What a waste

[shawn]

I found this webpage and I was shocked. Most of this stuff is recyclable. With the economy in the shitcan the government could possibly assign funding to get people working recycling this stuff. The oil and steel in the tires, the aluminum in the planes, the copper, gold, and other rare metals in the pc's. Just on this page there is billions and billion in waste raw materials and an opportunity for many thousands of people to be hired to separate and extract them.

http://webecoist.com/2009/03/15/obje...eryday-things/

[The 9th Sage]

It does seem like a shame. I too would think a lot of the materials or parts could be reused.

[shawn]

Originally Posted by The 9th Sage

It does seem like a shame. I too would think a lot of the materials or parts could be reused.

If possible that would be great but the age of the military stuff I'd say recycling would be best since rust/oxidation would make most reuse impossible in most cases. There are companies that can take the tires and shred, melt, and use chemicals to extract the oil and in the process the steel "steel belted tires" is separated which is also highly recyclable. I can't imagine the reason those planes are not recycled since aluminum is expensive to create from raw ore and most plane bodies are mostly aluminum. If I owned those planes I think I'd at least want a little bit of my investment back selling them to recyclers and even if I gave them away it would cost less than cleaning up that dump site if something ends up contaminating the soil/water supply in the area. It's just plain stupid letting the stuff go to rot in this day and age.

[Reaper man]

recycle or no, eventually it'll get to the point where we will mine landfills, so there's nothing to really worry about. nothing to see here, move along.

[shawn]

Originally Posted by Reaper man

recycle or no, eventually it'll get to the point where we will mine landfills, so there's nothing to really worry about. nothing to see here, move along.

We already do mine in a sense for methane in landfillls. The first time I saw it I just thought someone was using common sense for the first time. As for mining landfills I can definitely see that happening in the near future. Some of the older landfills in the country could be loaded with aluminum, gold, nickel, copper, chrome, and other metals used extensively and just dumped because that's how everyone did things in the last century.

[Isildur]

Originally Posted by The 9th Sage

It does seem like a shame. I too would think a lot of the materials or parts could be reused.

Some of the stuff, like CRTs, has some pretty nasty stuff in it, though. Then again, there's a lot of toxic stuff involved in the ore mining process too.

So yeah, like shawn said, given the enormous energy we expend and complicated processes we employ to extract ore and other resources from the ground, you'd think we could figure out how to efficiently (and even profitably) gather materials from already concentrated pieces like the ones in those pictures.

[The 9th Sage]

Originally Posted by Isildur

Some of the stuff, like CRTs, has some pretty nasty stuff in it, though. Then again, there's a lot of toxic stuff involved in the ore mining process too:

Yeah, I know some of the stuff isn't very salvagable or (incredibly difficult to salvage because of issues like you mention). I do wish the big companies would make more of an effort though.

[JadussD]

Originally Posted by shawn

I found this webpage and I was shocked. Most of this stuff is recyclable. With the economy in the shitcan the government could possibly assign funding to get people working recycling this stuff. The oil and steel in the tires, the aluminum in the planes, the copper, gold, and other rare metals in the pc's. Just on this page there is billions and billion in waste raw materials and an opportunity for many thousands of people to be hired to separate and extract them.

http://webecoist.com/2009/03/15/obje...eryday-things/

Out of self-interest, I can't really advocate creating an "object graveyard" made up of large amounts of "consumers", since I might end up in it, but it would certainly solve the problem pretty much for sure.

[Fla Flash]

Originally Posted by Reaper man

recycle or no, eventually it'll get to the point where we will mine landfills, so there's nothing to really worry about. nothing to see here, move along.

Betcha they don't mine for cigarette filters. Bastards are indestructible.

[Isildur]

Originally Posted by JadussD

Out of self-interest, I can't really advocate creating an "object graveyard" made up of large amounts of "consumers", since I might end up in it, but it would certainly solve the problem pretty much for sure.

Hmm... Perhaps I'm a bit slow today, but from which bit of ambiguous semantics are you jokingly getting that reading? Is it that you took text "thousands of people to be hired to separate and extract them" and associated the pronoun "them" with the thousands of people?