Bishop Hill The slow, green way to recycle
Apr 11, 2016 Recycling ;)
The news that a vast, shiny, new state of the art recycling centre in Lancashire is to be mothballed after incurring "catastrophic losses" will not come as much of a surprise to anyone who keeps an eye on the green scene. A moment's thought by anyone with more than a couple of braincells to rub together leads to the inevitable conclusion that expending vast resources - energy, labour, capital, chemicals and the like - to turn low value items into even lower value items is not much of an economic proposition. With councils increasingly cash-strapped, it is becoming ever harder to sustain the illusion that recycling is anything other than virtue-signalling from middle-class poseurs.
Perhaps landfill needs to have its brand detoxified. Rather than wasting all those precious resources on collecting refuse to turn it into heaven knows what, let's use the power of Mother Nature to break down and recycle what can be broken down, leaving what is inert to cause no trouble to anyone. Yes, it will be slower than what passes for recycling now, but aren't greens in favour of using slower, more natural approaches whenever they can?
"Landfill: the slow, green way to recycle".
Reader Comments (166)
DoC. I strongly suspect that what you are trying to convey might well be of interest here. Unfortunately you seem unable to transfer this information in an understandable way. Once I realized you were discussing something I knew about, my interest was piqued, but, even with this interest I found it impossible to understand most of what you wrote. Someone suggested it feeling like ears bleeding. I wouldn't go that far but it's close.
Have you tried discussing your thoughts with someone who might help you convey your message better?
I am reminded of one of the most influential geologists of all time - James Hutton. All his fabulous work, which revolutionized geological thought and understanding, went unrecognized because his contemporaries could not understand his writing. Only when his prose was deciphered by another geologist (Playfair) with the necessary patience was his brilliance recognized. Find your own Playfair.
Alan K: Please don't waste your time trying to get the plastic paddy to clarify his obfuscations. If anyone gets anywhere near to his current argument, he promptly goes off on another tangent.
Dork,
Why in the hell weren't you posting last summer before I went to Ireland? It would have been a wonderful pub crawl to try and keep up with your flow of consciousness.
And your recent posts, I note, are waxing poetic.
Now as a cretinous Texan I have little talent for poetry, but I do detect a meter struggling to be heard.
I think I will sip a bit of redbreast and re-read ye this evening and see if I can decipher a bit more.
Speaking of which, are you familiar with Ironwood, the now deceased poetry quarterly?
Blimey, Alan K, being a nice fellow, you're giving Dork a bit to much credit there.
You're in danger of portraying him as some sort of great Oirish mystic, a savant, a genius in his field, but hampered by some chronic grammatical inability to get his message across. If only we could fathom his ramblings, unlock the gate to his wisdom....Why - the problems of the world would be solved.
Alas, the real truth is somewhat different. He has no message. He has no wisdom. A cursory analysis of his, ahem, 'work' reveals endless contradictions and (what is known in the trade as) bullsh*t. He knows that his message is cowpoo, and uses the mysterious grammar gremlins to cover it up.
He epitomises the curse of the internet. Pre-WWW, he would have been nothing more than the nutter on the bus - the one we all dread, as he climbs on the No 35, shuffling down the central aisle, smelling of whiskey (sic), heading towards that one empty seat, next to one of us. Instead of "Oi've got as UFO in my pocket, so I have!", we get "Social credits are the bankers tokens for peat and a 2CV is great and can ye not see it..."
The great sadness is that the Bishop's wonderful blog has become that No 35 bus, and the Dork seems to be in every seat.
Shindig. You are probably right in everything you wrote. However, occasionally there is something buried within his written diarrhoea, something that might be of interest (others have noticed this). I don't think Dork is a hidden genius but I did wonder if there was something of merit struggling to get out. I also have no real expectations that he will take up my suggestion. So you are probably correct (or not).
In passing, Social Credit was a laughing stock in the rest of Canada, and Albertans were derided for their support of it. When I returned to Canada in the 1980s the philosophy and the political party had sunk without leaving much trace. It took the Albertan Conservative party to reorganize the Province's finances and to set up an inheritance fund to deal with some of its oil wealth.
EU Landfill Directive. Can we afford it?
Britain is heading for an annual fine from the EU of more than €200m a year from 2020 unless there is a rapid increase in household recycling, a senior waste executive has warned.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9e97b0c2-fc88-11e3-81f5-00144feab7de.html#axzz45moIuUyr
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16812103
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/3074231/Council-tax-may-rise-due-to-EU-fines-for-missing-landfill-targets.html
@Alan
You are mistaken.
As far as I am aware Albertas wealth was exported.
Not a very conservative policy.
Conservative = to conserve, or least it should be.
Now that the export wealth has gone Kaput it is entering another 1930s phase.
The response to the 1930s was capital goods expansion (The war economy)
The guild navigators have somehow kept the waste business going for another 80 years.
It looks like the expansion phase which really began proper in the 1500s is over.
Unless a cheap ticket can be bought for Mars then its not likely people's real. living standards will recover.
Again given the current total failure of the Albertan economy...... it's not a good example.
History is indeed repeating itself.
In both cases a primary goods exporting economy collapsed.
The specialisation of these regional economies is extreme.
They depend on functioning global mercantalism.
When the contradictions of this form of capitalism becomes exposed then almost everything goes tits up.
@Shindig.
I use the 2cv as a icon of design minimalism.
It's a representative of all such tools.
Puritans such as yourself has always insulted people who wish to consume now as drunks and knaves.
For you consumption and in particular human consumption is a great sin.
I am a fool but there has always been a role for fools in theatre.
They had a licence to speak the truth.
Yee guys need to do some research.
In particular the history of industry, settlement and how it functioned before the age of steam.
The supply chain for basic products was very tight.
The history of brewing in my city goes much further back then Beamish and Crawford.
Source:
"The landways of Medieval Cork"
By Gina Johnson
A list of street and lane names and the characters behind them.
From Quakers ( with a love of money) who arrived off Cromwells boat but was kicked out for obvious reasons to Protestant capital using ancient brewing expertise.
O Brian and Barrett were brewers while Beamish and Crawford was the capital.
A short lived partnership......
@Hunter
You would just love it.
A must for people who wish to understand geographic and social factors of production.
We're gonna need a bigger bus.....
DoC, the most important factor for production has always been technology. Bronze vs. Copper, Iron vs. Bronze, wheeled wagons vs. foot soldiers, assembly line vs. cobbler. And etc. Pastoralist rewriting of history, even done poetically, tends to end poorly. Is there a balance to be dynamically sought after? Of course.
@Hunter
Not anymore it seems.
What turned me on to social credit is me pouring over energy balance sheets.
I noticed that most energy is wasted
The classic physical warning sign of economic and social crisis is transport TFC as a % of total consumption rising exponentially.
There has been a brewery situated on the grounds of Beamish and Crawford since at least the 1600s, predating the Beamish family by a few centuries.
It closed during the euro capital goods expansion phase, it was no coincidence.
If production capacity is so awesome then why are all the pubs shut?
Again the function of production is consumption.
In particular during the euro years they have set up a closed corporate bubble of production consumed by depreciation, no human consumption need apply.
I find it quite fascinating.
To manage a production system with increasing lack of consumption is quite some technical achievement.
Ps Hunter
Google: Australia issues travel warning on Ireland, The Examiner paper.
There is probably a element of protectism behind the Australian declaration (trying to prevent the Oz Irish returning with their wages to "booming Ireland")
But also much truth.
Ireland is a extreme test case for booming Gdp and reduced real consumption
Creating social decay and disturbance.
The euro is a puritans wet dream.
Creating disturbance not seen in Europe since the religious wars.
As a teenager I (like Dork) formed the opinion that natural, spontaneous, simple, was better than trained, manufactured, complex etc. It came out of a vicious war between my family and a gang of GPs, one of whom was struck off and a situation where my brother (and his neighbours) refused to refused to acknowledge the existence of a world famous footballer (Willie Wallace) who moved into his street.
I hated the lower middle classes (Dork reference above) and embarked on a life of an everyday person who had an everyday job (which folded in the mid 1980s when I did a post grad degree). I loved working class warmth and wit, but the rise of working class degrees, professionals and managers has made realise I was completely wrong. They are actually worse and no matter how you add it up, capitalism, technology and financial progress benefit everyone.
Being in my own fight with GPs has made me realise they are every bit as vile, venal, arrogant and dangerously stupid as my family said back then. My very strong inclination is to prefer older ones b/c there is a massive recruitment crisis, the young ones are the bottom of the medical barrel (and seriously dumbed down) .
Land fill is what archaeologists like. They find out about past cultures from their dumps. More than written history is evident from what survives and who can tell if all this digital information will survive more than thirty years . Older forms of digital records are already difficult to access
It's hard to beat the Portlandia Sanitation Twins PSA: http://www.hulu.com/watch/335493