 | Hurricane Gustav and Energy Infrastructure - Early Open Thread | The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: August 28, 2008 |  |
| The Bullroarer - Wednesday 27 August 2008 | The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | The Bullroarer - Thursday 28th August 2008 | |
55 comments on Bioplastic - Better Living Through Green Chemistry ?
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
55 comments on Bioplastic - Better Living Through Green Chemistry ?
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
User login
Contact
- anz at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Archives
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
GAIA Host Collective
It's somewhat as John Milton said.
If you wash them, it uses a lot of water and energy, and you need some good quality control to make sure nothing's left.
If you smash them up and melt them, it uses no water but a lot of energy, and you can then safely reuse them, any crap left in them will just burn up at glass-melting temperatures.
Also, each company produces or orders its own kind of bottles or jars. For example the Monbulk jam jar is a different shape to the Homebrand jam jar. That means if they wanted to reuse rather than recycle, they'd have to sort out all the different jars and bottles. Easier just to smash them up, melt them down and reshape them.
Of course if we had just a dozen different standard sizes and shapes then it'd be easier to sort and thus reuse them, but there you go. All along the chain of production-use-disposal there are opportunities to step in to make reduce, reuse or recycle easier; at the moment we choose to only step in at the end. That's why we have recycling instead of reusing, and downcycling instead of recycling.
If we stepped in at the beginning of the production-use-disposal chain it'd be easier overall, but then you have to argue with and regulate a zillion different companies who will argue a moral right to have a slightly different-shaped bottle, and so on.
It seems like you're saying that, because fossil energy is cheap, water is kinda expensive, and human attention is very expensive, it's cheaper to use lots of energy to mash glass up and melt it on a large scale.
In the near future we expect fossil energy to be very expensive, water to be kinda expensive, and human attention to be cheap. So, it should become cheaper to use lots of human attention to wash glass and reuse it without mashing and melting.
You are 100% correct.
The excuses always go: We have different shaped bottles, different types of plastic etc.......
Why?? There is no reason retail products need anything except standardised containers, plastic formulations etc [anyone guess why homebrew beer barrels have wide diameter screw tops..?]
Ban Marketing, and everything will go back to brown paper and cardboard packaging.
Along with the human attention to wash out the glasses, will come the human attention to grow, proces and cook the stuff that goes in them at the household level.
I have been home brewing beer now for about 8 years. I have used the same set of glass beer bottles throughout this time and have only broken one or two. I guess that this is an advantage of localised/small scale systems, where items can be reused without any significant processing, energy or water requirements.
It wasn't that long ago when homemade jams, chutneys etc were commonly produced at home (and it probably won't be that far off that this will be commonplace again) using whatever glassware that was available. I guess it comes back to our current economic model. Simply reusing an item, or producing goods at home does not add any value to the formal economy, where as recycling 'adds' to the economy at several points.
I remember the days when old vegemite jars (glass, not plastic) were frequently used as glasses for drinks in a lot of Australian houses.
I suspect in some country towns that is still true today.
Yes, I remember this too. I also remember cake stalls etc as a kid where trifle and other goodies were sold in washed out yoghurt containers or anything else was that available. Probably can't do that any more due to health regulations.
I have thought about this previously but haven't put any effort into calculating it but I wonder what the energy consumption difference is between a packet of store bought biscuits versus biscuits baked at home. We try to cook a batch of biscuits or a cake every week or so. Obviously this saves on plastic wrapping, transportation etc, but most if not all of the ingredients come from the supermarket and I would imagine a home electric oven is less efficient than a factory one.
Any thoughts?
I've got no idea which is more energy efficient.
I bake bread at home every now and then but I'd be surprised if it was any more efficient than buying mass produced bread.
Just the production, the bakery will be more efficient than you can be. It's just that they have bigger ovens and so on.
But most supermarkets don't produce their own biscuits, they're made in a factory somewhere, often overseas. Factoring in the transport and the packaging turns the balance in favour of the home-baked stuff.