Date: Mon Nov 27, 2006 2:23 pm. By: John Beardmore
In message , Andy Hall writes
On 2006-11-27 02:12:01 +0000, John Beardmore said:
Well again, your only concern is that the 'customer' gets what they want in the short term. No. I think that the customer (and it is customer and not 'customer' - he *is* paying) But he is not the only one paying, nor necessarily the best informed of those that are.
Other people in the LA area are as well and should also be able to have the choice of where they buy.
It is the thin end of a very long wedge to suggest that because somebody allegedly doesn't know what they are doing that they shouldn't have choice. The next step is that they shouldn't have the vote either. While that may be true, unfortunately it isn't how democracy works.
Yes it's a wedge, but we justify legal boundaries around all sorts of stupidity from 'didn't know there was that much vodka in it' drunk driving to 'society is to blame' burglars and muggers. What makes you think that living unsustainably should be exempt ? It's hardly a victimless crime after all.
Bottom line is we don't have a very good democracy at the best of times, and the 'great and the good' of Europe and Westminster are slowly tying you up in environmental law, which on balance is probably a good thing.
should get what they want in the medium and long term as well. Even if that results in minimum spend and environmental damage.
I said that the minimum standard should be that required to meet the justifiable requirements at the time.
Well - that can only be judged when the minimum standards are agreed.
Whatever is done, even if everything on the far horizon of what environmentalists might like for Christmas is done, there will still be environmental damage. The only way to completely reach that point would be the removal of the entire human race from the planet. Even then, other species would continue to have an impact on the environment unless you want to take the view that it only matters if humans did it.
Not really - my main concern is that we don't bugger things up so badly that a large proportion of the human race will be wiped out. Things are marginal enough for a lot of us as it is.
Ergo, we will always be in a situation where there are compromises and perfection will never be achieved.
Agreed. Perfection isn't a sensible goal here. Not falling flat on your face is however.
Given that, it doesn't make sense to talk in terms of minimal spend and environmental damage. It doesn't matter how much money is spent, there will always be some.
To go on living we have to live sustainably.
When we can sustain the human population and the ecosystems that support it, talk to me about spending less on it.
Therefore it comes to a set of tests of whether or not given initiatives and their execution are justifiable or not and whether people are willing to pay to address them.
Well OK, but it is amenable to Life Cycle Analysis so that can be determined area by area,
Coming at it from a sustainability / resource conservation standpoint isn't really on your radar. Actually it is. You seem to want to approach this from the perspective of unqualified greenwash, government run monopoly, no freedom of choice, hang the expense and if people refuse to accept it, wield big legal sticks. Hardly the moral high ground, let alone the economic one. I think the case for recycling is relatively clear in the long run, though it's not been an easy industry to get started. Recycling is amenable to life cycle analysis and this is pretty much the best benchmark we have to determine what is appropriate in which circumstances.
In some specific instances, it may be interesting to recycle. I am far from convinced that it is across the range of things currently in the frame for so doing.
So do the sums. If you can prove that there is no environmental benefit, I can be on your side. None of us are doing this for fun.
I suspect it is the case that waste collection is most efficiently achieved by a single provider, and all the evidence I know of indicates that separation of waste streams at source is more efficient than later separation.
That depends on your measure of efficiency.
Indeed.
I think that unless the customer finds the whole package satisfactory in the ways that matter to him, there is no point in talking about efficiency as measured by how much diesel the bin lorry uses etc.
I have to disagree. There are stake holders other than the waste producer.
While I think that that may be important, I am also concerned about the efficiency of spending my time messing around sorting through rubbish, looking up what it is, and putting it into whichever box. That takes an amount of time and I don't think is an efficient use of that.
It does take some time, but as been pointed out, not a lot.
I don't particularly support the notion of provision of services that are free at the point of use - it distorts markets tremendously, but I'm not sure that I always like the alternatives better either. Freedom of choice is great as long as it doesn't get you freedom to choose from a range of choices which are all worse.
Which is why there do need to be minimum standards. I am sure that private waste contractors have certain SLAs with LAs today, so it would not be that difficult to adapt them.
Maybe.
The world is not a perfect place, but I'm happy to let the state carry on promoting recycling as best it can using the best available tools to work out what is appropriate, and if uptake is limited, I won't be too upset if some level of enforcement is undertaken in the interests of improving environmental performance.
Even if the basis is bullshit?
If its bullshit it isn't improving environmental performance.
You can talk about big sticks if you like - I can live with that.
Even if this continues to extend into other areas?
It's already in other areas.
I believe that it's possible to achieve the *genuinely important* objectives without any of those trappings, by encouraging people to do them and giving them choices as to how. Maybe - I'd like to think so, but I suspect you are too busy looking for excuses not to do anything to actually find out what it is best to do.
On the contrary. In respect to rubbish collection, if I choose to spend ages to sort through rubbish, put it in boxes and tie it with a green bow then I should be able to do that. If OTOH, I prefer to chuck everything into one bag, have someone collect it and they sort through it (for extra cost if they like), then I think that it's perfectly reasonable.
I thought you were objecting to additional cost ?
The outcome is the same, and I get to choose whether I want to spend my time doing this, or paying someone else to do it. This is not a difficult commercial concept.
Indeed, but the outcome may not be the same in the general case because the environmental impact of separating process and its staff may be significant.
That's fudge. It's always possible for the government no longer to provide something and not to pay for it. De facto, that has been done with dentistry. They simply haven't been honest about it.
:) Maybe, but if there were an explicit contract, it would be much harder to keep them on track.
Oh I disagree. It is accountability to the individual customer and competition that does that really quickly.
Like all the ISPs in the world are on track ?
Enough relatively independent academics have looked at separation and recycling in a fairly sophisticated way to justify it I think, but it's not always easy to know which of the plethora of implementation options are the best. Hmm... As soon as "academics" start to look at something, we know that we are in trouble. Well - you may not like them, but I don't see any indication of better ideas from you, or of any detailed analysis that goes beyond your telling us what's obvious [to you].
It's not a case of whether or not I *like* them, but one of how connected are they to the real world.
If they want to run mathematical models and analyses and whatever else they want to do, that's fine. However, their output should be taken in the context of a data point, not the definitive criterion for decision.
Well, do you have any better data points your self ? I'm not sure that we should count hunch and bluster.
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore