uncomfortable fact — the energy cost of irrigated corn is almost twice that of rain-fed corn. and irrigation is needed more as lands become unexpectedly dry due to climate change
@jimfl recycling was one of those things that sounded great on paper before we tried putting it into practice. “use plastic”, they said. “look at how fast technology evolves”, they said. “itll all work out in the end”, they said.
the thing is, the tech DID evolve, just not the tech to do it at scale. we need more economists
Glass used to be 3 streams (clear, green, brown) but the local recycling center now commingles them. The last 2 streams are essentially the same, but we stage them separately.
@kellogh our household has no appreciable aluminum waste. This all takes up a fairly compact amount of space (a food waste bin on the counter, two bokashi buckets under the counter, a compost bin in the yard, and a series of bins in the corner of the garage.
@jimfl@kellogh Probably not much - not an expert either, but getting aluminum out of bauxite ore involves a step where you use electrolysis to actually get the aluminum out of solution, and this is wildly expensive energy-wise, so it is always going to be fewer Joules to re-use the aluminum you have already done this to.
Paper can have a similar - though vastly smaller - efficiency when recycling.
@jimfl@kellogh And I might argue (though somewhat tentatively) that faster cycles of re-use for aluminum, i.e., not durable goods, is better systemically, since letting a lot of aluminum sit around in a non-raw form increases the demand to mine more bauxite ore to turn into aluminum instead of recycling, for example, beverage cans.
@jimfl@kellogh I think that if you say that "recycling complex hydrocarbons is bullshit" you're much closer to true than if you say "recycling elements is bullshit" and that simple molecules, like those formed in glass and paper are somewhere in the middle.
@kellogh in addition, what we commonly call recycling is a perfect example of placing the burden on consumers while producers extract all the value.
Whatever economists we bring into the system need to learn to subtract. If a corporation sends a consumer packaging, they need to own the lifecycle. If that renders a business non-viable, then guess what—that business is not viable, and should fail.
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