Curiously, by moving a magnetic field through a non-ferrous metal an eddy current is induced. Then the magnetic field interacts with that current, to produce a force!
>Eddy-current separators use a different approach to magnetic separation: They “repel” nonferrous metals. These powerful magnetic separators “kick-out” the nonferrous metallic products or contamination being conveyed while allowing other materials to continue in the flow. Eddy-current separator systems contain high-speed, powerful rare earth magnetic rotors and are available in a range of configurations. These often include vibratory pan feeders, adjustable splitters, high-speed conveyors, hoods, and even suspended magnets to remove ferrous metals that may also be present.
The cycle of modern consumerism and corporations is disgusting. I laugh to myself when I think North America looks down on third world countries. In many cases, it's the exact opposite. I'm a spoke in the wheel like most, however this article makes me want to change.
Recycling isn't the answer, it's part of the problem.
We're all wearing, eating from and washing in, plastic. Plastic or PET comes from crude oil. No health concerns here.
- " PET, a plastic derived from crude oil that’s used to make soda and ketchup bottles."
- "In the last few decades, production of the material has surged. Between 1980 and 2007, the year polyester definitively overtook cotton as the world’s dominant fiber, the amount of polyester produced annually increased from 5.3 million tonnes (5.8 million tons) to 30.9 million tonnes (34 million tons), according to Tecnon Orbichem. By 2025, that number is projected to nearly triple, to 90.5 million tonnes (99.8 million tons)."
- "Over 50 percent of what is placed into New York City’s recycling ends up in a landfill"
- “Unfortunately the bags (used to transport platics) themselves can’t be recycled—they are too dirty, so they will end up in a landfill.”
- “There is plastic in everything—in your car, in your home, in every part of your life,” says CarbonLite’s CEO, Leon Farahnik. “Globally, 100 billion pounds of PET are used in a year: 70 billion pounds goes to carpet and clothing; 30 billion pounds goes into packaging.” That’s a lot of plastic
- "We don't know if and how many people die from plastic exposure," says Dr. Halden, "but we do know that in the developed world we suffer from a lot of diseases—breast cancer, obesity and early onset puberty—that are less prevalent in developing countries. These are a result of our lifestyle." He adds: "From a public health perspective, we should consider heated plastic an unnecessary source of exposure to harmful elements and eliminate it."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873244937045784332...
- "(BPA is used) in everything from the lining of metal soup cans to receipt paper. The FDA banned the use of BPA in baby bottles in July 2012, because of growing consumer concerns over its link to developmental delays.
While the recycling numbers at the bottom of plastic items "are not meant to provide health information or risks," Dr. Halden says, they can sometimes provide clues to the chemicals in them. For example, No. 7, says Dr. Halden, means "there is a high likelihood" that Bisphenol A is in it. That reusable water bottle sitting on your desk? "Think of it as one big BPA vessel," he says.
I have a friend whose mother saved every plastic thing she came into contact with. She was born and raised in the Philippines. He said it took a lot of deprogramming to get her to put the perfectly useful containers in the recycle bin.
When I was in Central America, the place i stayed at used plastic cups, plates, forks, and knives. All PET, all reused to hell and back. I miss that place very much, so I keep some plastic kitchenware about for nostalgia's sake. If ever people come over to eat, they avoid using them.
I get it that the plastic bottle is the best meme for waste, poorly planned production, and/or the callous indifference of advanced societies. But I pick up a lot of litter in my everyday, and every time I toss a bottle in the bin, I feel like I am throwing away one of humankind's greatest inventions. Tiny nurdles melted and stretched into useful shales that could last for generations! Feather light; strong and flexible. What an amazing thing to just throw on the ground while you head off to be a cog in some clunky corporate machine built in the image of steam technology.
Hate on the bottle if you must; I'm just going to use the little guys for whatever they are useful for.
> "The cycle of modern consumerism and corporations is disgusting. I laugh to myself when I think North America looks down on third world countries. In many cases, it's the exact opposite. I'm a spoke in the wheel like most, however this article makes me want to change."
If you want to know the answer to this issue, it can be found by learning the 'waste equals food' approach found in nature. I can recommend this talk by William McDonough as an introduction to how this can be applied to man made items:
The article says plastics are washed repeatedly, so I'm trying to figure out if putting dirty plastic in the bin is acceptable or not. My city's recycling instructions say to wash plastics before putting them in the bin, and if I can't adequately clean something I've been more inclined to put it in the garbage instead. What's the right answer?
GP didn't suggest avoiding all plastics. Using plastic bottles for consumables is different than buying a plastic stepstool is different than having plastic components in some of your devices.
Lots of people eschew plastic containers in favor of metal or glass for a variety of reasons, including recyclability and reuse.
> “Unfortunately the bags themselves can’t be recycled—they are too dirty, so they will end up in a landfill.” This holds true for all plastic items that haven’t been cleaned properly—hence, the leaflets calling for us to “rinse our recyclables.” The cleaner a plastic bottle is, the more likely it will be marked for reincarnation as something new.
That bit happens before the washing, so I think the advice to wash plastics is correct. Sounds like there may not be harm in placing all plastics into the recycling bin regardless of their cleanliness, though; sounds like they'll just end up as waste if not clean enough.
Unfortunately the bags themselves can’t be recycled—they are too dirty, so they will end up in a landfill
I think at some time in the future they should also be excavated and reprocessed, because plastic is a petroleum product and the natural sources are known to be very finite. There is plenty of plastic in landfills that we just don't know how to effectively reprocess, or we would. That's also why I think the biodegradable stuff is not a good idea in the long term; sure it "disappears back into the environment", but overall a lot more energy needs to be spent in producing it --- really, extracting it from the environment --- than just reusing or recycling plastic that has already been extracted and gone through most of the production stages.
TL:DR - we will never run out of raw materials for plastics
The resources used for plastic are so vastly plentiful that considering them unlimited is a good approximation -- they may get more expensive but the market will sort that out. A lot of smart, well-meaning people get derailed by belief in imminent scarcity - and waste their time that could be spent on real opportunities.
* consumption is growing globally (production is outpacing the growth - hence the crash in crude prices), and in the US (the larges consumer) it's actually fallen over the last 10 years http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?country=us
in a couple of centuries, maybe, we will have some difficulty meeting the petroleum needs for petrochemicals - but only if we keep using the crude and natural gas for vehicle fuel, heating, and electricity (currently 95% goes to these). Since we are already on the cusp of using renewables (and could switch to nuclear if we needed) for most of these while we are swimming in cheap oil - you should not worry about the future of plastics. So, don't waste your time opposing biodegradables from a 'finite resources' perspective - instead consider air pollution and greenhouse gasses on their own merits.
You are forgetting exponential population growth and developing nations.
"It just costs more" meand it won't run out, but not won't be usable everywhere desired either.
The reason not to care about using it up is that tragedy of commons means we can't stop from being used up.
not at all - and exponential growth is a more nuanced term than you may realize. UN population growth projection for the next 100 years shows (95% conf) at most a doubling of population. development of nations has roared ahead since the industrial revolution, and petroleum reserve development has easily kept pace. I really am saying that time spent worrying about running out of oil -- ESPECIALLY running out for the purposes of plastics production is a complete waste of your time and a distraction from actually important things. Come to think of it, worrying about over-population is also a curious preoccupation of rich, privileged, people like ourselves.
Malthus was wrong.
That there is a commons does not mean there is a tragedy.
I'm old enough to remember when the milkman delivered glass bottles of milk into a box at our back door and picked up the previous week's empties. I remember reading once that the average milk bottle had a life span of 38 round trips. The same was pretty much true for soda bottles.
Glass bottles still work that way. Cleaned and reused. And at least in Germany, sturdy PET bottles get reused too; Wikipedia says 50x for glass, 25x for PET.
Not only that, but a milk bottle that my mother saved from the late 60s we reused for keeping water in the fridge for the next 40 years. We reused that one thousands upon thousands of times.
So dumb question but when they recycle plastics into water/soda containers - how do they know it is food-safe plastic making it back into the chain and not contain molecules that will "bleed" into the beverage/food?
I did read it, it doesn't address that, at least not in any detail what-so-ever.
The plastic flakes must be sterilized and tested to meet food-grade standards
Is that tested like how a certain number of roaches are allowed into food mixes in factories and that there is 1 FDA inspector for every thousand factories so there is no actual regulation going on thanks to congressional defunding?
Because that means the plastic is most definitely contaminated.
The article mentions the Bottle Bill system: this is a system where you pay a small deposit on every bottle you buy which is then refunded when you return the bottle to the supermarket.
This results in the bottles being recycled.
We have this system here in The Netherlands and I must say it's fantastic: we get proper thick Coke bottles and my bin doesn't get filled up so quickly.
Sadly this system isn't used for all bottles - 500ml bottles aren't covered - and it's only drinks (soft drinks + beer). It's also far from Europe-wide - the UK for example doesn't have this system.
Recently the soft-drink manufacturers - presumably Coke/Pepsi - have been lobbying hard to kill this system.. Nice to see how they care about the environment..
When I was a child, there was the same system in place in Italy for Coca-Cola glass bottles, and maybe for other sodas as well. It then disappeared, unfortunately.
In the US it wasn't the same system. The soda companies ran the bottle recycling system because it was cheaper to wash and reuse the bottle than to make new ones. They switched to plastic because it was cheaper to make new plastic bottles than reuse old glass ones.
The government systems described here went into place as a way to reduce the resulting trash.
The German system is also really great. It's a 15 cent Pfand for a plastic water bottle. Everyone recycles them. Failing that, the bottles are so thick that I just keep refilling mine. I've had the same 8 for more than a year.
A number of the states in the US have a bottle deposit, which sounds like the same idea. Problem is, it is only 5 cents, where it has been for like forty years, so it is only worth collecting and trading in the bottles if your time is effectively value-less. And it's not universal, so we still get the crap thin plastic bottles, they just cost a nickel more in some places than others.
There was a Seinfeld episode involving Kramer collecting a busload of bottles in NY (with $.05 deposit) and driving them to Michigan, where there is a $.10 redemption value.
Regardless of one's feelings about 'climate change,' it really behooves us to stop doing a variety of things in a way that are hugely destructive to the planet and ourselves. That would be good policy no matter what, but the fact that so often our hugely destructive actions are in the service of deriving relatively minimal value makes it patently absurd.
So it was quite striking that in the few images I saw from the recent Climate Summit in Paris, there were people standing around tables scattered with plastic water bottles. Really? Given the subject matter under discussion and you're going to sit around drinking water from a material derived from oil, that after it's brief service to you will have negative and hugely long-lasting effects on the biosphere, really?
>So it was quite striking that in the few images I saw from the recent Climate Summit in Paris, there were people standing around tables scattered with plastic water bottles. Really?
I'm pretty sure the people there are politicians. So my cynical view is that most of which only care about the environment only because their constituency does.
The alternative that most people will think of first are glass bottles, which are significantly heavier. Transport of bottled liquids is already weight-bound, so if you make the packaging heavier you'd need more trucks to transport the same amount of bottles.
i'm going to ignore the financial costs until a direction has been settled so your point would be an optimisation problem in regard to environmental effect
ie. what's less damaging? pacific garbage patch or truck diesel emissions?
if i had to dream up a bottling system now my interest would be in resource renewal.. mainly biodegradable substances
perhaps a waxed paper? i'm unsure what the weight costs would be on paper versus plastic, and i'd also want to investigate environmental effects of cans
Coconut water and children's juice seem to be the only drink that comes in a waxed cardboard "tetrapak" container, I wonder if they just can't handle carbonated beverages?
Not so much an objection, but more of a line of inquiry on tactics. Why try to make something illegal? Why not make something legal? Like instead of 'No Plastic', bonus for Plastic01 and 02. Plastic, like guns and cars and markets, are inherently useful. It is the production, use, and misuse that is the problem.
On a legislative level, I feel it is a mistake to always use the limitation of action as an agent for change. Any time there is a problem, people demand a law be made, and Law makers make some action punishable or unavailable. In some cases, this makes sense (drinking and driving), at least initially. But on balance, drinking and driving opens up so many areas for innovation and profit when you factor in self driving vehicles and on demand car services. The problem is going to be how long it will take to alter the Open Container laws. It is hard to undo legislation in my country (USA). I wish people would think to create motivators for desired behavior instead of consequences for undesired behavior.
as much as i like your sentiment: motivators stead limitators; we're talking about a mature industry causing a great deal of harm already yesterday and somehow managing to offload responsibility, using lobbying, onto the consumer
subsidising a shift in production interests is a great idea, and i do think a robust alternative will be necessary in pushing forth any able limiting legislation
i am uninterested in profiting financially from this effort
my interest is in having there be a sane approach to resource utilisation
Wasn't there an article circulated recently where they were advocating reverting plastics back to their base ingredients as a much saner alternative to recycling?
45 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 93.9 ms ] threadHow would non-ferromagnetic metals be sorted using magnets?
>Eddy-current separators use a different approach to magnetic separation: They “repel” nonferrous metals. These powerful magnetic separators “kick-out” the nonferrous metallic products or contamination being conveyed while allowing other materials to continue in the flow. Eddy-current separator systems contain high-speed, powerful rare earth magnetic rotors and are available in a range of configurations. These often include vibratory pan feeders, adjustable splitters, high-speed conveyors, hoods, and even suspended magnets to remove ferrous metals that may also be present.
That's my guess.
Recycling isn't the answer, it's part of the problem. We're all wearing, eating from and washing in, plastic. Plastic or PET comes from crude oil. No health concerns here.
- Plastic in our clothing? Polyester is PET: http://qz.com/414223/if-your-clothes-arent-already-made-out-...
- " PET, a plastic derived from crude oil that’s used to make soda and ketchup bottles."
- "In the last few decades, production of the material has surged. Between 1980 and 2007, the year polyester definitively overtook cotton as the world’s dominant fiber, the amount of polyester produced annually increased from 5.3 million tonnes (5.8 million tons) to 30.9 million tonnes (34 million tons), according to Tecnon Orbichem. By 2025, that number is projected to nearly triple, to 90.5 million tonnes (99.8 million tons)."
- "Over 50 percent of what is placed into New York City’s recycling ends up in a landfill"
- “Unfortunately the bags (used to transport platics) themselves can’t be recycled—they are too dirty, so they will end up in a landfill.”
- “There is plastic in everything—in your car, in your home, in every part of your life,” says CarbonLite’s CEO, Leon Farahnik. “Globally, 100 billion pounds of PET are used in a year: 70 billion pounds goes to carpet and clothing; 30 billion pounds goes into packaging.” That’s a lot of plastic
- "We don't know if and how many people die from plastic exposure," says Dr. Halden, "but we do know that in the developed world we suffer from a lot of diseases—breast cancer, obesity and early onset puberty—that are less prevalent in developing countries. These are a result of our lifestyle." He adds: "From a public health perspective, we should consider heated plastic an unnecessary source of exposure to harmful elements and eliminate it." http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873244937045784332...
- "(BPA is used) in everything from the lining of metal soup cans to receipt paper. The FDA banned the use of BPA in baby bottles in July 2012, because of growing consumer concerns over its link to developmental delays.
While the recycling numbers at the bottom of plastic items "are not meant to provide health information or risks," Dr. Halden says, they can sometimes provide clues to the chemicals in them. For example, No. 7, says Dr. Halden, means "there is a high likelihood" that Bisphenol A is in it. That reusable water bottle sitting on your desk? "Think of it as one big BPA vessel," he says.
So you're saying that plastic/PET comes from crude oil, therefore it's bad for your health? flawless logic.
When I was in Central America, the place i stayed at used plastic cups, plates, forks, and knives. All PET, all reused to hell and back. I miss that place very much, so I keep some plastic kitchenware about for nostalgia's sake. If ever people come over to eat, they avoid using them.
I get it that the plastic bottle is the best meme for waste, poorly planned production, and/or the callous indifference of advanced societies. But I pick up a lot of litter in my everyday, and every time I toss a bottle in the bin, I feel like I am throwing away one of humankind's greatest inventions. Tiny nurdles melted and stretched into useful shales that could last for generations! Feather light; strong and flexible. What an amazing thing to just throw on the ground while you head off to be a cog in some clunky corporate machine built in the image of steam technology.
Hate on the bottle if you must; I'm just going to use the little guys for whatever they are useful for.
Edit: grammar
If you want to know the answer to this issue, it can be found by learning the 'waste equals food' approach found in nature. I can recommend this talk by William McDonough as an introduction to how this can be applied to man made items:
https://www.ted.com/talks/william_mcdonough_on_cradle_to_cra...
Lots of people eschew plastic containers in favor of metal or glass for a variety of reasons, including recyclability and reuse.
> “Unfortunately the bags themselves can’t be recycled—they are too dirty, so they will end up in a landfill.” This holds true for all plastic items that haven’t been cleaned properly—hence, the leaflets calling for us to “rinse our recyclables.” The cleaner a plastic bottle is, the more likely it will be marked for reincarnation as something new.
That bit happens before the washing, so I think the advice to wash plastics is correct. Sounds like there may not be harm in placing all plastics into the recycling bin regardless of their cleanliness, though; sounds like they'll just end up as waste if not clean enough.
I think at some time in the future they should also be excavated and reprocessed, because plastic is a petroleum product and the natural sources are known to be very finite. There is plenty of plastic in landfills that we just don't know how to effectively reprocess, or we would. That's also why I think the biodegradable stuff is not a good idea in the long term; sure it "disappears back into the environment", but overall a lot more energy needs to be spent in producing it --- really, extracting it from the environment --- than just reusing or recycling plastic that has already been extracted and gone through most of the production stages.
The resources used for plastic are so vastly plentiful that considering them unlimited is a good approximation -- they may get more expensive but the market will sort that out. A lot of smart, well-meaning people get derailed by belief in imminent scarcity - and waste their time that could be spent on real opportunities.
* only a couple of percent of petroleum and natural gas production is used for plastics http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=34&t=6
* crude oil reserves (a very conservative measure) are immense and growing - http://www.opec.org/library/Annual%20Statistical%20Bulletin/...
* natural gas reserves (a very conservative measure) are immense and growing - http://www.opec.org/library/Annual%20Statistical%20Bulletin/...
* consumption is growing globally (production is outpacing the growth - hence the crash in crude prices), and in the US (the larges consumer) it's actually fallen over the last 10 years http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx?country=us
in a couple of centuries, maybe, we will have some difficulty meeting the petroleum needs for petrochemicals - but only if we keep using the crude and natural gas for vehicle fuel, heating, and electricity (currently 95% goes to these). Since we are already on the cusp of using renewables (and could switch to nuclear if we needed) for most of these while we are swimming in cheap oil - you should not worry about the future of plastics. So, don't waste your time opposing biodegradables from a 'finite resources' perspective - instead consider air pollution and greenhouse gasses on their own merits.
The reason not to care about using it up is that tragedy of commons means we can't stop from being used up.
Malthus was wrong.
That there is a commons does not mean there is a tragedy.
But anyway consumer-level recycling is a farce to make consumers feel less bad about and discarding plastic. It doesn't actually help anything.
Do you mind sharing any references about this?
Some progress, huh?
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrwegpfand
The plastic flakes must be sterilized and tested to meet food-grade standards
Is that tested like how a certain number of roaches are allowed into food mixes in factories and that there is 1 FDA inspector for every thousand factories so there is no actual regulation going on thanks to congressional defunding?
Because that means the plastic is most definitely contaminated.
This results in the bottles being recycled.
We have this system here in The Netherlands and I must say it's fantastic: we get proper thick Coke bottles and my bin doesn't get filled up so quickly.
Sadly this system isn't used for all bottles - 500ml bottles aren't covered - and it's only drinks (soft drinks + beer). It's also far from Europe-wide - the UK for example doesn't have this system.
Recently the soft-drink manufacturers - presumably Coke/Pepsi - have been lobbying hard to kill this system.. Nice to see how they care about the environment..
The government systems described here went into place as a way to reduce the resulting trash.
There was a Seinfeld episode involving Kramer collecting a busload of bottles in NY (with $.05 deposit) and driving them to Michigan, where there is a $.10 redemption value.
So it was quite striking that in the few images I saw from the recent Climate Summit in Paris, there were people standing around tables scattered with plastic water bottles. Really? Given the subject matter under discussion and you're going to sit around drinking water from a material derived from oil, that after it's brief service to you will have negative and hugely long-lasting effects on the biosphere, really?
I'm pretty sure the people there are politicians. So my cynical view is that most of which only care about the environment only because their constituency does.
anyone have any early objections i could work on developing responses to?
ie. what's less damaging? pacific garbage patch or truck diesel emissions?
if i had to dream up a bottling system now my interest would be in resource renewal.. mainly biodegradable substances
perhaps a waxed paper? i'm unsure what the weight costs would be on paper versus plastic, and i'd also want to investigate environmental effects of cans
On a legislative level, I feel it is a mistake to always use the limitation of action as an agent for change. Any time there is a problem, people demand a law be made, and Law makers make some action punishable or unavailable. In some cases, this makes sense (drinking and driving), at least initially. But on balance, drinking and driving opens up so many areas for innovation and profit when you factor in self driving vehicles and on demand car services. The problem is going to be how long it will take to alter the Open Container laws. It is hard to undo legislation in my country (USA). I wish people would think to create motivators for desired behavior instead of consequences for undesired behavior.
subsidising a shift in production interests is a great idea, and i do think a robust alternative will be necessary in pushing forth any able limiting legislation
i am uninterested in profiting financially from this effort
my interest is in having there be a sane approach to resource utilisation
you've caused me to really consider what my goals are
i am uninterested in making plastics illegal but rather i'm interested in reducing the amount of plastic waste in the world
my initial reaction is the best way to halt this is to remove the ability to create more plastics
but as you pointed out it's more interesting to promote stead limit
so perhaps instead of making plastic use for superficial, yet to be clearly defined, uses illegal perhaps there is a buy in for use allowance
meaning plastic bottling is illegal unless you pay for the rights for so much plastic use
but the caveat is two fold
first: in order to pay for the rights you need to agree to reduce overall plastic waste in the world
meaning, you can use plastic bottles for your product, but you need to be diminishing old plastic accumulation
if you fail to reduce at the rate agreed in the permission then your rights are again revoked
second: the only ones who can buy the rights to create plastics are research teams attempting to decompose existing plastics
in this way the research is funded by the sponsorship of plastic users
meaning, a big corp that bottles in plastic uses profits to fund research in plastic decomposition for the ability to continue to bottle in plastics
.
any thoughts?