, many of North America's largest catalogs and tissue product manufacturers use virgin boreal pulp [nrdc.org].
Often in managed forests, where, as you triumphantly declare: trees are "specifically grown to supply paper", the trees that have been planted are not indigenous to the region. This endangers native plant and animal species, such as in Chile [panda.org].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
and what about the chemical treatment to recycle paper?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You can read more here: a report from NH Dept of Environmental Services [state.nh.us].
I have taken the liberty of copying a few salient points:
Re: (Score:1)
I'm not sure you get the idea that the natural cycle of forest fires compares to the dioxin and other pollutants released by modern paper mills. Even though forest fires appear destructive, they have there place in the natural cycle of death and regrowth of forests. However, pulp mills release chemicals that have no place in the natural environmental cycles.
Re: (Score:2)
I call bullshit. Biodegradable plastics that decay with exposure to sunlight exist but have proven too expensive to manufacture for general use. Biodegradable plastics also tend to release carbon into the atmosphere. The plastics we use do not "decay rapidly" if just left in sunlight. Even if the coke
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, recycling plastics has proven difficult. The biggest problem with plastics recycling is that it is difficult to automate the sorting of plastic waste, and so it is labor intensive. Typically, workers sort the plastic by looking at the resin identification code, though common containers like soda bottles can be sorted from memory. Other recyclable materials, such as metals, are easier to process mechanically.
While containers are usually made from a single
Re: (Score:2)
So, that's what Dell's been experimenting with!
recycling cellphones (Score:2)
a cellular phone may have many small parts consisting of over a dozen different types and colors of plastics. In a case like this, the resources it would take to separate the plastics far exceed their value
Ah but there's another reason to recycle cellphones, for the coltan in them. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a major source of coltan and the profits of mining it pay for the deaths of thousands. Much of the conflict in the Congo is a resource conflict.
Since the outbreak of fighting in Aug [globalissues.org]
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (Score:2)
Sorry, but even in sunlight, they don't decay fast enough.
There is a giant ( twice the size of Texas ) pile of floating plastic in the north eastern Pacific know as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. An unfourtunate combination of wind and currents causes most anything dropped into the northern Paci
Re: (Score:2)
plastic recycling (Score:2)
And don't get me started on the fact that plastics only last 1000 years in a dump if you bury it like an idiot. Plastics are photosensitive and will decay rapidly if just left where they can get sunlight.
Yes some plastics are sun, light, degradable. But this requires sunlight, and where does the vast majority of used plastic go? It gets buried in landfills. I doubt many people would like it if plastics were just laying around anywhere waiting to degrade. Also plastic can be deadly. Have you ever see
Re: (Score:1)
The trick to dealing with waste is; don't. Perhaps you've heard an aphorism that begins with that word, but as such you are the only one who makes money on the deal (there's another aphorism that deals with pennies), so you'll never hear the concept advertised.
Read Brave New World for the argumentum ad adsurdum.
KFG
how is this recycling, anyway? (Score:2)
Ooookay. That's nice. But...er...what happens when the bag wears out? Or the paver gets too many cuts and dings from inline skates and people falling off bikes? You've got your trash back again, that's wha
Re: (Score:2)
Correct.
This doesn't seem to me like what we normally think of as "recycling."
It's exactly what we normally think of as recycling. Every trip through the recycling cycle degrades the material to some extent -- that's why white paper gets recycled as newspaper, and newspaper gets recycled as filler, and so on. Even aluminum cans and plastic bottles can't be recycled indefinitely, becau
Re: (Score:2)
Re:how is this recycling, anyway? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense. Aluminum is aluminum is aluminum. Steel is steel. Silicon dioxide (glass) is silicon dioxide. You melt them down, blow off the impurities, and you are exactly back where you started -- and I mean right down to the molecule. The idea that somehow the Fe atoms that are part of your 2006 Ford car door might be "degraded" because they were once part of the trunk of a '56 Ford, and before that formed the bearing on a pushrod in a locomotive built in 1908, is inconsistent with basic principles of chemistry. (Biological recycling is even more efficient -- your food doesn't taste faintly of shit if the farmer manures the field.)
The only place you could make this kind of general argument is for composite polymer materials -- e.g. plastics, rubber and paper -- where it's not economical to reduce the materials to their original chemical form. Practically speaking, you can't reduce polystyrene waste to the olefins from which it was originally polymerized, in order to purge it of impurities, restore the original degree of polymerization, and restore the original composite mix of resin, plasticizers, et cetera. It just costs too much, as someone else has pointed out. So these materials are not, at present, significantly recycleable in any meaningful sense.
Instead, as in TFA, one "recycles" materials like these only in the toy sense of taking the used material and shaping it into another form for a while. It's as if you took your old, rusted-out car body, and, rather than melt the steel down and recast it into a pristine rust-free new car body, just turned the rustbucket into a planter, or some funky rust art. Or like my grandfather re-using wood from packing crates to stake up his tomato plants. Or GIs in the Second World War wiping their asses with pages from Stars and Stripes.
I don't think this is true recycling. It hasn't a prayer of ever becoming a closed loop, where the material recycles more or less endlessly, and you just supply energy. Turning your rusted-out automobile into a planter doesn't solve the fundamental problem at all, because the planter's just going to go into the dump itself, soon enough. You haven't done squat to figure out a way to truly close the loop, to turn the worn-out product back into a brand new product of the same type and quality.
Such "recycling" is a gimmick, an abuse of language, which conveys the false impression that something much more useful is going on than really is. The fact that some miniscule fraction of bicycle tires could be re-used by consumers one more time, for a year or so, as part of a rubber bookbag, can have no serious impact on the problem of our waste stream. It's re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Does it matter? Sure. Effort spent re-arranging deck chairs could be better spent trying to plug holes below the waterline. When people hear about all this "recycling" they may figure, hey, plenty's being done, and pay less attention to efforts at genuine recycling. (For example, although steel is infinitely recycleable, and very economically, only about 60% of American steel cans are recycled. That's idiotic.) Toy solutions can easily delay and prevent real solutions.
In any case, the more interesting thing is that entrepreneurs are beginning to see the profit potential of recycling garbage.
Good grief. Are we to suppose engineers have been idiots until early in the 21st century? Any fool understands that if you can figure out a way to turn "garbage" (what you can buy cheap) into "product" (what you can sell dear), then profit follows as night follows day. Consequently, the history of technology is chock-o'-block full of engineers taking "waste" products and finding new, useful things to do with them. This isn't a new insight or development, it's as old as compost heaps.
One historical example, relevant here, is that our entire modern plastics industry is based around the
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed, but your rusted-out car body isn't pure aluminum or pure steel. It's some metal, plus some paint, plus various other materials that you will need to separate out in order to get your useful raw material back out again. The separation takes work and energy, and you'll never get all of the material back -- there will always be some lost during the processing. The waste percentage is much smaller for metals than it is for other materials, bu
Re: (Score:2)
Sure. But for the "recycling" schemes in question, the waste percentage is 100%. None of the material is recovered in its original form. I'm drawing a distinction -- I think a very useful distinction -- between recycling schemes that recover some percentage of the material in its original, pristine form, and "recycling" schemes that don't back up at all, that merely take material too degraded for one use and
plastics (Score:2)
One historical example, relevant here, is that our entire modern plastics industry is based around the fact that when oil started to be refined into gasoline and kerosene for smaller and more delicate engines around the turn of the 20th century, the process left behind sludgy heavy "garbage" residue, which was a mere nuisance until some chemists in the 20s and 30s figured out you could polymerize the "garbage" and turn it into strong, lightweight plastics. Poof, straw into gold. Hardly an uncommon event, hi
Re: (Score:2)
And yet still they are able to sell them at a profit. Strange, eh? But not so strange when you consider that people willing pay $99 for a designer t-shirt when essentially the same thing being sold elsewhere for $5. If nothing else, the symbolism and novelty makes these things worth the extra cost, at least in the eyes of some.
The trick to recycling is to do so in an economic manner
Well, the trick
eWaste is ready to kill us, so it's better to mine (Score:3, Interesting)
eWastecanada.ca [ewastecanada.ca] is a local business mining for gold.
Re:eWaste is ready to kill us, so it's better to m (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:eWaste is ready to kill us, so it's better to m (Score:4, Insightful)
I find that very difficult do believe. I mean that's 5-25 POUNDS of solder. What the hell are they doing in there?
The heaviest thing in a television set is the picture tube. Since it's big and filled with vacuum it must have very thick walls. Thick glass walls. I suppose they could be lead crystal glass tubes, but that would be needlessly expensive, and wouldn't leach into the water supply in any meaningful timescale anyway. The next heaviest thing is the hundreds of wrappings of thin copper wire. There is no reason to ever make thin copper wire out of lead. In fact, it's impossible.
That figure smacks of taking advantage of people's ignorance about a heavy rarely opened box in almost everyone's homes. There's gotta be some kind of term for abusing people's uncertainty about things to encourage fear to promote some kind of crazy agenda.
Re:eWaste is ready to kill us, so it's better to m (Score:4, Informative)
Bingo [wikipedia.org]. It's heavily leaded glass to absorb X-rays generated by the electron beams smashing into the aperture grille etc.
Re: (Score:2)
If everyone is not using LCD monitors by now they should be shunned and tsked at by the general population for being energy-wasters.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
. That dot to the left is what my current monitor shows in places. Never had that problem with CRTs.
Re: (Score:2)
alas, not so (Score:2)
That's a very reasonable thought, with which I'd have instinctively agreed, but unfortunately it turns out not to be true. Apparently it takes mere hours to days if the glass is crushed. Here [sciencenews.org] is a surprising brief report from Science News, which, since it's in a God-damned PDF, I will quote:
Though anecdotal reports have hinted that picture tubes' glass might leach [lead], no one knew how much, notes Timothy G. T
Re: (Score:1)
Some Reference:
http://www.svtc.org/hightech_prod/desktop.htm [svtc.org]
http://www.qsrecycling.com/whatisacrt.html [qsrecycling.com]
http://www.epa.gov/dfe/pubs/comp-dic/lca-sum/ques8
Re: (Score:2)
2-10 lbs of lead? (Score:2)
I find that very difficult do believe. I mean that's 5-25 POUNDS of solder. What the hell are they doing in there?
Lead isn't in just the solder, there's also lead in the glass.
FalconRecycling Slashdot (Score:1, Funny)
I'm going to do my part and recycle all my comments from now on.
We don't need this (Score:1)
Breaking news: Profitability is good! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
That would be me, however, unlike most of the people with a conscience in the recyling business I also have a modicum of understanding.
As per my other post in this thread, however, understanding is very, very "bad for the economy," so unless you learn to think these issues out, very hard, on your own, you aren't likely to hear about it.
People who "have a conscience" are selling plastics now as being "good for the environment," and make a damned fi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
At your expense; and, generally speaking, that of the environment as well.
KFG
Re: (Score:2)
As our resources become less and less in the next few decades this sort of business will become much more important. These are the precursors to what very well could be a huge industry boom in the near future.
Also, you don't find the fact that their business relies on the refuse of other businesses instead of using new resources to be interesting? Wow. How jaded you have become!
Re: (Score:2)
Creative opportunities in other people's junk (Score:2, Funny)
Old saying (Score:2)
I work with a nonprofit doing some of this... (Score:3, Interesting)
He already makes money from the wrecked planet... (Score:1)
Well, he already found his way to make money with his "Green MBA program". Although, I guess it's not really in the spirit of the message.
Only a slight tangent (Score:2)
i had a 3000+ sq ft warehouse full at one point but too many problems
Other wholesalers/retailers were only interested in the particular product number they normally used even if something was equal or simply a different package quantity.
Soon even the charities didnt want odd quantities or small lots, they wanted pallets of gloves and money. By that point all our excess had to be put in garbage.
Between storing it, sorting it and paying t
Re: (Score:2)
Dunno whether it applies to bulk medical supplies so much, but in general this sort of problem ("I have item X that I don't need and can't profitably sell, but it's still perfectly useful if only I could find the person who could use it") is a search/discovery problem. 99% of the time, the person who could use the item is out there, if only there was a way for you to find them (or them
Recycled rubber sidewalks? Bad idea. (Score:3, Informative)
If you dispose of tires in a dump (Score:2)
>a href="http://www.netfeed.com/~jhill/westley.htm"> TIRE FIRE NEAR WESTLEY,CA 09-22-1999 9:36AM
Falconoops try it again (Score:2)
Tire fire near Westley, CA 09-22-1999 9:36AM [netfeed.com]
FalconRe: (Score:2)
Mixed fonts, dozens of colors, flashing, bold, italics, uneven margins, etc.
It reminded me of Wired magazine from the mid 90s.
Re: (Score:2)
Manufacture and use of cement requires large amounts of energy and thus large release of CO2. Some wind turbines, for example, need such large bases that they can only be used on bedrock or the emissions creating them would outweigh the gains in generation.
Slow breakdown of old rubber - which is going to happen somewhere after all - may well be better overall.
Justin.
Back in the '80s... (Score:3, Interesting)
Eventually the installed base of systems dried up. That's when my second career started...
Green Waste to Ethanol (Score:1)
AOL (Score:2)
I live next to a rubber recycling plant (Score:1, Interesting)
What the EPA says about recycling (Score:2, Informative)
"In 1999, recycling and composting kept ~64 million tons of material from landfills and incinerators. Today, this country recycles 28 percent of its waste...
It seems like the Baby Boom consumer generation has left us with a legacy of trash we are continuing to produce, and we
Chemicals. (Score:2)
- check out the waste-chemicals of a plant.
- evaluate what might be of use.
- offer to dispose of the interesting chemicals, cheaper than the normal waste-processing of those chemicals would cost.
- Sell the chemicals where someone else needs them!
They would get money on both ends: both getting the goods, as well as getting rid of them. There might be a refining step in the middle, usually cheap enough not to spoil the fun....
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's really just two ways of saying the same thing. And in any case, isn't delaying the inevitable a worthwhile thing to do? The more slowly the landfills fill, the more time we have to come up with a way to solve the problem.
When that happens, we will have the same volume of trash as we started with.
No matter what happens (barring space exploration, and meteorites, anyway), we will always have the same volu
Re: (Score:2)
Making the tire companies responsible for deposit, return and recycling services for thier product (back into tires again) would be more to the point.
I'm not sure how it works here but in MN there is a surcharge when you change tires. When you have a shop replace the tires a fee is added to the bill.
Falcon