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From: Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: GIMP 3.0.0-RC1
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2025 18:27:21 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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On 2025-01-07, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
> There are a few recycling projects that do make money and they don't 
> require government intervention.  My information is from the '90s but 
> there were two lead acid battery operations in the LA area and it was 
> worth hauling junk batteries from Denver or further. The Kaiser aluminum 
> smelter in Spokane also pulled in crushed aluminum cans from all over the 
> west. The local pulp mill had cardboard hauled in but they shut down. 
> There must still be a market since the company that handles the garbage 
> has a separate dumpster for cardboard.
>
> The oddest one was in Rancho Cucamonga. I hauled past the sell date beer 
> from Denver. They distilled it for industrial alcohol.
>
> Plastic recycling is problematic as is glass. I've got a suspicion after 
> the people have their feel good moment separating the trash it still winds 
> up in the same landfill.

Paper that can be pulped /should/ be economical. I try to keep the bad
items out of my recycle bin:
* junkmail with "gifts" of address labels - I am sure the sticky and the
  wax paper backing clog up the pulp process.
* junkmail with coins glued to the reply coupon. Those nickels and
  quarters surely will damage the shredding machine.
* corrugated boxes with an excessive amount of plastic tape wrapped
  around them.
* retail packaging with a mix of cardboard and plastic parts.

Glass should be capable of being melted down, with most contaminants
turning into slag that can be skimmed off. But mostly it would be far
better to REUSE the class jars and bottles. That would require
standardization to create a viable return path. We use to do this back
in my native Denmark, when all the breweries (who also bottled most
sodas) had one 25 cemntiliter clear soda bottle and one green 37 cl beer
bottle. This was strained a bit by coca-cola who insisted on their
global unique bottles, and one brewery that had their own brown bottle
which theey insisted was needed to protect their ale from sunlight. But
it still worked, so long as we could ban the aluminum cans. Once the EU
decided that this was "market distortion" the recycling became MUCH less
efficient. But still, Danes take their empty bottles back to the store
where they buy the full ones, and put them in reverse vending machines.

Plastic is hard, because there are endless variations of materials.
Plastic film is the worst, because it eventually gets ground into
microbe-sized micro-plastic bits, which are not good for living things.

Again the Danes have a decent solution: Everything not recyclable goes
into incinerators, producing heat for city heating or electricity
generation or greenhouse heating. The ashes tht are goind to the
landfill are a MUCH reduced volume. People worry about them containing
heavy metals, but honestly: If you bury the waste in a landfill, the
heavy metals are all there in that mess, too. Incineration decomposes
the plastics. Yes there may be some nasty fumes, but what can't be
scrubbed out of the smoke, can be released atop a tall smokestack so
that it disperses widely.