Recycling What a joke

[minderasr]

51 minutes ago, DAKA said:

A LONG time ago there were pig farms in Secaucus  NJ, you could smell it as you drove through on the NJ Turnpike

I thought that smell was just New Jersey!

[DAKA]

7 minutes ago, minderasr said:

I thought that smell was just New Jersey!

Just Secaucus    (AFAIK)

[jmohme]

On 7/12/2023 at 8:53 PM, Pogey Bait said:

We insured a tire recycler in Indianapolis for several years.  He told me that name brand tires like Michelin, Dunlop were set aside-all others went to the tire shredder- and bundled together.  They were then sent to another company that shipped them to Mexico and Central America.  Recycle owner said high end brand tires, no matter how worn they were would sell to consumers in these countries as status symbols.

He also told me most of the shredded tires ended up in the landfill.  

I don't know about now, but 10 or 15 years ago, when landfills would dig a new cells, they had to have a clay liner packed in and then they would spread the shredded tires on top of that liner so that the leachate (garbage juice) drainage could be managed rather than just letting it leach into the ground water.

The landfills also were required to have monitoring wells around the edges of the property that were checked periodically for water table contamination.

That is where your shredded tires going into landfills story comes from.

[gwalchmai]

"garbage juice"

[Huaco Kid]

Garbage juice is unavoidable. Watch a garbage truck, on your street. It's dripping.

At the burning plants, it's enough to make ponds across ten floors of conveyors and furnaces. Drip drip down the back of your neck. Soak your boots.

Concentrated garbage smell doesn't bother me. I know it.

[Huaco Kid]

But at the s***-burning places...

The smell in the furnace buildings has made me dry-barf. You can smell it from 1/4 mile away. I guess they get used to it.

It's got floors of conveyors and wringers, and ponds too. You know what it is. Drip drip down the back of your neck.

I don't go in the pre-dry building. I'll walk a mile around. They pipe in the juice from the field of stirring tanks, let it drain through filters, wring the goo, and dry it, before it goes to the furnace.

At a lumber mill, there is two inches of sawdust on every single surface. You know what it is. At a cement plant, two inches of gray powder on every single surface. You know what it is. At s*** burners, there's two inches of brown powder on every single surface. You know........

[Huaco Kid]

Michigan is very strict with their environmental laws.

Unless Detroit owns the facility, then they pretty much get away with whatever they want.

[Batesmotel]

8 hours ago, minderasr said:

I thought that smell was just New Jersey!

“The Garden State”

[jmohme]

1 hour ago, Huaco Kid said:

Garbage juice is unavoidable. Watch a garbage truck, on your street. It's dripping.

At the burning plants, it's enough to make ponds across ten floors of conveyors and furnaces. Drip drip down the back of your neck. Soak your boots.

Concentrated garbage smell doesn't bother me. I know it.

Unavoidable yes, but if it leaches into the ground water from a landfill, it's a huge and expensive problem for that landfill.

I know most people think a landfill is just digging a hole and filling it with trash, but it is actually a complex and costly engineering project.

[Huaco Kid]

It takes engineers and scientists to run a modern landfill.

A while back, Pennsylvania started fill old HUGE abandoned coal mines with garbage. They pack it tight. They said each one will take decades to fill.

I guess they engineer-planned them.... or just started bulldozing **** in.

[Huaco Kid]

After Detroit's first filter stage, the liquid went to the water treatment plants. Yum.

[jmohme]

4 minutes ago, Huaco Kid said:

It takes engineers and scientists to run a modern landfill.

A while back, Pennsylvania started fill old HUGE abandoned coal mines with garbage. They pack it tight. They said each one will take decades to fill.

I guess they engineer-planned them.... or just started bulldozing **** in.

I will guarantee you that they first paid geologists tons of cash to test for fissures, then spent millions more laying and packing liners, then more money to build in drainage to the leachate collections areas, and then the geologists come back to certify the entire project before the first bag of garbage is deposited.

70 years ago, it was toss trash into a hole and forget about it. Those days, fortunately, are long gone.

As for packing it tight, that is standard practice at all landfills. That is the purpose of this ugly machine.

The wheels alone on this machine weigh more than the loaded trucks that dump the trash. The dozer blade channels the trash under the wheels. the steel cleats break up the solids, and the weight of the wheels and tractor pack it.

Landfills are valued by packed cubic yards of capacity.

[Batesmotel]

So many years ago I had to buy an iPad for work. iPad mini 2, 16 gigabytes. Bottom of the line but it did the job it needed to. Haven’t used it in years other than as a clock and kitchen timer. Too old and unbelievably slow for much else.

I just look into buying a new iPad Pro and checked out the trade in value of the old one. I get a message back with a big red, yellow and black banner saying….

CONGRATULATIONS! Your iPad qualifies for RECYCLE! Please enter your information to find a recycling center near you.

I think I’ll just keep it as a timer. 

[railfancwb]

15 hours ago, Huaco Kid said:

After Detroit's first filter stage, the liquid went to the water treatment plants. Yum.

Most if not all water used on the International Space Station is almost certainly recycled repeatedly. 

[gwalchmai]

8 minutes ago, railfancwb said:

Most if not all water used on the International Space Station Earth is almost certainly recycled repeatedly. 

FIFY.

[jmohme]

1 hour ago, Batesmotel said:

So many years ago I had to buy an iPad for work. iPad mini 2, 16 gigabytes. Bottom of the line but it did the job it needed to. Haven’t used it in years other than as a clock and kitchen timer. Too old and unbelievably slow for much else.

I just look into buying a new iPad Pro and checked out the trade in value of the old one. I get a message back with a big red, yellow and black banner saying….

CONGRATULATIONS! Your iPad qualifies for RECYCLE! Please enter your information to find a recycling center near you.

I think I’ll just keep it as a timer. 

I sometimes use old smart stupid phones and coasters.

[railfancwb]

13 minutes ago, gwalchmai said:

FIFY.

True as well

[Pogey Bait]

On 7/15/2023 at 2:38 AM, janice6 said:

I had a remote non-magnetic test site in the middle of nowhere, that I used to drive to to test Super Conducting Sub Sensors. 

Just before I got to the site I had to pass by a large Pig Farm.  For about two miles through winding dirt roads I had to try to hold my breath.

You're right!  The stench was so overpowering it wanted to make you gag and or throw up.  Apparently they had a very large pit for feces and waste.  Sometimes it would make you eyes water if the wind was right.

Some of the tight turns went through a grove of trees.  One day I was going slowly through the trees and just at the end of a very tight turn, there was a Skunk standing in the middle of the road licking up some road kill.  It faced me and stood its tail on end and went back to licking.

I was trapped for about 5 or ten minutes between the horrible stench of the Pig farm, and a skunk 10 feet from me that was cocked and ready to fire.

I learned humility that day and waited for the Skunk to finish.  It looked at me and slowly walked into the brush.  I was lucky to survive an encounter with such a vicious animal.

Janice6 I worked for a p&c insurance company.  For a short time I was a field rep in farm loss control.  We insured some huge hog confinement operations.  the manure and urine plus anything else falls through a slatted floor  into a pit under the floor.  Before I retired insurance companies were having issues with pit explosions.  The methane gas built up in the pit would be covered over with a crust that sealed the gas inside the liquid.  Eventually the crust would crack open and release the gas into the building where it could be ignited by a standing pilot, welding or grinding work or any other heat that hit the flash point.  We had a building that exploded, killed all of the livestock inside and completely demolished the building.  It was thought this crust buildup might be due to feed eaten by the hogs and then pooped out.  

And yes, those building operations stink to high heaven.  After inspecting one odor gets in your hair, clothes, everywhere.

But as bad as hog confinement operations are, nothing compares to a 50k hen egg laying house in the summer.  

[jmohme]

27 minutes ago, Pogey Bait said:

Janice6 I worked for a p&c insurance company.  For a short time I was a field rep in farm loss control.  We insured some huge hog confinement operations.  the manure and urine plus anything else falls through a slatted floor  into a pit under the floor.  Before I retired insurance companies were having issues with pit explosions.  The methane gas built up in the pit would be covered over with a crust that sealed the gas inside the liquid.  Eventually the crust would crack open and release the gas into the building where it could be ignited by a standing pilot, welding or grinding work or any other heat that hit the flash point.  We had a building that exploded, killed all of the livestock inside and completely demolished the building.  It was thought this crust buildup might be due to feed eaten by the hogs and then pooped out.  

And yes, those building operations stink to high heaven.  After inspecting one odor gets in your hair, clothes, everywhere.

But as bad as hog confinement operations are, nothing compares to a 50k hen egg laying house in the summer.  

[janice6]

3 hours ago, Pogey Bait said:

Janice6 I worked for a p&c insurance company.  For a short time I was a field rep in farm loss control.  We insured some huge hog confinement operations.  the manure and urine plus anything else falls through a slatted floor  into a pit under the floor.  Before I retired insurance companies were having issues with pit explosions.  The methane gas built up in the pit would be covered over with a crust that sealed the gas inside the liquid.  Eventually the crust would crack open and release the gas into the building where it could be ignited by a standing pilot, welding or grinding work or any other heat that hit the flash point.  We had a building that exploded, killed all of the livestock inside and completely demolished the building.  It was thought this crust buildup might be due to feed eaten by the hogs and then pooped out.  

And yes, those building operations stink to high heaven.  After inspecting one odor gets in your hair, clothes, everywhere.

But as bad as hog confinement operations are, nothing compares to a 50k hen egg laying house in the summer.  

I've posted long ago about my father having a "Chicken ranch' with 5,000 Chickens.  It took me 60 years to get to even taste a Chicken part.  God, I hated that smell of the coops and the feces in the air that got into the back of your throat.

You have my sympathies.

[janice6]

On 7/16/2023 at 11:00 AM, gwalchmai said:

FIFY.

Sobering, isn't it.