Finish Disposal

[gee-dub]

We come up with plenty of cardboard boxes at work.  I cut them open, lay them flat and pour the finish out onto them to dry.  If there's a lot I do it over a few sessions.  When dry I toss it in the trash.  If my need to dispose coincides with one of the hazardous waste pickups or drop-offs I do that.

[drzaius]

6 hours ago, TerryMcK said:

I'm sure somebody knows what you mean,

Soylent Green is a great '70s dystopian future movie starring Charlton Heston. Check it out. Of course the ending has been spoiled now.

[Hurricane Dry]

16 hours ago, TerryMcK said:

I'm sure somebody knows what you mean,

Some things are economically valuable for recycling, others are not economical to recycle, but recycling reduces the cost of disposal, and recycling some things costs more than disposal.  If it costs more to recycle

I remember seeing a program about a factory that New York City built to recycle common household waste.  Some of the things being collected for recycling could not be sold as virgin materials had lower costs.  So the city paid vendors to take the recycled materials.  One would think, since the cost of recycling was already a sunk cost, the city could drop the price enough below virgin costs, so that a portion of the sunk costs could be recovered.  Apparently, this was not possible as no one would take the material even at less than virgin costs so they had to pay for the material to be taken.  This leads me to believe that the reality of the situation was that the material was of too low of a quality to be used and in reality the material was landfilled or incinerated at additional costs.  I don't think the government plant operator wanted to say that, but the statement that was made did not make sense, so something else must have been true.  I believe the plant operator didn't want to admit that the material was so worthless that it could not be recycled and that the additional effort of having people sort the material, send it for processing, and be treated as garbage was actually wasting more resources in fuel, electricity, and capital equipment than treating it as garbage in the first place.

Julian Assange is currently political asylum in Ecuador's Embassy in Londoun.  He is the main character in wikileaks, an organization that exposes government lies, corruption, incompetance, and other failures.

Last night, it occured to my tired brain that some official with tons of unwanted material got the bright idea to see if the Ecuadorians would take it and therefore wouldn't have to admit that the material was only fit for incineration instead of supposably being magically turned into useful products.  I imagined Julian Assange smelling some evil used solvents in the room next to his and asking "what's all this?"

Soylent Green is a 1970's overpopulation movie.  Edward G. Robinson, knowing he was about to die in real life, selected the movie as his last role.  Charleton Heston plays the role of a policeman in New York City who calls in giant trucks known as Scoops in to quell food riots after the supply of Soylent Green is exhausted.  Soylent Green is a food that is made from plankton and/or algea to feed the masses of people.  Scoops are a combination front end loader and dump truck that are used to scoop up rioters by the dozen and toss them into the dumper in the back.  The movie has a prominent scene of a large recycling plant and after Edward G. Robinson dies, Charleton Heston plays a role very similar to Julian Assange but with only his wonderful voice instead of the worldwide reach of the internet.  Eduard G. Robinson does not end up at the Embassy of Ecuador.

Bottom line, used paints and solvents need to be disposed of properly, some of them are indeed recycled into solvents or burned as fuel.  But I am somewhat sceptical of stories of turning some products into glorious recycling successes.