Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 10:17 pm Post subject: 1 Aluminum can = 3 hours TV
Recycling 1 ton of aluminum saves the equivalent in energy of 2,350 gallons of gasoline. This is equivalent to the amount of electricity used by the typical home over a period of 10 years.
One recycled aluminum can saves enough electricity to operate a TV for three hours.
Using recycled aluminum beverage cans to produce new cans allows the aluminum can industry to make up to 20 times more cans for the same amount of energy.
one pound aluminum equal a gallon of gas in power usage.
ALUMINUM is the epitomy of waste and largess.
Aluminum will become very expensive soon.
In 1900 before electrolysis, an ounce of aluminum cost 10 times what an ounce of Gold cost.
Chemically, it is almost impossible to manufacture, you have to have electric power.
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 11:29 pm Post subject: Re: 1 Aluminum can = 3 hours TV
Actually, all joking aside I suspect one of the few industries to survive into the post-peak world will be recycling. For those of you mulling over "what careers/jobs/businesses should I look into", I found the following on google. Sure there are more like it out there:
Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2005 12:24 am Post subject: Re: 1 Aluminum can = 3 hours TV
MattSavinar wrote:
Actually, all joking aside I suspect one of the few industries to survive into the post-peak world will be recycling. For those of you mulling over "what careers/jobs/businesses should I look into", I found the following on google. Sure there are more like it out there:
Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2005 3:04 pm Post subject: Re: 1 Aluminum can = 3 hours TV
Aluminum was more expensive than gold because people did not know how to get it out of the ore, only the free formed Aluminum was mined and it was very rare until someone learn't how to extract it from the ore.
Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2005 3:43 pm Post subject: Re: 1 Aluminum can = 3 hours TV
grabby wrote:
One recycled aluminum can saves enough electricity to operate a TV for three hours.
You know what saves even more electricity? Not drinking from disposable containers.
In general I'm pretty skeptical about recycling. Our problem is that we are obsessed w/ consumption. It's not that we need to perfect our methods of consumption, it's that we need to stop consuming. Recycling, IMHO, is generally just a way for people to dodge the moral impact of their destructive consumption. "I'm drinking water that was shipped a thousand miles to get to my house wasting huge amounts of energy. As long as I recycle the bottle, I don't have to feel bad."
It's reduce, reuse, recycle. Recycling is worse than useless if you forget the first two steps.
Joined: Aug 07, 2005 Posts: 302 Location: Columbia, MO
Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2005 3:28 pm Post subject: Re: 1 Aluminum can = 3 hours TV
I've watched the demise of reusable containers over the last thirty years with sadness.
Recycling as practiced in most American cities these days wastes more energy than it saves. Only aluminum is worth recycling when one factors in the energy costs to sort, bale, and transport the other materials to a reuse facility. It would be better to burn one's paper and plastic (in an efficient incinerator or heater) to heat the house and simply take in one's cans ever now and then. And whatever happened to returnable bottles? Milk, soda and beer bottles are so much better reused than recycled - surely returning a load of cases via train saves more energy than melting them down and making new, right?
Joined: Sep 29, 2004 Posts: 2330 Location: Pennsylvania, USA
Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2005 4:30 pm Post subject: Re: 1 Aluminum can = 3 hours TV
This brings up a point that has always erked me. What alot of people call recycling is actually remanufacturing. Prior to the disposable age, people brought their own containers to the store and filled them. Perhaps peak oil will bring back that practice.
Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2005 4:35 pm Post subject: Re: 1 Aluminum can = 3 hours TV
In the interest of recycling back in the '80s, a bunch of UK environmentalists (FOE) mounted a campaign targeting businesses' usage of new paper.
Since Thatcher was at the time donning a Green headscarf, the campaign was supported by business, and recycled paper gained some serious market share.
The largest papermilll in S. UK, at Sittingbourne in Kent, thus decided to end its timber purchase and go over to recycling paper only.
Great News ? For who ? For FOE membership maybe, but no one else.
The 100,000 tonnes /yr of timber Sittingbourne terminated was grown in Coppice Woodlands across Kent, and in losing its market, they've lost their viability and are being plowed up or left to go derelict, with no youngsters being trained on in their forestry skills.
Those coppices were Britain's most ancient sustainable production industry.
STUFF the idiocy of urbocentric recyclists where the sun don't shine !!!
regards,
Backstop _________________ "The best of conservation . . . is written not with a pen but with an axe."
(from "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold, 1948.
Last edited by backstop on Sun Dec 25, 2005 6:09 pm; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2005 4:35 pm Post subject: Re: 1 Aluminum can = 3 hours TV
dooberheim wrote:
I've watched the demise of reusable containers over the last thirty years with sadness.
Recycling as practiced in most American cities these days wastes more energy than it saves. Only aluminum is worth recycling when one factors in the energy costs to sort, bale, and transport the other materials to a reuse facility. It would be better to burn one's paper and plastic (in an efficient incinerator or heater) to heat the house and simply take in one's cans ever now and then. And whatever happened to returnable bottles? Milk, soda and beer bottles are so much better reused than recycled - surely returning a load of cases via train saves more energy than melting them down and making new, right?
DK
I lived in rural Pennsylvani at the beginning of the micro-brew fad. At the time Yuengling sold their beer in old-fashioned returnable bottles but only through state package-stores. I doubt the beaucrats and fundementalists that ran system understood that it had positive energy component. Now that Yuengling is groovey I bet they'v given up on the returnables. On the whole I believer we've blown it and the next drink packaging trend will be puddles. _________________ ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap
Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2005 4:43 pm Post subject: Re: 1 Aluminum can = 3 hours TV
The sad statistic is that people who watch TV drink beer contained in aluminum cans. Turning off the TV and not drinking the pop/beer could have significant gains for the environment, one's waist and brain. _________________ "Nuclear power has long been to the Left what embryonic-stem-cell research is to the Right--irredeemably wrong and a signifier of moral weakness."Esquire Magazine,12/05
The genetic code is commaless and so are my posts.
Joined: Aug 07, 2005 Posts: 302 Location: Columbia, MO
Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 6:38 pm Post subject: Re: 1 Aluminum can = 3 hours TV
I love Yuengling - my family lives in Tampa, Florida, and when I go there I pick some up. They bought the old Schlitz plant there - a good use of it in my book.
When I moved here we had returnables (beer) from Busch, Miller and Huber (Wisconsin). All have since discontinued selling beer in returnable bottles. Shame. I haven't seen a returnable milk container since 1963 or so. We had returnable pop bottles here until about 1998, again, what's the problem? You make the stuff here, refill them here, you don't need to buy new containers!!!
I think some of this is fear of liability - some slick lawyer would sue Pepsi for giving his client AIDS or something like that. Some people have to find a USEFUL profession.
Joined: Oct 23, 2005 Posts: 1713 Location: East of Eden
Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2006 7:31 pm Post subject: Re: 1 Aluminum can = 3 hours TV
Dezakin wrote:
Quote:
Aluminum will become very expensive soon.
This doesnt follow. Peak oil has only tangental effects on electricity supply given that we produce hardly any electricity at all from oil.
Quote:
Chemically, it is almost impossible to manufacture, you have to have electric power
Fortunately electric power is cheap and is likely to remain so for centuries.
Unfortunately, a lot of out electricity is produced from natural gas and coal, which are also nonrenewable fuels, and are also showing signs of faltering, especially NG. And, of course, more of those fuels will be pulled aside to make up for shortfalls in oil supply... No, after Peak Oil electricity will not remain cheap for many years, let alone centuries. _________________ "If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst." — Thomas Hardy
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
News
Discussions
Resources
Members
Forum FAQ
Search
Usergroups
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
ree rah rip ram. sunofabitch godamn. hidey didey christ almighty. rah rah crap 
