Good morning Mastodon!
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Anyway I had a brilliant day, and I love seeing people work together to do very clever things to solve problems, but we can't lose track of the fact that this isn't actually a good thing it's just the least bad option we have for disposing of waste because it's still sending greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and what we really need to be working on as a species is generating less waste to start with. The presentation also shared the depressing statistic that only 2/3 of humanity has access to any waste collection and disposal infrastructure at all, and the rest just have to deal with it themselves by burning it or dumping it around their living spaces (something I encountered in a previous life doing ecology fieldwork in The Gambia https://geekinthegambia.blogspot.com/2009/06/setsetal.html)
@afewbugs I'm somewhat surprised to hear that waste management is available to ⅔ of people. (Even if it's nominally true, I suspect that a portion of those people still have to do some waste management themselves.)
At home, we're in the remaining ⅓, having no access to waste management beyond our own efforts. Composting the kitchen waste is the obvious part (though we haven't got it dialled in completely just yet). We try to keep and reuse all the plastic packaging we get. For example, whenever we cast any concrete (e.g., a slab for parking, concrete foundations or water tanks, etc.) we put down an overlapping layer of plastic packets/bags on the ground first, and it helps to retain water in the slab during casting (instead of being absorbed by the rather sandy soil underneath). We also take sackfuls of recyclable (in theory) waste with us whenever we drive down into the plains.
But we still have to burn the rest, along with the more woody farm waste (leaves and things go into a pit). I want to build a steel-drum incinerator to be able to burn our garbage at a higher temperature, but I haven't done anything about it yet.
There was at least one burninating energy recovery facility in Delhi, and I vaguely remember some huge scam in its operation (IIRC, they weren't generating anything, and were just burning stuff normally).
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@afewbugs
Yes, I have a memory of a friend asking why teachers think we'd want to visit old sewers (must've been part of a museum). Just the other day I was reading about the development of Tallinn's water system hundreds of years ago in a museum. History is much more interesting when youre in charge of what you learn.@treehugger @afewbugs I still have a "Plughole tours" TShirt from the time I decided as an adult to visit the waterworks openday between Bath and Bristol. I remember it being an interesting day.
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@afewbugs
Yes, I have a memory of a friend asking why teachers think we'd want to visit old sewers (must've been part of a museum). Just the other day I was reading about the development of Tallinn's water system hundreds of years ago in a museum. History is much more interesting when youre in charge of what you learn.@treehugger @afewbugs It is also more interesting when you are old enough for it to have some context.
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Ferrous metals get pulled out by an electromagnet. Non ferrous metals melt into these weird modern art type sculptures that clog up the pipes and are the reason the plant has to be periodically shut down for maintenance to remove them. So I guess the moral is don't put metal in your non recyclable waste, but if you're going to only put ferrous metal?
@afewbugs
“Ferrous” does not mean “magnetic”. It only means “iron-containing”. Nickel and cobalt are not ferrous, yet they are magnetic. On the other side, many iron-based alloys are not meaningfully magnetic: 304 and 316 stainless steel, for instance, are ferrous steels, but in their usual austenitic form they are essentially non-magnetic.
I'm curious now: how they manage that?
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Uriel Fanelli
Using Aktor: https://git.keinpfusch.net/loweel/Aktor-2
XMPP: uriel@keinpfusch.net
old blog: https://blog.keinpfusch.net
new blog: https://keinpfusch.net -
Everything that doesn't burn up in the kiln comes out of the bottom and gets turned into aggregate. I hope you like boxes of rocks Mastodon.
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@afewbugs I'm somewhat surprised to hear that waste management is available to ⅔ of people. (Even if it's nominally true, I suspect that a portion of those people still have to do some waste management themselves.)
At home, we're in the remaining ⅓, having no access to waste management beyond our own efforts. Composting the kitchen waste is the obvious part (though we haven't got it dialled in completely just yet). We try to keep and reuse all the plastic packaging we get. For example, whenever we cast any concrete (e.g., a slab for parking, concrete foundations or water tanks, etc.) we put down an overlapping layer of plastic packets/bags on the ground first, and it helps to retain water in the slab during casting (instead of being absorbed by the rather sandy soil underneath). We also take sackfuls of recyclable (in theory) waste with us whenever we drive down into the plains.
But we still have to burn the rest, along with the more woody farm waste (leaves and things go into a pit). I want to build a steel-drum incinerator to be able to burn our garbage at a higher temperature, but I haven't done anything about it yet.
There was at least one burninating energy recovery facility in Delhi, and I vaguely remember some huge scam in its operation (IIRC, they weren't generating anything, and were just burning stuff normally).
@amenonsen I'm guessing there's a great deal of variation concealed in that 2/3 figure, covering the whole spectrum from "weekly household collections transported to an energy from waste plant that decontaminates its waste gases" to "a waste truck removes some rubbish from this neighbourhood once a month and dumps it in a big pile outside the city". My only experience of living in an under resourced nation was The Gambia, which had no waste infrastructure at all in rural areas but the latter system in the big city on the coast.
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But I don't want to end on a negative note because I've had an absolutely fascinating day, and I hope you've enjoyed following along too.
I can only apologise to anyone who encountered me on my way home smelling of warm damp garbage
@afewbugs
That was a fascinating thread, but I'm intrigued as to what WEEE is. presumably not the same as wee. -
@afewbugs
That was a fascinating thread, but I'm intrigued as to what WEEE is. presumably not the same as wee.@ideogram it's apparently Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment, as opposed to weeee, the noise you make when going fast or wee, the liquid that comes out if you go frighteningly fast
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@afewbugs
Yes, I have a memory of a friend asking why teachers think we'd want to visit old sewers (must've been part of a museum). Just the other day I was reading about the development of Tallinn's water system hundreds of years ago in a museum. History is much more interesting when youre in charge of what you learn.@treehugger @afewbugs As part of a tech GCSE topic in the 90s 'The Man Made Water Cycle' I took my group to a sewage treatment plant. It went well, considering, but when we got back to school the headmaster met us. He picked on the biggest, daftest boy to ask where we'd been. And he answered nicely. I thought that was it but HM pressed on. 'And what did you see?'
'A lot of shit sir, loads and loads of shit.' -
@treehugger @afewbugs As part of a tech GCSE topic in the 90s 'The Man Made Water Cycle' I took my group to a sewage treatment plant. It went well, considering, but when we got back to school the headmaster met us. He picked on the biggest, daftest boy to ask where we'd been. And he answered nicely. I thought that was it but HM pressed on. 'And what did you see?'
'A lot of shit sir, loads and loads of shit.'@treehugger @afewbugs Don't @me about 'Man' Made and Head 'Master'. It was the 90s.
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@ideogram it's apparently Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment, as opposed to weeee, the noise you make when going fast or wee, the liquid that comes out if you go frighteningly fast
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@alicemcalicepants @ideogram my wife has annual checkups with the West of England Eye Unit, WEEU, and I always read their signs as the sound one of our cats makes
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@alicemcalicepants @ideogram my wife has annual checkups with the West of England Eye Unit, WEEU, and I always read their signs as the sound one of our cats makes
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@afewbugs
Yes, I have a memory of a friend asking why teachers think we'd want to visit old sewers (must've been part of a museum). Just the other day I was reading about the development of Tallinn's water system hundreds of years ago in a museum. History is much more interesting when youre in charge of what you learn.@treehugger @afewbugs The Manchester* museum of technology, when last I was there, had an entire gallery recreated as a sewer. I think it closed down during the Covid period.
*UK for anyone who thinks New Hampshire. -
Good morning Mastodon! Remember when you were in primary school and went on school trips to places teachers though were important or free, and retained nothing from them except for who was sick on whom on the way there? Now you're older and nerdier did you ever think "Actually it might be really interesting to visit a major piece of civic infrastructure and learn how it works?" Just me? Well I was in luck today because the University sustainability team has organised a tour of #Exeter Energy Recovery Facility in #MarshBarton, where all our non-recyclable rubbish ends up.
https://www.viridor.co.uk/energy/energy-recovery-facilities/exeter-erf/
@afewbugs Waste management, water, electricity, central heating; all really super sexy infrastructure. Semi-invisible most of the time, because we're so good at it it mostly just works. Which is incredible.
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@afewbugs Waste management, water, electricity, central heating; all really super sexy infrastructure. Semi-invisible most of the time, because we're so good at it it mostly just works. Which is incredible.
@liebach "works so well most people don't even notice it" is absolute top tier technology isn't it
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@afewbugs Waste management, water, electricity, central heating; all really super sexy infrastructure. Semi-invisible most of the time, because we're so good at it it mostly just works. Which is incredible.
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Also as a little postscript, in a facility where 95% of the staff I saw were male presenting I was impressed by the fact that there were free menstrual products in the toilets
@afewbugs This was a fascinating read. Thank you for sharing!
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@liebach "works so well most people don't even notice it" is absolute top tier technology isn't it
@afewbugs Exactly.
