Global doom and gloom.

[Ogertron3000]

A little eye opener for you, though i'll throw a disclaimer in and say I can't say if this happens in Oz or not, but in the uk it happens all over.

The general public, from a recycling point of view, has a spectrum as broad as any you'll ever see. Ranging from people who dilligently wash out plastic, glass and tins before placing them just so in the appropriate bin ready for collection. Right through to the lazy lot who just don't give a hoot and throw anything in their bins.

The council dustbin wagons pick it up and go and dump it at a huge central facility where bulldozers and loading shovel diggers load it into bulk tippers. Then it comes to our recycling site.

I tell you. If any of the diligent lot who take time and care to to wash and segregate their waste ready for collection saw what comes to our site they would have heart attacks. It's just a huge dirty pile of stinking fly and rat infested crap. We bulldoze it all into a machine which segregates non ferrous and ferrous tins, glass and plastic, which all should be there. But the efficiency rate and productivity of the machine is way way down on what it should be to achieve targets. This is because of all the paper, cardboard, fabrics, even garden waste that are abundant in the mix, and shouldn't even be there.

I believe Germany, who are one of the world leaders in recycling, realised a long time ago that they're flogging a dead horse. Government targets just cannot be hit and as a result more and more is going back into landfill and incineration. They're going backwards and I think the next couple of decades will see a seismic shift by the rest of the world too.

It's absolutely crazy.

It's pretty much the same here. We have 4 bins, 1 for garden waste, 1 for glass, 1 for general waste and the dodgy "recycling" one. The problem is the confusion about what is recyclable. If you buy a new toaster you can recycle the cardboard box it comes in but can't recycle a pizza box as it's soiled. Some plastic food packaging is recyclable but some isn't and there's no real labelling system letting you know which is which. Maybe just print a big green R on recyclable things would be an easy solution but that would obviously be too simple for the authorities to implement.

Once our recycling is supposedly sorted it gets sent to Indonesia for actual recycling. They have started rejecting the waste and sending it back as it's not sorted properly. There was 1 container I saw on the news which had ****ty nappies, cds, sticks and pillows in it. It was meant to be sorted plastic!

We have so much space and sunlight here I wish the government would build some solar powered recycling plants out in the middle of nowhere. We could do recycling properly and even charge other countries to do there's too and sell the recycled materials back to them. It would be good for the economy, give jobs in areas where there are none and actually do something positive for the environment. At the moment it just seems like we are pretending to recycle and getting Indonesia to bury our rubbish in their landfill.

 

[Ulu]

Hello; Well this clears up where you are coming from at least. I do still disagree. You have equated the things I write to something I did not intend with the addition of the word "control". I never implied the use of mind control or the use of "government sanctioned mass mind control" to effect population size. While you get to have an opinion just as I do, I fear your comments do not reflect what I am writing. Rather you seem to be taking my comments to a place other than where I mean to be.
I will leave it here for the sake of civility.

I'm not trying to twist your words. I'm trying to express what we thought of as population control, and what it might have been.
Our "control" was anemic and we convinced all the wrong people to have self control: people who already had the most resources and the most control.
I realize that sounds like eugenics. It's not.

We have a lot of people who had kids they couldn't/wouldn't support or didn't plan to have, and irresponsible/crazy/addicted people who had kids they had no business making. But you can't just tell someone, "you have no moral right to this child." So to convince the majority, well they must be persuaded into things "sideways", so to speak.

You might call that mind control, good markting, the ol'-stick-and-carrot, or plain charlatanism. Whatever it's called, we didn't do it well.

But you can't imagine the process is unknowable. We knew it well enough to sell Pet Rocks to people.

 

[skjl47]

We have a lot of people who had kids they couldn't/wouldn't support or didn't plan to have, and irresponsible/crazy/addicted people who had kids they had no business making.

Hello; This point I do agree with. I have known some of the children of people you correctly describe. A heartbreaking and sometimes tragic outcome for the children. Yes irresponsible people do irresponsible things including bringing children into the world they either cannot or will not care for properly.

Perhaps a difference from my point of view is a distinction you appear to be making. (Correct me if I am wrong again). You seem to see children from some people as a problem while children of others as a good thing. Let me be more clear. Children from well to do or well educated people appear to be considered less of a problem while children of the poor or uneducated or addicted and such are the ones that should not be around.

we convinced all the wrong people to have self control: people who already had the most resources and the most control.
I realize that sounds like eugenics. It's not.

I guess to me any child beyond the one per person of the ZPG (zero population growth) is to be considered to be adding to the overall increase of the total human population. I make no distinction other than the total numbers in this particular respect. In fact the case seems clear to me that a child of wealth is going to have a bigger impact (footprint) on the environment due to that wealth.
Would things have worked out better if all had been more responsible about the number of children they spawned? Sure. But I cannot quite support the notion that some people ought to deserve to have more children than others because they are better educated or have a level of wealth.

I do concede that some folks do neglect and otherwise mistreat children Those should not have children for such reasons. I guess I should extend this to folks who actually do the best they can for their kids but just cannot afford to properly provide for them. Not an intentional neglect but still a poor outcome for the child

So to convince the majority, well they must be persuaded into things "sideways", so to speak.

Here is a difference for me. I prefer to play it more straight with things like this. But alas neither approach worked and we now have the evidence. My methods failed so are not worthy of defense.

 

[esoxlucius]

It's pretty much the same here. We have 4 bins, 1 for garden waste, 1 for glass, 1 for general waste and the dodgy "recycling" one. The problem is the confusion about what is recyclable. If you buy a new toaster you can recycle the cardboard box it comes in but can't recycle a pizza box as it's soiled. Some plastic food packaging is recyclable but some isn't and there's no real labelling system letting you know which is which. Maybe just print a big green R on recyclable things would be an easy solution but that would obviously be too simple for the authorities to implement.

Once our recycling is supposedly sorted it gets sent to Indonesia for actual recycling. They have started rejecting the waste and sending it back as it's not sorted properly. There was 1 container I saw on the news which had ****ty nappies, cds, sticks and pillows in it. It was meant to be sorted plastic!

We have so much space and sunlight here I wish the government would build some solar powered recycling plants out in the middle of nowhere. We could do recycling properly and even charge other countries to do there's too and sell the recycled materials back to them. It would be good for the economy, give jobs in areas where there are none and actually do something positive for the environment. At the moment it just seems like we are pretending to recycle and getting Indonesia to bury our rubbish in their landfill.

So it's exactly the same in Oz then, it doesn't surprise me, humans are the same all over the world. The only difference being is that you ship your crap out overseas for others to deal with which just further adds to its carbon footprint, and in the uk we linger in our own crap. Lol.

And yes, you mention the ****ty nappies, let me add shringes and used sanitary products too. A lad on a sorting plant, not our place, had to go to hospital and have all the necessary precautionary injections after he was manually sorting waste and a used needle broke his skin, and that was through a heavy duty protective glove!

Absolutely everyone just does as they please. And the minority, who care, and try do their bit, aren't making any headway into this huge problem. Someone mentioned earlier in the thread that once people get on board and change, and start that snowball rolling, this whole "green" thing will gain momentum and soon all our problems will be over.

Unfortunately, although they are spot on in what they said, i think it's a very blinkered way of looking at it. We're talking about human beings here. There aren't going to be any little snowballs. The proof of that is all around us.

 

[skjl47]

you mention the ****ty nappies,

Hello; Here in the area where I live it is mountainous. Not high like the Rockies but still enough to get the main rivers running high after heavy rains. We get some high water from time to time. After the water goes down the trees are decorated. I started calling them "pamper trees". After the brand of disposable diapers I was familiar with. All along the Cumberland River from Harlan to Pineville the trees were decorated. I guess the slight benefit could be it is easy to tell how high the water got.

Absolutely everyone just does as they please. And the minority, who care, and try do their bit, aren't making any headway into this huge problem.

Hello; Yes to this. The same sort of conclusion I got to back around 1975. I went ahead with a vasectomy around that time due to not wanting to bring a child into the mess I had imagined. I kept on talking to a limited number of folks about the problems for a few years. Took a break from talking about it much during the 80's and 90's other than including environmental content in my general science or biology classes.
Sometime after 2000 I decided there still was no reason to think there is much chance to turn things around but also nothing to lose by telling my story.

 

[esoxlucius]

I remember the days before the modern disposable nappy. They were cloth and had to be washed before reusing. Uggh, it almost seems prehistoric now. Modern day nappies are super absorbent, super comfy for the infant, are churned out in billions worldwide at an affordable price......but.......aren't recyclable. There's no biodegradeable material in modern nappies, most are made out of plastic fibres, mainly polypropylene, polyester, nylons and elastanes, for their stretch qualities.

We went down the route of recycling post production nappy waste straight from the nappy factories. Beautiful material to recycle, all clean, just faulty in some way. But post consumer use? Full of human excrement, lol, a different kettle of fish altogether. The boffins who manufacture the recycling machines had to give up. Unsurprisingly really, imagine trying to recycle mountains of used nappies!

At least the old cotton based nappy would, quite quickly, return to earth, but modern day ones are like plastic bottles.

 

[Ogertron3000]

So it's exactly the same in Oz then, it doesn't surprise me, humans are the same all over the world. The only difference being is that you ship your crap out overseas for others to deal with which just further adds to its carbon footprint, and in the uk we linger in our own crap. Lol.

And yes, you mention the ****ty nappies, let me add shringes and used sanitary products too. A lad on a sorting plant, not our place, had to go to hospital and have all the necessary precautionary injections after he was manually sorting waste and a used needle broke his skin, and that was through a heavy duty protective glove!

Absolutely everyone just does as they please. And the minority, who care, and try do their bit, aren't making any headway into this huge problem. Someone mentioned earlier in the thread that once people get on board and change, and start that snowball rolling, this whole "green" thing will gain momentum and soon all our problems will be over.

Unfortunately, although they are spot on in what they said, i think it's a very blinkered way of looking at it. We're talking about human beings here. There aren't going to be any little snowballs. The proof of that is all around us.

I think its the same all over the world, once we throw it in the recycling bin we think we have done our bit and can feel happy. What happens to it after that is someone elses problem. I must admit ive been a lot less diligent with my recycling once i saw what was really going on. I still try to do it right but if i accidentally put something in the wrong bin i dont always pull it out now because i just think whats the point, who knows whats in all the neighbours bins? The only one that actually works is the glass bin, for some reason everyone does that well. Probably because its so simple, glass and only glass.
The council send "bin inspectors" around a few times a year and they check and if the bin isnt compliant they put a big red sticker on it so it doesnt get collected. Then you have to call the council so they do a special collection with the standard non recycling garbage truck so its not much of a punishment.

I imagine the next thing you will be seeing a lot of is facemasks popping up. Ive noticed when i take the daughter for a walk they are all over the place, some people hang them from trees, theres quite a few floating in the creek and some just chucked on the ground. I dont think they can be recycled and theres going to be lots of them being disposed of all over the world over the next year or so.

 

[esoxlucius]

I think its the same all over the world, once we throw it in the recycling bin we think we have done our bit and can feel happy. What happens to it after that is someone elses problem. I must admit ive been a lot less diligent with my recycling once i saw what was really going on. I still try to do it right but if i accidentally put something in the wrong bin i dont always pull it out now because i just think whats the point, who knows whats in all the neighbours bins? The only one that actually works is the glass bin, for some reason everyone does that well. Probably because its so simple, glass and only glass.
The council send "bin inspectors" around a few times a year and they check and if the bin isnt compliant they put a big red sticker on it so it doesnt get collected. Then you have to call the council so they do a special collection with the standard non recycling garbage truck so its not much of a punishment.

I imagine the next thing you will be seeing a lot of is facemasks popping up. Ive noticed when i take the daughter for a walk they are all over the place, some people hang them from trees, theres quite a few floating in the creek and some just chucked on the ground. I dont think they can be recycled and theres going to be lots of them being disposed of all over the world over the next year or so.

You mention "bin inspectors" whose job it is to make sure people are recycling properly. They'll make diddly squat of a difference, as you're seeing. But bin inspectors, and their like, could well be just the start of a new wave of future crime busters known as "the green police". They will carry a lot more clout. They will be looked upon with disdain, like modern day traffic wardens.

There will undoubtedly come a time where governments worldwide will have all these climate change summits and what not, and they'll decide, for the sake of the world, that enough is enough. They just can't rely on human beings to make the "correct choices" and so law upon law upon law will be introduced with extremely strict penalties.

It will be an awful society to live in. I really hope i'm dead wrong.

 

[skjl47]

I remember the days before the modern disposable nappy. They were cloth and had to be washed before reusing.

Hello; Made me recall a story from my undergrad days when living in a married student housing building at Morehead State University. My wife came in to our apartment in a furious state. She had been to the buildings laundry room. Seems someone in the building had just put fully loaded cloth diapers straight into the washing machine. No pre rinse or anything. I started taking our laundry to a commercial place after that.
That triggered another story. For me a big lifestyle move up was when we got our own washing machine for the first time. No more sitting around a laundromat watching clothes spin in the big dryers.

 

[skjl47]

Hello; There was an interesting bit on the radio today. I was cleaning up my truck and had the radio on. Seems a study was made. Women were shown pictures of men. One picture was just the guy. The other picture was the guy with a cat. The picture with the cat was found to be a less desirable as a person to date. So I guess guys with cats do not get as many dates as guys who do not have cats.
I do not have cats but I do not get dates either.