Plastic bags, climate change, renewable energy,

oldcorollas

oldcorollas

Levin the moment
Quick hambo suggests only Vic/ACT/SA have banned solar panels going to landfill. Current aus recycling costs ~$30 a panel, which recovers the Al frames, and shreds the rest for use in roadbase/bricks/concrete... We should do better :)

For turbines, maybe shredding for concrete filler is the best re-use?
 
oldcorollas

oldcorollas

Levin the moment
pink poodle said:
Could you imagine the fires!
Click to expand...
going by what those Ebike fires look like, will be wayyy more impressive than the tyre fires :D
(tyres are "fully recyclable" too... they just happen to sit in big piles for a while.. like car batteries will)
1704162501645.png



on a brighter note... going to "return n earn" some Xmas bottles and such today, and lookin at https://returnandearn.org.au/ to find a nearby return point that is not full...

since 2017, 10,590,198,743 bottles returned thru the network.... at 10c each :eek: + 3.1 billion through kerbside...
Almost a million tonnes recycled and more than halved drink bottle rubbish in environment...

Sometimes we do actually do better :)
 
Freediver

Freediver

I can go full Karen
oldcorollas said:
Not buried, but piled up...
They'll certainly be recycled first for value.

Is it cheaper to make batteries using raw materials or starting with an old battery?
Is anyone not using raw materials now? (in bulk, not in lab)

Mandated means we pay the cost upfront, which is a good thing :)
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Metals are metals regardless of whether they are freshly mined or recycled, they are exactly the same product.
The first question is whether it's cheaper to mine or recycle, the second comes down to national security. If an economy reliant on lithium doesn't have it's own supply it makes sense to develop a recycling industry and the necessary tech to do so.
 
Stredda

Stredda

Runs naked through virgin scrub
Freediver said:
Metals are metals regardless of whether they are freshly mined or recycled, they are exactly the same product.
The first question is whether it's cheaper to mine or recycle, the second comes down to national security. If an economy reliant on lithium doesn't have it's own supply it makes sense to develop a recycling industry and the necessary tech to do so.
Click to expand...
And Australia has a whole lot of lithium so we will chuck it all into landfill or ship it off overseas to be someone else's problem. :(

oldcorollas said:
going by what those Ebike fires look like, will be wayyy more impressive than the tyre fires :D
(tyres are "fully recyclable" too... they just happen to sit in big piles for a while.. like car batteries will)
Click to expand...
It's pretty disappointing with tyres, as there has been many ways to recycle them for decades but there's still bloody great piles of them around the country.
 
Scotty T

Scotty T

Walks the walk
@oldcorollas we have the Return It here for cans and bottles, it's by far easiest to go to the ones that have staff and don't scan the barcodes, but generally there's a line up there because everyone is onto it being much faster even with the line up.

The full self serve ones here scan barcodes, there's always loads that don't work for me because I drink different weird craft beer all the time. The scanning machines themselves are pretty shit, it will recognnise one can of whatever, and the next exact same one it won't.

CSIRO is doing some work on circular economy:

Home - Circular Economy

A national research initiative to transition Australia to a circular economy.
research.csiro.au research.csiro.au
 
Freediver

Freediver

I can go full Karen
Flow-Rider said:
Most countries have had to introduce what they call a 'black mass recycling policy', it's cheaper to bin them than it is to dismantle them and separate all the metals.
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Shredding the batteries into black mass is the first step in recycling them, they leach the metals out of the black mass which is just finely shredded batteries. There is an Australian company, that last time I read was having a plant up and running to recycle them using an alkali process that didn't require the black mass step to recover the metals by the end of last year.
 
silentbutdeadly

silentbutdeadly

has some good things to say
oldcorollas said:
going by what those Ebike fires look like, will be wayyy more impressive than the tyre fires :D
(tyres are "fully recyclable" too... they just happen to sit in big piles for a while.. like car batteries will)
View attachment 405879


on a brighter note... going to "return n earn" some Xmas bottles and such today, and lookin at https://returnandearn.org.au/ to find a nearby return point that is not full...

since 2017, 10,590,198,743 bottles returned thru the network.... at 10c each :eek: + 3.1 billion through kerbside...
Almost a million tonnes recycled and more than halved drink bottle rubbish in environment...

Sometimes we do actually do better :)
Click to expand...
And yet...we have a return and earn setup at our town dump (regional NSW). Which is great except that all the collected bottles get bagged into shipping containers which are then trucked nearly 1,000 kilometres to Adelaide for processing.

All our other glass packaging is roughly crushed and dumped in brown, white and green piles like at the landscape supplies shop. Except no-one can buy it and no commercial recycling operation wants it. Council can't afford a machine that can process it into sand.

Same story with plastic. It's all baled up and sitting in a corner of the dump but none of it has left the place in six years. One bale a week. The next bushfire will sort it out. Again, no-one wants it because it's not sorted into plastic type and the volumes are comparatively tiny going forward.

Cardboard, metal, oil and some e-waste is about the only recyclable material leaving our shire, outside the 10c scheme. Which is underused here anyway.

A circular economy can only work if it's viable. Outside the cities and large regional centres...it's not. Unless we actually take the 'reduce' part of the circle seriously.
 
ozzybmx

ozzybmx

taking a shit with my boobs out
silentbutdeadly said:
And yet...we have a return and earn setup at our town dump (regional NSW). Which is great except that all the collected bottles get bagged into shipping containers which are then trucked nearly 1,000 kilometres to Adelaide for processing.

All our other glass packaging is roughly crushed and dumped in brown, white and green piles like at the landscape supplies shop. Except no-one can buy it and no commercial recycling operation wants it. Council can't afford a machine that can process it into sand.
Click to expand...
Because the rest of Australia are noobs.

The old backward state doesn't just have 200km of Singletrack accessible by bike from the city centre, it leaves Australia for dead on renewables and recycling.

Those not so well off have been keeping the city tidy of cartons, glass and containers for over 45yrs.

While the rest of Australia is stockpiling and wondering what to do with it.

SA - 1977

VIC - 2023.

TAS - 2023.

NSW - 2017

QLD - 2018

ACT- 2018

WA - 2020

NT - 2018
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oldcorollas

oldcorollas

Levin the moment
ozzybmx said:
Those not so well off have been keeping the city tidy of cartons, glass and containers for over 45yrs.
Click to expand...
I thought this initiative was a nice idea (not sure it will work in practice?)
to stop such people needing to dive into red bins in public.. and less cost/effort for council to collect yellow bins
1704181398190.png


always amazes me the number of people driving quite nice, not old, cars (various German marques) going through peoples household recyc bins of an evening..
 
ozzybmx

ozzybmx

taking a shit with my boobs out
oldcorollas said:
I thought this initiative was a nice idea (not sure it will work in practice?)
to stop such people needing to dive into red bins in public.. and less cost/effort for council to collect yellow bins

always amazes me the number of people driving quite nice, not old, cars (various German marques) going through peoples household recyc bins of an evening..
Click to expand...
There were a few organised crew that came round in the early mornings and emptied peoples 'black' recycling tubs but now they are bins and mixed with other recyclables. If people even throw 10c containers out.

We have 4 bins here, waste, recycling, green garden waste and waste food (compostible) which also takes grass clippings.

We also have a 5th brown bin that I fill with beer cans, then the missus drops them at the recycling depot near her work.

Plenty of recyclers here and also can drop centres. All they do is throw and count roughly ;) They dont give a shit where they are from and even if they have a 10c money back tag.

In the city, its people down on their luck or homeless that risk syringes poking through bins with their bare hands collecting the money back containers. Some have a bike with a trailer with 2 of those 750mm-1m square mega bags filled with containers they have harvested during the night.

I can say since I've been here, the sight of a can or a bottle littered is rare, even if you do see one, it wont be there a day or two later.

Cant believe other states took so long to get on the wagon.

A mate told me that years ago, they used to come from Melbourne with a van full of crushed cans and cash them in when they got to Adelaide, paying for the fuel there and back.
 
ozzybmx

ozzybmx

taking a shit with my boobs out
The Dude said:
At ten cents a bottle and ten cents a can
We're pulling in five hundred dollars a man
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Nice job.

It used to be 5c here in SA up until a load of years ago, maybe 10yrs ?

5000 per man is a good effort, thats 4 x cartons of 24 beers a week for the whole year

You are making me look like a beginner :p (maybe not some weeks)
 
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