A couple of days ago I published a Bloomberg View column on ways to reduce deaths – and crowds – on Mount Everest. The two are closely related: too many people on the summit means that climbers are spending too much time in a dangerous, low oxygen environment. Why the crowds? Nepal’s government earns needed…
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Here’s what John Tierney left out of his anti-recycling screed.
Over the weekend the New York Times’ John Tierney published “The Reign of Recycling,” his attempt to show that recycling is more sentiment than it is good environmental stewardship, much less, good business. I’ll have much more to say about the meat of his work soon, but for now I’d like to make one small point…
More iPhone, More Carbon.
Earlier this week, when Apple announced that it was building a solar-powered data center in Mesa, Arizona, I immediately thought of their phones. To be sure, there’s much to admire in Apple’s commitment to reducing its internal carbon footprint. But that admiration needs to be tempered by an equally relevant set of facts: the carbon…
What Does San Diego Have Against Recycling, Free Enterprise, and the American Way?
For more than a decade, Gary Ries of Mission Hills, California, has spent his spare time earning money by picking recyclable cans and bottles from trash cans owned by the city of San Diego. Under most definitions, this is laudable entrepreneurship and everyone wins: Ries makes a few extra bucks, San Diego trucks a few…
Scenes from a Junkyard Planet: What Ultimately Happens to that New Car Smell.
During the run-up to the November 12 release of my first book, Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade, every weekday I’m posting a new photo taken during my decade of reporting on the global waste, recycling, refurbishment, and repair trade. Today’s scene was photographed at an Indiana scrap yard in 2011 by my…
Scenes from a Junkyard Planet: Viva American Scrap
During the run-up to the November 12 release of my first book, Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade, every weekday I’m posting a new photo taken during my decade of reporting on the global waste, recycling, refurbishment, and repair trade. Today’s image is the classic American scrap yard, from above. Click to enlarge:…
Don’t Trust the UN with Your Recycling (rates).
Every week I receive at least one query asking me for pointers on finding statistics regarding how much China recycles on an annual basis. And, for the most part, my answer is the same: check Google, or check the trade publications. For example, a simple google search will reveal that China generated and recycled around…
Recycle Rare Earths at Home, with a Screwdriver.
Let’s call this a lesson in avoiding absolutes. Below, two versions of a component in every hard disk drive. The circled components – the valuable, important components – are magnets of the (capital R, capital E) Rare Earth variety. That is to say, they are magnets manufactured, in part, by adding a dash of the…
The best scrap blogger in the world.
Tonight the staff of Shanghai Scrap is taking a break from writing over-heated posts about wikileaks to pause and appreciate what we now consider the greatest scrap recycling blog of all time: the Good Point Ideas Blog, authored by Robin Ingenthron – founder of the World Reuse Repair and Recycling Association, and owner of Good…
Where [some of] Hong Kong’s old computers go to die.
Below, a stack of old PCs, monitors, and printers that, at one time, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, new. Yesterday, at the time that I took this photo, they had just arrived in bulk at a Hong Kong warehouse where they were to be sorted and – for the most part – disassembled and…