Since silver is important in making the front contacts of solar cells, sell that old unused silverware blackening in the drawer and help replace fossil fuels.

Worried what the ghost of granny will think? Ghosts don't exist.

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acheron 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Beep boop, human feelings are illogical.

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wakawaka28 3 days ago | parent [-]

The funny thing is that the "logical argument" is also emotional. "Your silver is tarnishing because you don't need or even want it" and "don't you care about the climate, we need solar panels to be 0.1% cheaper" are playing with emotions.

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bee_rider 3 days ago | parent [-]

Most individual people can only hope to make a minuscule difference for the climate. I don’t think it’s really irrational to try to make that 0.1% difference, just a recognition of our limitations.

	▲	wakawaka28 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think 0.1% is an exaggeration, and the price drop would be even less. The amount of silver even in all the silverware put together is dwarfed by other uses, even investment (which is stacking it in a vault for future use). The point is that depriving yourself of sentimental objects just because you imagine some green outcome is silly. The absolute most environmentally friendly use for the silverware is to put it in the hands of someone who WANTS silverware, because of the substantial costs required to make it in the first place PLUS the costs of remanufacturing it into other objects (which you also have to assume in the transfer to your proposed use).

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wakawaka28 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The impact of everyone selling their silverware on solar panel prices (and probably even bullion prices) would be so miniscule that it doesn't even matter. So don't destroy your culturally significant artifacts because of such absurd hypotheticals as "I'm making the world a better place by doing this"...

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owenversteeg 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Funny enough, this sort of thing is _usually_ true. Civilians doing things in some sort of vaguely coordinated mass movement is typically a very weak force vs any industrial process. See, for example, WWII scrap drives, which were far more invasive and not terribly effective, even for easily recycled materials like aluminum. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/41736/were-worl...

Modern industrial forces are generally far, far more powerful than we realize. The great Falun mine, jewel of Sweden, producer of 2/3rds of all Europe's copper, builder of empires, produced 3,000 tons/year at its absolute peak; today, current copper production is quite mechanized and produces 18.3M tons/year. There is approximately nothing we can do by hand, or with our household items, that matches the power of industry.

But silver, with its small production, is a bit of an outlier. Worldwide silver production is only 25k metric tons/year, so if each of 131 million US households has a 52-piece set of .925 sterling silver at 1 troy oz sterling silver/piece, that is 0.925 * 52 piece * 1 troy oz/piece * 31.1g/troy oz * 131 million or 196k metric tons. Obviously nowhere near every household will have a full 52-pc set, some will have none and some will have larger sets, but if even 1/4 of households sell just one set, that is two entire years of worldwide silver production; the effects would be massive.

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wakawaka28 3 days ago | parent [-]

I doubt most households even have a 52 piece set of stainless steel flatware, much less silverware. I doubt that even 1 in 10 has any real silverware enough to set a table of 4.

You are right about silver production but the cost of silver is negligible in any product except for actual silver jewelry and tableware. It is not worth badgering people to part with precious personal items to save $0.50 per solar panel or some shit. The price of silver is $41 per troy oz, or a little over a dollar per gram. Getting rid of silver for this reason is like getting rid of diamond jewelry because someone could use those diamonds to make high-precision cutting equipment for manufacture of EVs and solar panels. Everything you touch on a daily basis can be used for something else. You don't need to feel guilty because someone else might want it more. The market system we have ensures that if someone else wants it more than you, for a sufficiently good reason, they can prove it by simply buying it at the asking price.

	▲	owenversteeg 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not making any sort of judgments about recycling your family heirlooms to feed industrial demand. None of these schemes would have a terribly substantial effect in the long term. Just pointing out that while typically this sort of thing is hilariously ineffective and rounds to zero, this specific case is very unique and people do own a market-distorting amount of silver - yes, even if it's only one in ten households with a set. >someone could use those diamonds to make high-precision cutting equipment Funny enough, I actually do use monocrystalline diamond tooling (not for EVs or solar panels.) I would never tell someone to sell their family jewels, and they would almost certainly get pennies on the dollar if they tried.
	▲	pfdietz 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> I doubt most households even have a 52 piece set of stainless steel flatware, much less silverware. I just went and counted our stainless steel set: 79 pieces. Actual silverware became obsolete in 1913 with the invention of stainless steel. That people keep it around is almost pathological.
	▲	pfdietz 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> but the cost of silver is negligible in any product except for actual silver jewelry and tableware. I understand it's somewhere in the neighborhood 10% of the production cost of a PV module.

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pfdietz 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, by all means allow the "culturally significant artifacts" to sit unused, taking up space, until your estate sale where they will be purchased for their scrap value.

The attachment to these things is a distant echo of when they were signs of social status, when maybe 1% of households, the rich ones, would have silver flatware (and the servants to keep it polished.) Now? They are superfluous matter than serves to weight down our lives.

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wakawaka28 3 days ago | parent [-]

You might think this is "superfluous matter" but it is literally physical wealth in your hand, on top of being historically significant (in some cases). It is still probably only owned and used by the top 1%.

The bottom line is, you should sell silver if you feel like the sale price is worth it, or you personally hate it. Not because you dream of solar panels and what not, that hardly use much of it at all. As with most manufactured goods, it is better to sell silverware to continue to be used as silverware, than to scrap it.

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_dain_ 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

If you want to keep silver as wealth, buy actual silver coins and bars. Not dinnerware.

The top 1% own ETF shares, and the top 0.001% own industries.

	▲	wakawaka28 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Sterling silver is more pure than most constitutional silver coins (which is exactly why they are not more pure; the mint does not want the coins melted constantly). If you want to own a bunch of silver for investment and also enjoy having it, there's nothing wrong with having some of it in dinnerware.

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pjc50 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> literally physical wealth in your hand

In almost all cases of "heirlooms", the area of land taken up by the object is worth more than the object. Other than gold, very little stuff has enough value density.

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wakawaka28 2 days ago | parent [-]

That is the wrong way to think about it. Many places have buildings where the structure costs less than the land it's on. You won't get rid of your car because of the land under it. The space required for a box of silverware is similar to a small pack of toilet paper. Shall we throw that out too?

	▲	pfdietz a day ago \| parent [-]
		In many such places people buy houses explicitly to tear them down and build something better. We'd be seeing even more of that if zoning didn't restrict it.

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pfdietz 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You'd do better to sell the silver and invest in things that actually produce wealth.

	▲	wakawaka28 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Perhaps. Or you could lose money. That is the difference between having wealth and investing.