Siting of panels for solar water heating

In message , The Central Authority writes

On Fri, 24 Nov 2006 19:26:47 +0000, John Beardmore wookie@wookie.demon.co.uk> wrote:
The plastic is shipped to China.
Well - if our plastic didn't go there, presumably oil would. Which do you think has the lower net environmental impact ?
A non-sequitur.
Waste plastic going to China does not replace oil. I've seen photographs of PET bottles being burnt in China on open bonfires yielding acrid yellow smoke.

Even if you have, that doesn't mean that the Chinese burn all PET, or indeed that all our PET goes to China.

I am sure if PET could be shredded and included with pulverised fuel at British power stations it would be.

Hmmm... Can't see why it couldn't be. Drax is tooling up to burn a bit of wood on the side, but I doubt burning it is the best use for PET.

Waste paper (including Yellow Pages) can be put in a recycling box but Yellow Pages cannot be put in a waste paper collection station. The waste paper is driven to Kent and from there shipped to Sweden where it is reprocessed,
Really ? I though Kent had a lot of UK based paper mills ?
Why should Kent have a lot of paper mills?

My understanding is that a lot of wood comes into the UK from Europe.

For composting, small branches are OK but dead woody matter isn't. How you tell the difference between a small branch (which is dead woody matter but allowed) and something which is dead woody matter and not allowed is interesting but could cost you a lot of money to get wrong.
In theory. How many are fined in practice ?
Sems to be about 1 per week, and the fines are not minor slaps on the wrist either. ISTR �400 for a single item of junk mail in with the waste paper.

I find that hard to believe.

Glass and Plastic bottles are supposed to be washed - which wastes water and energy.
Water is a renewable resource, at least for the time being.
Water usage is currently restricted in many parts of this country.

Quite possibly, but it continues to fall out of the sky.
The real question is if recycling uses less energy than working with virgin materials, and which of the above is sustainable. Any thoughts ?

How much energy is used raising a moderate amount of water to say 55 degrees, (and the tail end of the washing up water will probably do !), as opposed to melting glass ?
Another non-sequitur, it still has to be melted.

True.

Unsurprisingly this scheme is held up as a paragon of virtue by FOE and won an award.
Well - I guess the question is, can you prove that the impacts outweigh the benefits ? Because, of course there impacts - that's no surprise, it's just a question of magnitude.
Or, more to the point, "Does any of it make sense ?"

I'll take it from that that you can't prove anything but just want to cast aspersions from the sidelines.
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore

"John Beardmore" wrote in message >>

Waste plastic going to China does not replace oil. I've seen photographs of PET bottles being burnt in China on open bonfires yielding acrid yellow smoke.
Even if you have, that doesn't mean that the Chinese burn all PET, or indeed that all our PET goes to China.

I wonder how he knows that the smoke is acrid if he's only seen photographs?

For composting, small branches are OK but dead woody matter isn't. How you tell the difference between a small branch (which is dead woody matter but allowed) and something which is dead woody matter and not allowed is interesting but could cost you a lot of money to get wrong.
In theory. How many are fined in practice ?
Sems to be about 1 per week, and the fines are not minor slaps on the wrist either. ISTR �400 for a single item of junk mail in with the waste paper.
I find that hard to believe.

I find it impossible to believe. It's probably been rumoured in a redtop or a consumer tv programme.

Mary

On 2006-12-14 15:17:47 +0000, John Beardmore said:

In message , Andy Hall writes
I can and do acknowledge achievement where it is made. Unlike a lot of people, I won't accept poor service and being promised A and having A - B delivered. This is why, as a nation, we are ripped off and then moan about things but are generally not willing to take action about them. IME, both the private and the public sectors suffer from bad service malaise, but it is far more prevalent in the public sector.
But none of this happy rant says anything specific about the matter in hand.

There is no rant, just an observation on the poor service ethic which is a UK malaise. It is just as much the customer's fault for allowing it to happen as the suppliers' for performing poorly.
In terms of public to private sector comparison, the acid test is what happens when there is good service and bad service. Do people get rewarded over and above their basic remuneration for giving good service? Do they get penalised and ultimately fired if not. Does the organisation that they work in cease to exist if it doesn't deliver?
When those fundamental questions are answered, it becomes very clear that for the most part the public sector is not being correctly motivated.

On 2006-12-14 15:19:16 +0000, John Beardmore said:

In message , The Central Authority Why should Kent have a lot of paper mills?
My understanding is that a lot of wood comes into the UK from Europe.

When I looked on the map this afternoon, the UK appeared to be in Europe....

John Beardmore wrote:

In message , meow2222@care2.com writes John Beardmore wrote: In message , Andy Hall writes On 2006-11-29 00:25:37 +0000, John Beardmore wookie@wookie.demon.co.uk> said: In message , Andy Hall writes
More people, equipment and road miles may be involved.
as may be less. Its really not difficult to see how that could occur.
Also you keep saying more vehicles, without offering any evidence that this is the way it will go down in practice.
Well, equally, as Andy declines to give any detail, I don't see any reason to assume it need be any lower footprint either.
It's really Andy who has pushed this agenda, but I'm not convinced in the absence of a hard proposal, that he can know that there would be a reduction in foot print, or that he cares much. It's not his priority.

Andys answered that one quite well. Another angle on it is that a substantial percentage of British people are quite price driven, and this translates to less frequent collections and motivation to develop more efficient colelction systems - which really isnt too hard to do once theres the money motive in place. And as already said, once people pay for disposal there will be a mass uptake of composting, which clearly will reduce collection footprint.
All the above factors contribute to reducing vehicle use. We dont know for sure what might turn out when a market changes, but the evidence is fairly one sided here.

I'm tempted to call the other examples of demonopolisation, such as electricity, gas, phone.
Be tempted. But maybe this is more like delivered milk or groceries ?

And in both cases, private enterprise leads to improvements.
Take grocery delivery for example. One vehicle delivers to (at a guess) lets say 20 customers, and each vehicle goes to a geographic grouping of customers because of the profit motive.
We need some numbers here - so lets say the customers of one van live 1 mile from the store, and on avergae 0.15 miles from each other. Now, traditional shopping means 20 cars each doing 2 miles, finishing the job in say 2 hrs. thats 20 vehicles and 40 miles travelled, and 40 manhours of labour.
A delivery van travels the 1 mile to customer A, then 0.15 miles 19 times, then 1 mile back to store. It takes 5 minutes per delivery and 10 minutes in traffic between each customer. So thats 4.85 miles travelled in total, or quarter of a mile per customer, one vehicle not 20, and under 20 minutes of labour per customer.
Now, we both know that under state monopoly control, supermarkets would not have started internet ordering and home deliveries. Under private enterprise, its been done and is a great success. And from one success, many will copy. You picked a good example.

You would be at liberty to choose a supplier who operates in the same way as your existing one.
Which guarantees nothing about the change to multiple providers as a
whats this preoccupation with guarantees? Clearly life doesnt give guarantees, wise decisions just give us the best odds.
Yes - my point is only that saying "You would be at liberty to choose a supplier who operates in the same way as your existing one" doesn't guarantee anything about environmental performance or answer my concerns

so you said, and I answered that one.

in any respect, and indeed if other services are run as well, it's impossible to see how the aggregate footprint of moving that material could be lower.

well, see above, but theyre already points that had been brought up before you wrote that, so its pretty well addressed really.

I also told you that the term "environmental impact" is whatever the individual decides it is.
You may have told me that, but an MSc course in environmental decision making tells me otherwise.
Which do you think I'm going to believe ?
I get the feeling its whatever you were told.
No - being told isn't enough. What you are told has to 'add up' and make sense !

but you werent exposed to other views on the matter. This is a basic problem with school-like teaching. Students are left without anything like the kind of expertise that results when one goes over the various views and finds out whats right and what isnt, why, and what the pros and cons of each approach are.

That depends on what you mean by "environmental foot print"
Are you going to tell us you dont see any issues with that definition?
Well - clearly it is prone to underestimate, but it seems to be a pretty useful and largely quantitative way of looking at the problem.

Uesful yes, quantitative yes, but properly addressing the issue I think no.

as long as the same definiton is used, the same errors will be present.
In indeed there are any - or at least any that aren't recognised as inherent to the technique.

of course there are

Anyway - if you've got any bright ideas for better ways to work it out that's fine. If not, random redefinition is probably petty pointless.

yes I have. I'm not saying either system is perfect, but the deficiencies in what you quote do seem a bit significant.

To say "The definition is individual" shows a pretty complete lack of understanding of the field.
it may be just an acknowledgement of the fact that not everyone buys this approach.
Then they can say
'Footprint calculations don't work because...'
That's not the same thing as redefining what it is agreed to mean.

I think thats addressing a point no-one has made.

its not that the solution is non-trivial, right now the issue is that the solution isnt available.
THE solution ??

the solution to climate change

No-one has even proposed any method that would reduce the worlds environmental footprint - and by that I mean a system based in reality that is likely to work. There is no such solution today.
There is certainly no single solution, but there are many things that can contribute to a reduction. Recycling is one such.
Nobody has ever said there is a single 'magic bullet'.

There isnt a solution full stop. I dont care if it has 1 or 100 components to it, there just isnt one. The popular notion of a solution is to be a little more energy efficient at home, and that doesnt even begin to solve the problem. What most people in UK are doing today is not the solution.
No-one can stand up and say 'heres the plan sir, this will work and stop climate change' and have their plan taken as realistic. Nobody has a workable effective plan.

With only 2% of the worlds population there is nothing Britain can do today to solve the problem by acting within our own borders.
Except contribute.
Your arguments leads to the conclusion that
nobody should do anything because nobody can do everything
where as those with a little more presence of mind see that
if everybody does something, everybody can achieve anything.

No, they most definiately dont lead to such conclusions. I've already explained what I see as the solution, and it sure isnt the above. Its developing energy technologies that can be used around the world. Britain-only solutions are never going to cut it.
The notion that everyone can achieve anything is the stuff of Disney films. The mass of people working 9-5 year in year out make it pretty clear it aint so.

The only real solution si to devise methods that both can be applied internatinally, and for which there is an incentive to apply them worldwide. The real climate problem solvers are not footprint assessments, but technology innovators.
Well - as I've said, fusion might get us out of a hole,

AFAIK fusion is not one of the promising energy techs in the pipeline, so isnt part of the solution.

but it seems dumb to 'bet the farm' on technologies that may never emerge while we are already doing damage at an alarming rate.

Whether you like it or not we are betting the farm. There is no better alternative to that.
2nd we have no other solution today than research. So we need to follow the R&D path, not waste our time money & energy on things that can never do it.
3rd there is plenty the average Jo can do to support such research. They can ask publicly for more research, they can raise funds for research programs, they can donate, they can set up prize funds for anyone that comes along with an energy solution that meets a given set of criteria - all these things accelerate the pace of technological change, and all (but one) are within anyone's grasp.
4th there are loads of new techs coming out every year, check the patents if you dont believe me.
5thly energy technologies are being developed and improved already. Its already happening, so you cant say theres nothing ahead there.
6th, we can combine 3 and 5 to reduce the private cost of research and hasten the process.

Just as awareness is now much better than in the 70s, perhaps this interest group will come of age in the future and come up with some real solutions.
This problem isn't going to be solved by a single interest group,

It only takes one technology. That will come from one lab, so yes it will be.

but by characterising the problems and looking for opportunities to fix it at all levels.

Hmm. Thing is, there are no opportunities to fix it at almost all levels. There are none. The present approach sure isnt going to do it. Its only when we can face these facts that one stops running about like a headless chicken, and starts to look again at just where the solution does lie. And its with research. The one thing that everyone will do the world around is adopt a new technology that is cost efficient and non-polluting. That is our solution.
In the distant future, energy reduction is not part of the solution. Its an interim measure only. Once energy is cheap in bulk and non-pollution, we can use much more than we do today.
NT

David Hansen wrote:

On 6 Dec 2006 02:58:01 -0800 someone who may be meow2222@care2.com wrote this:-
There appear to be rather a lot of assumptions behind your remark.
Any extra container than the main black binbag one has to take up more space, it cant fail to.
You are assuming that people have a "main black binbag". Next contestant please.

yes, thats how its mandated around here.

Outside the "junk" should be inside suitable containers, a bin or box, rather then bags.
Maybe you should tell our LA.
They don't provide a bin or box for recyclables? Where is this council?

they do, one box and several categories of recyclables, that cant be mixed of course.

And how do these "fill up with neighbourhood rubbish"?
people put junk in them
Really. How do they manage this?

If you cant work that out we're in trouble.
NT

Owain wrote:

meow2222@care2.com wrote:
A small army of uk.d-i-y regulars have expressed the desire to scavenge at the dump in the UK but are prevented from doing so by H&S regulations. is that truth or excuse though? How hard is it to sign a preprinted waiver?
A waiver *might* indemnify the tip operator against a civil claim but would not prevent the criminal prosecution under H&SAWA.
In any activity in the workplace there has to be a risk assessment:
Is there a risk of injury or death to the public if they are allowed on the tip? -- Yes.
How can that risk be reduced? -- Don't allow public on the tip.

What do you mean by 'on the tip' The idea is to give access to goods _destined_ for landfill. This can be done by putting goods on flatback forkliftable platforms that buyers can pick from, not climb over.

How hard is it to buy electrical goods after showing evidence of being in the trade? Etc.
Apart from H&SAWA there is all the legislation around only conveying 'waste' between licensed waste handlers. What happens to the 'waste' when it becomes 'useful' again I don't know.

If an item is bought and sold it is by definition not waste.

And why is laying out the possibly saleable rubbish so much more hazardous than it is when its done at jumble sales, second hand goods shops and so on? I'm far from convinced.
Jumble sales and the like are done by people wanting to sell things for money. Council tips are run by councils.
Owain

No, theyre run by private contractors. These contractors could openly take orders for goods, sell from a long table like platform, and each platformful could be checked by an inspector before being opened to the public. Yes it costs, and yes theres a financial return. They'd do best out of bulk orders for trade. Advertising onsite that such orders are taken would encourage more business.
In short, permitting free trade would reduce landfill and make lots of good goods available for businesses and end users alike.
If the issues of dealing with public direct were insurmountable, which I doubt, trade lots are still workable.
NT

Andy Hall wrote:

On 2006-12-06 12:49:16 +0000, meow2222@care2.com said: Andy Hall wrote: On 2006-12-04 16:48:31 +0000, John Beardmore said:
Its odd how many put whatever theyre taught on a pedestal. The 'well..' paragraph above describes some real naivete.
Quite amazing. I've always considered education to be about finding out things for one's self, questioning them and sifting the important and influencing from the dross. The last thing that I have felt it to be was being fed a package of goods and treating it as sacrosanct. I suspect that that is one reason for my not wanting to buy unquestioningly into mindless ecobabble for the sake of it.

Most dont need to understand things in depth to do their job, and education to adequate-for-a-job depth can be done quickly en masse by just telling people what to believe. Educational establishments market themselves as being The providers of Knowledge, when this is really sales talk rather than reality. The problem is that kids grow up not being taught any critical thinking skills, and therefore swallow such ideas whole. The result is graduates that think they know all they need to know. A nice fuzzy feelgood idea, but not really realistic.
Doing a degree course proves you can do a degree course, and know at least something about the subject. So its useful, but to take it as complete qualification is just not how it is, and employers see it this way too in my experience.
NT

In message , meow2222@care2.com writes

John Beardmore wrote: In message , meow2222@care2.com writes John Beardmore wrote: In message , Andy Hall writes On 2006-11-29 00:25:37 +0000, John Beardmore wookie@wookie.demon.co.uk> said: In message , Andy Hall writes
More people, equipment and road miles may be involved.
as may be less. Its really not difficult to see how that could occur.
Also you keep saying more vehicles, without offering any evidence that this is the way it will go down in practice.
Well, equally, as Andy declines to give any detail, I don't see any reason to assume it need be any lower footprint either.
It's really Andy who has pushed this agenda, but I'm not convinced in the absence of a hard proposal, that he can know that there would be a reduction in foot print, or that he cares much. It's not his priority.
Andys answered that one quite well.

Well... He answered it... More with words than meaning I think.

Another angle on it is that a substantial percentage of British people are quite price driven, and this translates to less frequent collections and motivation to develop more efficient colelction systems - which really isnt too hard to do once theres the money motive in place.

Maybe.

And as already said, once people pay for disposal there will be a mass uptake of composting, which clearly will reduce collection footprint.

It might reduce collected volume, but if the composting is done badly at home, it may also give off a great deal of methane I suspect, so I'm not sure the footprint would necessarily fall.

All the above factors contribute to reducing vehicle use. We dont know for sure what might turn out when a market changes, but the evidence is fairly one sided here.

The hunches may be. Not sure that there is "evidence".

I'm tempted to call the other examples of demonopolisation, such as electricity, gas, phone.
Be tempted. But maybe this is more like delivered milk or groceries ?
And in both cases, private enterprise leads to improvements.
Take grocery delivery for example. One vehicle delivers to (at a guess) lets say 20 customers, and each vehicle goes to a geographic grouping of customers because of the profit motive.

Yes - delivering groceries might make more sense than all end users driving to the supermarket, but that doesn't mean that each supermarket having a vehicle fleet covering each area has a lower delivery footprint than each area being served by a single vehicle from a single location.

We need some numbers here - so lets say the customers of one van live 1 mile from the store, and on avergae 0.15 miles from each other. Now, traditional shopping means 20 cars each doing 2 miles, finishing the job in say 2 hrs. thats 20 vehicles and 40 miles travelled, and 40 manhours of labour.
A delivery van travels the 1 mile to customer A, then 0.15 miles 19 times, then 1 mile back to store. It takes 5 minutes per delivery and 10 minutes in traffic between each customer. So thats 4.85 miles travelled in total, or quarter of a mile per customer, one vehicle not 20, and under 20 minutes of labour per customer.

An analogy which would be utterly splendid if only we drove our own rubbish to the 'waste transfer station' !
But we don't. So it's toast !

Now, we both know that under state monopoly control, supermarkets would not have started internet ordering and home deliveries. Under private enterprise, its been done and is a great success. And from one success, many will copy.

And yet somehow the LAs still manage to come round and collect waste once a week !

You picked a good example.

Indeed ! Better than yours anyway !

You would be at liberty to choose a supplier who operates in the same way as your existing one.
Which guarantees nothing about the change to multiple providers as a
whats this preoccupation with guarantees? Clearly life doesnt give guarantees, wise decisions just give us the best odds.
Yes - my point is only that saying "You would be at liberty to choose a supplier who operates in the same way as your existing one" doesn't guarantee anything about environmental performance or answer my concerns
so you said, and I answered that one.

Well - if you were setting out to be convincing, you failed !

in any respect, and indeed if other services are run as well, it's impossible to see how the aggregate footprint of moving that material could be lower.
well, see above, but theyre already points that had been brought up before you wrote that, so its pretty well addressed really.

There are currently about 108 messages in this thread I haven't read and may never have time to. None the less what I have read from you and Andy among the other 932 messages hasn't been convincing so far.
What makes you think I'll regard your recent missives as the very model of good sense ?

I also told you that the term "environmental impact" is whatever the individual decides it is.
You may have told me that, but an MSc course in environmental decision making tells me otherwise.
Which do you think I'm going to believe ?
I get the feeling its whatever you were told.
No - being told isn't enough. What you are told has to 'add up' and make sense !
but you werent exposed to other views on the matter.

I wouldn't bank on that.

This is a basic problem with school-like teaching. Students are left without anything like the kind of expertise that results when one goes over the various views and finds out whats right and what isnt, why, and what the pros and cons of each approach are.

Well - it's certainly true that we all have our unique perspectives, but that doesn't make you right any more than it makes me wrong.

That depends on what you mean by "environmental foot print"
Are you going to tell us you dont see any issues with that definition?
Well - clearly it is prone to underestimate, but it seems to be a pretty useful and largely quantitative way of looking at the problem.
Uesful yes, quantitative yes, but properly addressing the issue I think no.

The reason being ?
Or is this just the sweet voice of assertion and bluff ?

as long as the same definiton is used, the same errors will be present.
In indeed there are any - or at least any that aren't recognised as inherent to the technique.
of course there are
Anyway - if you've got any bright ideas for better ways to work it out that's fine. If not, random redefinition is probably petty pointless.
yes I have.

Go on then...

I'm not saying either system is perfect, but the deficiencies in what you quote do seem a bit significant.

Well again, given that footprint calculations tend to underestimate, I'd like to know how you think the sort of errors that the technique is prone to strengthen your case.

To say "The definition is individual" shows a pretty complete lack of understanding of the field.
it may be just an acknowledgement of the fact that not everyone buys this approach.
Then they can say
'Footprint calculations don't work because...'
That's not the same thing as redefining what it is agreed to mean.
I think thats addressing a point no-one has made.

Well you seem to be decrying environmental footprint because "The definition is individual". I'm suggesting that given that the definition and concept are pretty clear, you might criticise particular elements of the method for failing to accurately account for all the impacts of an activity, and if you have a sound numeric argument, the technique can be refined. But just to say "The definition is individual", (which it isn't), or "not everyone buys this approach", (so what ?), if pretty useless unless you plan to volunteer some better way to understand the situation.

its not that the solution is non-trivial, right now the issue is that the solution isnt available.
THE solution ??
the solution to climate change

But may things which may mitigate it are. There unlikely ever to be a SINGLE solution.

No-one has even proposed any method that would reduce the worlds environmental footprint - and by that I mean a system based in reality that is likely to work. There is no such solution today.
There is certainly no single solution, but there are many things that can contribute to a reduction. Recycling is one such.
Nobody has ever said there is a single 'magic bullet'.
There isnt a solution full stop. I dont care if it has 1 or 100 components to it, there just isnt one.

There isn't ONE. But there are many that can contribute.

The popular notion of a solution is to be a little more energy efficient at home, and that doesnt even begin to solve the problem.

Wrong. It does begin, but it can't get all you need.

What most people in UK are doing today is not the solution.

No - but it's a contribution.

No-one can stand up and say 'heres the plan sir, this will work and stop climate change' and have their plan taken as realistic. Nobody has a workable effective plan.

Indeed, but making the problem less bad less quickly seems smarter than making it more bad more quickly.

With only 2% of the worlds population there is nothing Britain can do today to solve the problem by acting within our own borders.
Except contribute.
Your arguments leads to the conclusion that
nobody should do anything because nobody can do everything
where as those with a little more presence of mind see that
if everybody does something, everybody can achieve anything.
No, they most definiately dont lead to such conclusions. I've already explained what I see as the solution, and it sure isnt the above. Its developing energy technologies that can be used around the world. Britain-only solutions are never going to cut it.

But sensible waste disposal isn't a "Britain-only solution" any more than switching lights off using renewable energy.
The whole geographical / administrative boundary thing is a total red herring.

The notion that everyone can achieve anything is the stuff of Disney films.

Indeed - you can't back thermodynamics. :)

The mass of people working 9-5 year in year out make it pretty clear it aint so.

Depends what they work on and how they work.

The only real solution si to devise methods that both can be applied internatinally, and for which there is an incentive to apply them worldwide. The real climate problem solvers are not footprint assessments, but technology innovators.
Well - as I've said, fusion might get us out of a hole,
AFAIK fusion is not one of the promising energy techs in the pipeline,

Then I don't think you K very much !

so isnt part of the solution.

So what do you think will sort it ?

but it seems dumb to 'bet the farm' on technologies that may never emerge while we are already doing damage at an alarming rate.
Whether you like it or not we are betting the farm.

I agree that we are doing, and I don't particularly like it.

There is no better alternative to that.

I don't think that view is universally held !

2nd we have no other solution today than research. So we need to follow the R&D path, not waste our time money & energy on things that can never do it.

The less green house gas we emit, and the more slowly we emit it, the longer we have to get something half way decent out of an R&D process.

3rd there is plenty the average Jo can do to support such research. They can ask publicly for more research, they can raise funds for research programs, they can donate, they can set up prize funds for anyone that comes along with an energy solution that meets a given set of criteria - all these things accelerate the pace of technological change, and all (but one) are within anyone's grasp.

Yes - sounds much like the sort of stuff Eurosolar do.

4th there are loads of new techs coming out every year, check the patents if you dont believe me.

There are loads of new patents, but it's fascinating that you don't name a single one that looks more promising than fusion.

5thly energy technologies are being developed and improved already. Its already happening, so you cant say theres nothing ahead there.

I've never said there is no progress being made, but you have yet to identify any progress that is significant, and seem dismissive of renewables and fusion. So - among all the patents you refer to, could you identify say 5 which you think really address the problem of climate change ?

6th, we can combine 3 and 5 to reduce the private cost of research and hasten the process.

So in essence, you suggest we do noting to reduce our emissions, but ask for research to be done, make some donations, and offer prizes to solve the worlds problems !
ROFL !

Just as awareness is now much better than in the 70s, perhaps this interest group will come of age in the future and come up with some real solutions.
This problem isn't going to be solved by a single interest group,
It only takes one technology. That will come from one lab, so yes it will be.

Well - you just might be right. Had cold fusion worked, something along those lines might have been a 'magic bullet', but I for one don't think we can rely on that sort of single solution, and even if we get one, we have a better chance if emissions are reduced in the mean time.

but by characterising the problems and looking for opportunities to fix it at all levels.
Hmm. Thing is, there are no opportunities to fix it at almost all levels. There are none.

Well - none you seem to know about. But I guess we can't help wilful ignorance or disingenuous stance.

The present approach sure isnt going to do it.

It sure isn't going to do all of it at present rates of progress.

Its only when we can face these facts that one stops running about like a headless chicken, and starts to look again at just where the solution does lie. And its with research.

Well - I'm all in favour of research, but I'm also in favour of allowing longer for it to happen with whatever mitigation we can achieve as soon as possible.

The one thing that everyone will do the world around is adopt a new technology that is cost efficient and non-polluting. That is our solution.

It will be when there is one. IF there is one...

In the distant future, energy reduction is not part of the solution. Its an interim measure only.

OK - so you concede that it has value as an interim measure then.

Once energy is cheap in bulk and non-pollution, we can use much more than we do today.

Well - here you have much in common with the renewable energy community who take the view that once using RE, being profligate isn't a problem.
This is a sound point, except that your postulated sustainable energy source (TBA) doesn't exist, and the capital cost of existing renewable energy sources is so high that it's more or less always cheaper to cut consumption than generate more energy.
Which takes us back to cutting consumption and solar water heating...
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore

In message , Andy Hall writes

On 2006-12-10 22:50:34 +0000, John Beardmore said:
In message , Andy Hall writes On 2006-12-04 02:54:50 +0000, John Beardmore wookie@wookie.demon.co.uk> said:
Obviously, one would hope that you wouldn't seek to reduce the choice of others who do not have the same order of priorities in terms of the impact of additional choices of supplier. I think there should be a debate about it. Many of our choices are curtailed in the interests of others. I don't think waste disposal is precious an issue that it should be out of the question that a democratically elected state make that choice. YMMV. It does, because the state, and it's local level implementation does not demonstrate any great skill in that area The rubbish is collected. What more do you want ?
Choice of supplier, service and price - I already told you that.

Hmmm... OK - well that may be your highest priority, but you may have to accept that your view isn't universally shared.

You want a free market, but this seems to be more to do with your personal ideology than any particular lack of skill.
It's not a personal ideology, rather a recognition of the natural order.

That may be how you see it, but again, you may have to accept that your view isn't universally shared.

Not sure about the notion of 'mark up' here. I've explained it clearly enough. It buys the service from an outside (normally private) supplier. It adds administrative cost in spades If you want to prove that, get numerate about it.
Are you telling me that you can't figure out that if you take service A and add admin cost B to it that the total isn't A+B?

No - I'm trying to tell you that you don't know the values of either A or B, or the ratio of A to B, nor have you come up with values of B' for your new proposed 'market place', nor values for C, D and E, the costs of the new service provisions, and not have you expressed any meaningful information about the environmental impacts of your scheme which you are utterly unwilling to consider in any detail.
As such it does seem reasonable to ask you to "get numerate about it", and in the absence of any numeric justification of your assertions, it doesn't seem utterly wild to suggest that it's "personal ideology" rather than an idea of substance or worth.

and sells it to the customer. The administration adds no value, A bold yet spurious assumption...
It's an unnecessary cost. I am surprised that you think that that's spurious.

I'm surprised you think it's unnecessary.

so the customer might as well deal direcly with the supplier and cut out the middle man. Clear enough? Clear, simple, simplistic, but not in my view correct.
It's hard to come to any other conclusion unless you believe that Father Christmas funds local authorities.

Well - even you seem to envisage LAs continuing to have a role, and a thing is not rendered unnecessary by somebody having to pay for it !
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore

In message , Andy Hall writes

On 2006-12-04 16:39:38 +0000, John Beardmore said: In message , Andy Hall writes
If some people really think this is too difficult or takes too long then perhaps they should ask their local waste advisor to give them some advice. Actually no, it's not that this is difficult in the final analysis but that it is unnecessarily overcomplicated and inconvenient for dubious value. Well - you couldn't actually do any meaningful separation and have it any simpler !
Then one has to ask whether it is meaningful at all....

Yes - though it might not be a bad idea to listen to the reply !

I have no idea who a "waste advisor" is. Is it yet another person paid for from council tax with pie in the sky ideas about the rality of what people require? Well - as you say, you've got no idea.
Perhaps you would like to enlighten the assembled throng so that we can all have a laugh.

Perhaps you should when you've found out what the services cost and what the departments actually do ?
To criticise them without taking the trouble to learn the basics seems pretty piss poor IMV.

I would be very pleased to have a conversation with such a person, but it would be along a few simple lines: 1) How is he going to offer me a choice of disposal services? 2) How is he going to reduce the cost? 3) How is he going to deliver the above with less use of time on my part? If he has good answers for all of the above, then there is a basis for discussion. If he doesn't, then I will want to know who his boss is and who the budget holder is for his position because he isn't doing his job properly and should be removed from the payroll.. Well - he certainly isn't doing what you want, but may well be doing what he's employed to do.
By whom? Who is paying?

We all pay, but that doesn't mean you proposal would do the job better, nor necessarily even cheaper.
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore

In message , meow2222@care2.com writes

You appear to now be saying the LA is not so great after all.

Some are bound to be better than others.

Would you say someone who can actually do the job should be given a chance to do so?

Might be a better deal to sort the LA out.
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore

In message , Andy Hall writes

On 2006-12-03 11:49:36 +0000, David Hansen SENDdavidNOhSPAM@spidacom.co.uk> said:
On Sun, 3 Dec 2006 11:30:42 +0000 someone who may be Andy Hall andyh@hall.nospam> wrote this:-
If you choose to jumble it all together to make one large horrid mess, you should certainly have to sort that out yourself. Why? I pay for rubbish disposal. If the local authority wants it to be separated then they need to organise that. As has been explained more than once the desire is driven by the Westminster government and EU. Most councils undoubtedly just wanted to continue in the way they had been doing in the past.
I'm sure. It was a big enough gravy train before, and now even more wagons have been added.

I thought you were the one that wanted to add wagons, road miles and multiple service providers ?
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore

In message , Andy Hall writes

On 2006-12-03 17:47:04 +0000, usenet@colddrake.co.uk (sarah) said:
The whole premise was to have a range of services from a range of providers so that people can choose what they want and with local authorities taken out of the financial path between customer and supplier. If you want to continue as you are then that is accomodated.

But if you want to continue having your waste collected with an environmental impact / footprint that as small as it is now, you may not be, and indeed, there is no guarantee that your existing service provision would be offered.

Alternatively, you have the option to select products based on the way that the manufacturer does the packaging. It's far better not to have the packaging disposal issue in the first place. Quite. But until legislation forces it on the manufacturers, their marketing people, combined perhaps with a host of safety regs and transport requirements, and sheer laziness on the part of some consumers ensures the problem will persist.
There already is huge over-regulation in these areas. Adding more is unlikely to alter the behaviour of consumers who want to buy a) on price and b) on the attractiveness of the packaging.

:) Oh I don't know...

If you choose to jumble it all together to make one large horrid mess, you should certainly have to sort that out yourself. Why? I pay for rubbish disposal. And your rubbish is disposed of.
Then I'm happy. I am not happy if I am expected to do part of the supplier's work for nothing. Either they reduce the price or they do the work.

:) Oh there there !!

If the local authority wants it to be separated then they need to organise that. If waste recycling were merely some whimsical initiative undertaken by UK local authorities, that would be fair. Unfortunately it's not. Recycling has been forced on them by EU directives which are in turn a function of general (you may be excluded if you wish) recognition that we're running short of sites for bulk waste disposal and that burying valuable resources or sending them up in smoke to generate heat and pollution is a Bad Thing.
If the total effect of each recycling procedure is positive (including the whole lifetime of the product), then it may be worthwhile. I am not convinced that there are very many actual cases where this applies.

Well - this is indeed the big one ! Is there any centralised reporting and analysis of LCA data broken down by region ? That could certainly inform a more systematic approach.
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore

In message , meow2222@care2.com writes

sarah wrote: Andy Hall wrote: On 2006-12-03 17:47:04 +0000, usenet@colddrake.co.uk (sarah) said: Andy Hall wrote:
That's *your* premise, not mine. Making a range of services from a range of providers available means no one can apply economies of scale (and
no it doesnt, no-one said they would have to be small firms.

Indeed, but three large ones will still have to drive round your area each week where one does now, even if two of them don't pick up from you.
What does that do for road miles per bon lifted ?

someone will have to regulate and inspect the suppliers,
same as they do now

Yes, but in your dream we'll have the same volume of waste, but three tenders to process, and three companies to police.

but that's another issue, sorry, set of costs).
which we already pay

And would then have to pay for more of.

I'm perfectly happy to have essential services provided by a single supplier ultimately responsible to me (the electorate).
this is another political myth.

A bit like the assertion that a cheaper service must necessarily use less energy. :) !

You or the electorate didnt insitute this LA garbage recycling system in the first place, theyre not acting as you tell them, ie theyre not serving you. With a free market the company does serve the customer/electorate, else it loses market share and dies.

Or alternatively, the rubbish is processed the cheapest way, regardless of consequences.

I beg to disagree. If regulation forces manufacturers to reduce their packaging excesses, consumers will have to buy what's available.
the overpackaging myth

Not sure that it's a myth. Many things could do with a lot less packaging.

You're not thinking it through. No one sorted refuse in the past: you're requiring them to do additional work. Which means the cost of refuse disposal would rise.
au contraire, I think Andy doesnt want to pay for sorting.

Quite possibly not.

Are you proposing a two- (or more) tier cost for refuse disposal, with one price for those of us who sort their own and another for those who prefer not to sully their hands with it? How much would implementing *that* cost?
nothing. You leave the market to it,

And that makes it free ? Oh good !!

and people will buy from whichever firm does closest to what they want. It would result in economies rather than costs.

Yes - but that makes the preferred outcome cheap, not the most sustainable one.

Add the cost of providing sorting facilities, hiring people to do the sorting, working out how to charge for it... gods, they'd have to have *another* collection round for the dirty combined stuff, which shouldn't contaminate the sorted refuse, so they'd need more trucks and drivers... the cost would be (relatively) astronomical.
What would happen in reality is that in the earliest days of the market, many types of service would be offered and chosen somewhere or other. This would provide a mass of real hard factual data about the various options, and analysis would show which was genuinely best for the economy, environment and so on,

Really ???

and as consumers learn about this the choices would move toward the better options, according to the choices of the service user. None of this happens today, which is why we're still debating it.
And as we know from market observation, it tends to be the cheaper services that get large market share, not the astropriced ones.

Yes - but again, that makes the preferred (cheap !) outcome cheaper, and does nothing to the more sustainable options.

Nope, I'm afraid that if you don't want to sort your refuse yourself, the only effective solution is for you to hire someone to sort yours before you put it out.
why cant he have another option, such as not sorting and not recycling? Its not like the recycling option is beyond debate.

You could have options to poo in the street too, but you may not get huge popular support !

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your PoV), those responsible for recycling don't necessarily agree with you. And they're bound by the regulations anyway, so neither their opinions nor yours will influence the outcome.
does that mean they dont have power in democratically deciding this after all?

Well - you can lobby your democratically elected members using sound numerically supported arguments if you like.
Alternatively, you pontificate until you grow old, and never make an effective case.
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore