| ▲ | malfist 5 hours ago |
| IIRC any grease is considered a contaminate. So any cardboard with grease splotching should be discarded instead of recycled. Interesting my municipality recycles glass, but like, why? Silica is the most common mineral in the crust, easily accessible almost everywhere, and recycling it takes as much energy if not more than just making new. It's not like aluminum or steel where there are significant energy savings to recycling vs mining and refining. |
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| ▲ | smileysteve 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > it takes as much energy if not more than just making new. It saves 30% of the energy inputs to reuse slightly contaminated glass, especially when done locally. That's ignoring the energy inputs of mining and delivering the silica. https://learn.sustainability-directory.com/learn/what-are-th... |
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| ▲ | bayindirh 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > and recycling it takes as much energy if not more than just making new. It's just melted, mixed and reused, AFAIK. We're recycling glass since forever (maybe mid 90s), and the recycling bins were put out by our national glassware company. They even have a special line built with these, recycled glasses, which I don't remember the name. They also have a "upcycle" line where they repurpose their fine but not perfect items to other things. Both are excellent lines and are not more expensive than their usual wares. |
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| ▲ | JohnFen 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > We're recycling glass since forever (maybe mid 90s) Far, far earlier than the '90s. Glass has been regularly recycled from the early days of glassmaking itself. It's crushed up into "cullet" and mixed back in. Glass is great for this because it doesn't degrade from being remelted and reformed, and using cullet reduces the cost of energy and new raw materials when making new glass. | | |
| ▲ | bayindirh 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Far, far earlier than the '90s. Glass has been regularly recycled from the early days of glassmaking itself. You’re absolutely right. I meant recycling as ordinary citizens in my country with that date. |
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| ▲ | dylan604 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I've seen articles lately about the sand becoming harder (more expensive) to get. Even though it is abundant, it is not necessarily clean. It still needs to be refined similar to other raw ores. If the glass has already been made, I would expect the contaminants are easier to eliminate from crushing and melting it back down. |
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| ▲ | malfist 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Talking out of my ass, but I think that's only for concrete right? Same reason saudi arabia imports sand for their construction projects. | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not sure. I've never really read the articles. The headlines tend to be from sites that lean a little further that I'm willing to read normally. Search assist AI suggested it was even for glass bottles, but I don't trust anything an AI suggests as it could be sourcing from the same places. | | |
| ▲ | JohnFen 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you're just reading headlines (from any news source), then you're likely misinforming yourself. Headlines are advertisements, not summaries of the articles, and are frequently misleading. At the very least, keep in mind that the headlines are not written by the article's author(s), they're written by editors whose only goal is to get you to read the article. | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 10 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Yes, and looking at the source of the headline tells me a lot about the type of editors they do or do not have which does not change my original statement that I don't bother reading certain sites. Sure, I said their leaning, but that's not the only thing that is used. But that wasn't really germane to the conversation, but now you've changed the topic. |
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