Plastic Recycling Issues

[Timsup2nothin]

We reuse them too but we still have extra.

They have been outlawed in California for a year and *I* still have a ton of them around.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Really? I've found using shopping carts to be a huge hassle because I can't properly maneuver it with one hand without it veering all over the place. I found a method involving leaning my entire arm against it but that kind of gets painful.

I just hooked my canes over the handle and pushed them normally. And if I had to do one-handed pushing, it works as long as there's not too many heavy items.

Do you try to steer them from the sides or the middle? The middle works best for me as long as the wheels aren't wonky.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Oh, I think I might see the problem there. I use the cane (it's a quad) for stability reasons so hooking it over the handle doesn't work too well. I do steer from the middle, but the wheels are often wobbly.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

My mom loved to go to the store, because she used the cart pretty much as a walker and she felt like she could run into old friends and pretend she didn't need a walker. Of course, she had a minion along to do the actual putting stuff in the cart for her, as well as do the driving, and the retrieving of the cart prior to helping her out of the car to push it around.

Come to think of it, the cart and the minion had a lot of getting pushed around in common.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

My mom loved to go to the store, because she used the cart pretty much as a walker and she felt like she could run into old friends and pretend she didn't need a walker. Of course, she had a minion along to do the actual putting stuff in the cart for her, as well as do the driving, and the retrieving of the cart prior to helping her out of the car to push it around.

Come to think of it, the cart and the minion had a lot of getting pushed around in common.

I take it you were the minion?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I take it you were the minion?

Often. I was head minion, and organized the minion forces to ensure there was one. Frequently the active minion slot was filled by one or another of my sons. The downside of that was that I was the only one who could stand up to my mom and keep the cart from filling with grotesque expenditures that she didn't need and couldn't afford. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest the founder of Costco.

 

[Cutlass]

I separated out a lot of light plastic. And then they filled a closet and never got returned...

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Landfills are not very good at degrading stuff. I have worked on a construction site on a former tip recently, there were newspapers from the 1960s that you could still read and plenty of cardboard. They try to keep out water because it picks up chemicals and is then expensive to treat when it flows back out. They cap the tip to reduce the smell and stop stuff blowing around. So the inside of the tip has little water and low oxygen levels so bacterial growth is slow.

Well, that's depressing. Still, even though the landfill is poor at degrading stuff that pizza bow would still be the most degradable thing in it, so there's that.

 

[Bamspeedy]

The deepest parts of the tip had a lot of glass bottles and clay jars, maybe a hundred years old. Some of the workforce collected the unbroken ones and sold them on ebay. That level was mostly rotted down but I would assume they would have burnt newspaper to start coal fires. The strangest thing we found was a car, do not know why it was not scrapped.

How many decades old was the car? Was it checked by law enforcement for cold cases (thorouhly searched incuding the trunk checked for human remains)

 

[Timsup2nothin]

How many decades old was the car? Was it checked by law enforcement for cold cases (thorouhly searched incuding the trunk checked for human remains)

I was kinda thinking the same thing. Slip into the landfill at night and bury a car has quite a few possible motivations, none of them good.

 

[Cutlass]

Somewhat relevant to landfills...

 

[Cutlass]

I was working next to one road and the road caught fire, same size flames as that vid but they kept burning. We assumed we had disturbed a gas main that we could not see. When the gas company turned up they said it was nothing to do with them. The road rang next to an old coal gas manufacturing site so we assumed it was just gas trapped under the road that we released by digging next to it.

I had an uncle who worked in a landfill driving a bulldozer, and he told a story about a trash fire they had there. Trash fires are one of the hardest types of fires to extinguish, because the fuel is inaccessible, and there is enough retained heat to reignite the fires.

 

[Hrothbern]

I had an uncle who worked in a landfill driving a bulldozer, and he told a story about a trash fire they had there. Trash fires are one of the hardest types of fires to extinguish, because the fuel is inaccessible, and there is enough retained heat to reignite the fires.

Peat fires are difficult also

 

[Cutlass]

Peat fires are difficult also

Coal, oil wells, tire piles, if they can be put out at all, it takes specialists and a lot of time and equipment.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Most difficult are metallic fires. Using water is like adding gasoline since temperarure is so high water breaks down into oxygen and hydrogen. Only thing is to bury it under powder or sand hoping to asphyxiate it eventually.

 

[Hrothbern]

yes
Fluid iron and steel at say 1600 C or so is nasty, and using water a double hazard from the inflammable gas you make and the splashes of molten iron... if it's a small pool fire foam still works

Burning oil in open containers is also tricky for the use of water because the steam from water in the too hot oil makes a fountain of your oil, spreading fire real quick
(and you do have to tell fire squads that very explicitly when they arrive at the site... they should know... your attack plan is made with that fire squad.. but nothing is certain)

Having such fires, I experienced a lot of them, is a real thrill.
I used to run towards them and do something... and later learned my people to secure other employees first and get out !
Close some big valves etc when possible and leave the rest for the fire squad and the insurance.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Most difficult are metallic fires. Using water is like adding gasoline since temperarure is so high water breaks down into oxygen and hydrogen. Only thing is to bury it under powder or sand hoping to asphyxiate it eventually.

Well, water works if you have enough. It has to work by cooling instead of suffocating the fire. Enough is pretty hard to come by, admittedly. The navy deals with metal fires by chucking them off the ship.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

The navy deals with metal fires by chucking them off the ship.

A container ship caught fire off the coast of Nova Scotia a few weeks ago. I was a bit surprised that they had to send tugboats out to put the fire out.

 

[civvver]

There's a thin tree line behind my house separating another sub. It's about 20 feet deep. Some of it is my yard, not exactly sure how much, and the rest is owned by the sub as common area. I used to throw my grass clippings in there, but then I started using the mulcher on my mower and just leaving them on the grass for natural fertilizer.

Anyway, I could probably start a compost back there. Can you use that soil for potted plants? I grow potted tomato plants outside in the summer, just a few, and I have a herb garden in a box, very small, like 6 inches by 18 inches box. It enough to give me fresh basil, thyme and oregano on demand all summer. I bought potting soil for those.

If I want to make a compost do I need to box it in or can I just start a pile in the middle of the woods there?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Compost can be made in a pile, but it is a lot slower and turning it over is, well, work. I learned about composting in the groundskeeping department of a prison, where we were operating on a large scale and used a row of big compost spinners that were made on site. Mass production with pretty close to zero work. Something in between is probably best. There's lots of guides, most of which are associated with ads for some sort of home scale spinner. Spinners don't cost all that much, and they're actually not hard to make either. If you have scrap stuff in the garage like I do you can probably make something that would work out of it.