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Garbage and recycling are becoming a priority problem in most parts of the world.
The need to recycle and to dispose of litter thoughtfully and responsibly is far more obvious to our children than it is to earlier generations. Hence this idea:
The Super Recycling Bin is really a public art installation
and garbage disposal built into one. With a clear perspex front, you can see what is going on inside it, once you deposit a can, bottle or apple core.
Sensors and probes identify the item as it comes in, directing it to one of a number of channels.
Aluminium: Shredded and compacted for collection.
Steel: Crushed and stored for recycling.
Paper: Shredded and stored for recycling if clean. Shredded and used for biofuel if soiled.
Glass: Sorted by colour and crushed for immediate recycling.
Plastic: Sorted by type, heated and compacted.
Organics: Pulped and added to a fermentation tank, for methane generation or cooked anaerobically into biofuel.
Non-recyclables: Routed to a Reprocessing/Intractable storage bin.
Toss in a binful of stuff and watch it go to work. Water from container contents is filtered and used to keep the interior clean.
http://www.smile-plastics.co.uk/
[Ian Tindale, Sep 21 2009]
London waste recycling
http://www.lbhf.gov...eet_tcm21-23390.pdf
[hippo, Sep 22 2009]
Cloaca
http://www.youtube....watch?v=VdlLBWymnUA
Perhaps the organics process could work similar to this. [tatterdemalion, Sep 22 2009]
[link]
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What energy footprint does it have? |
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Depends upon the volume of compostible organics dumped into it. |
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Ah, but does it consume more energy to do all of this than it saves? |
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Better than the current approach, where councils fine you if you don't sort out your recyclables from non recyclables, but ultimately send both to landfill. |
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Our local council allows us to mix recycling (except compostable waste) in a single bag - paper, glass, cardboard, plastic and metal, all mixed together. When they introduced this I was a bit sceptical, so I asked them how it worked and was convinced by their explanation of how it all gets sorted automatically. The process sounded fascinating though, so a bun for the idea - I'd love to see it in operation. |
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Ours is like that too. I'm still sceptical, to be hornets. Until I know that they're separating it out into huge homogeneous piles of differently shaped and coloured atoms, I'm not convinced. The question I'd also ask these days is not 'are we recycling stuff' but more 'are we expending less energy to recycle than if we didn't'? |
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//The question I'd also ask these days is not 'are we recycling stuff' but more 'are we expending less energy to recycle than if we didn't'?//
I often wonder the same thing, when waiting at the municipal dump/recycling centre, behind a three hundred yard queue of cars all idling, waiting to drop off their meagre pile of bottles and cans. |
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Quite coincidentally (as I was looking for something to put
down under a washer dryer if it ever gets replaced by a new
one - it needs a smooth surface on the floor, as the current
rough and damp wood gets ripped up and also bends the feet
off of the washing machine every time I have to extract it
from the hole and then force it back in when I've fixed it) I
found a place that does recycled plastic sheeting in an
interesting way (I've linked to it using a link in the link
facility, which leads to the url elsewhere on the internet). |
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Ive had a look through a council recycling facility here. The biggest problem they have is sorting the different types of plastics apart, especially when there are many items that use more than one type of plastic or that compine, say, PET and aluminium in one package. |
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That stuff often ends up in landfill. |
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I once worked in the meat industry, where every part of the beast is used or recycled, including the semi-digested grass in its gut. It shouldn't be such a difficult choice for manufacturers to make... and it wouldn't be, if it weren't for gutless politicians bowing to lobby groups. |
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I seem to remember the explanation for plastics recycling was something along the lines of first shredding the plastic, and then separating it by floating it in baths of water - each one of a different salinity so you could separate them by density. |
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I've been thinking of that, since I read up on the process
employed by the people in my link. What if people at home
had the facility to shred or chip plastic? I mean, we all* have
shredders to shred our documents and identifying
paperwork, so why not a small device that chips plastics and
perhaps washes them? |
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*I presume. Although that's probably another thing that the
rest of the world doesn't bother to do or has never heard of
or spells differently or, oh just shove it up your arse. |
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I've been toying with the idea of a shredder for plastic bottles, to mount on the side of your wheelie bin. Shipping all of the air inside empty soft drink bottles to the recycling centre seems like a waste of resources. |
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Isn't energy footprint a bit spurious? Are we not
trying to obtain a higher energy state, more
energy, more complexity to give the betterment
of everyone, and everything, even nature. Isn't
that, how life stood up, so to speak. Are we not
trying to create an entity that's even more
complex
which involves consumerism throughput. It is
going to cost more energy. |
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I think this un-vending machine is a step in that
direction. |
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Tips/dumps are evolving into complex reaction
vessels, anyway. Controlling the purity and
composition of inputs will only make them better. |
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Burying as a type of storage, makes sense if you
can keep the item pure and therefore ready for
when the use arises. |
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[UnaBubba] A shredder could make a nice bottle
unitary stock material if kept clean. Artists, who
use the bottles to make rafts, would have to dip in
earlier into the bottle life stream. |
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Maybe it'd make sense to regularly airdrop all our waste into one of the mid-ocean gyres, later trawling through to scoop up nicely nature-shredded and nature-washed plastic. I wonder if nature also sorts it for us? |
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In fact, it's interesting to see the process involved, in that site I've linked to: navigate to 'our products' -> 'how we make it' and check out the pics of their huge press! |
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Nature has evolved to deal with nature's stuff.
Pushing nature to deal with stuff designing has
messed with will probably bite us in the ass. |
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Ford should have invented the deconstruction line as
well. |
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