Aftermath of the Good Idea Fairy
Two glaring examples of how good intentions can be ruined or subverted by reality surfaced today:
In California, a failing beer can recycyling program is hindering beer can production. One manufacturer is limiting can orders to 5-truckload minimums, which is a pretty high barrier for smaller brewers. Where is a micro-brewery on a shoe-string budget with limited storage going to store that many till useage? For that matter, paying all at once for a year’s supply is crippling. In a nutshell, the problem is that are apparently fewer recycling centers that there were a few years back, some places required by law to accept recycling (by government mandate) aren’t taking donations, and cans culled from trash pickups aren’t clean enough.
Another reason: California’s creaking recycling system can’t collect enough cans, one consequence of a program that has been crippled by redemption center closures and out-of-date policies that have made it harder for people to recycle effectively. The chronic shortage highlights how an overlooked link in the supply chain — trash — can hamstring a beloved, and booming, industry.
About 73% of an aluminum can comes from recycled scrap. As demand for canned beverages boomed in recent years, the state’s patchwork of recycling centers and recovery facilities just couldn’t keep pace.
In the last five years, California’s recycling rate for aluminum cans has fallen 20%, from 91% in 2016 to 73% in 2021, according to data from the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, or CalRecycle.
The overall can recycling rate in the U.S. is 45%, meaning that more than half of the cans wind up in landfills.
In California, the situation has deteriorated precipitously. In 2016, according to the state’s data, slightly more than 766 million aluminum cans wound up in landfills or never got recycled. Last year, the number was 2.8 billion. That’s enough cans to fill about 31,000 backyard swimming pools.
Experts said the beer business could come to a standstill without a steady supply of cans, and smaller businesses are the most vulnerable.
In 2015, there were 2,245 buyback centers, or places where consumers could go to claim their nickel deposit on a bottle or can in the California Refund Value program. Those centers make their money by selling aluminum — as well as paper, glass and some plastic — on the scrap market. The price of scrap metals caved that year, falling 30.8%, and the centers began to close en masse.
When there are no redemption centers nearby, California’s “Bottle Bill,” AB 2020, requires that grocery stores and supermarkets step in and offer customers a nickel for every can they turn in. But few retailers are willing to accept them, and enforcement is lax.
Meanwhile, in Texas, the regional power authority which did such a good job during the Big Freeze, was drawing praise from the eco-hippy types for their ever-increasing availability of wind power. Nowadays, however, during peak high-temperature demand they are finding that one of the drawbacks of having a high-pressure zone parked over the state for weeks is that the wind also parks itself. No wind, no power.
(Bloomberg) — Wind power — a key source of electricity in Texas — is being sidelined just when the Lone Star State needs it most, with turbines generating less than a 10th of what they’re capable of.
A scorching heat wave is pushing the Texas grid to the brink. Power demand is surging as people crank up air conditioners. But meanwhile, wind speeds have fallen to extremely low levels, and that means the state’s fleet of turbines is at just 8% of their potential output.
Depressed wind power during heat waves isn’t a new phenomenon. Powerful high-pressure systems that cause intense heat often squelch wind production — just when more power is needed to meet higher electricity demand. The mass of air overhead stifles wind near the surface, until the mass moves elsewhere.
Sounds like a Texas-sized “oopsie” to me. We won’t go into how generator blades aren’t recyclable, how generators which run hot and burn are too big to dismantle so they just stay there, bird strikes, or any of the other pitfalls of mass wind power.
Bottom line, if you implement a 20 year program with plenty of pitfalls, just fund for five years of no problems, and turn a blind eye to any potential issues: you’re gonna get burned.
Category: None
The Good Idea Fairy has Joe Biden and his handlers under its spell.
More like bent over the desk.
No, as always it’ll be the tax payers that pay for this Colossal Green Fuck-up. We get the weenus!
I wish those assholes would leave enginerding to the smart guys that’ve actually used a graphing calculator meaningfully not just as a repository for gum as they blew their way to a passing grade from the math professor.
Well, they are “woke,” it might as well be a transgendered fairy.
Those accursed wind-farms in the panhandle and North plains of Texas are horrible.
And I see more turbine blades headed N on I-45 from the Port of Houston all. the. stinkin’. time.
Future landfill material for a failing idea.
The landowners get big $$$ for the use of their land, so I understand why they do that, but it seems that farming cotton is a much surer source of income – and that is a gamble every year.
Hydroelectric is a great emissions-free source of power, but the hippies hate dams!
I drink beer exclusively from aluminum (aluminium for any of our former retarded rulers that grace this blessed site.)
When I was a wee lad student in Chapel Hill, I decided the hump to the dumpster with a 13 gallon Glad bag was easier to accomplish with cans than bottles.
I do not recycle anything as a matter of principle. The principle being I am too lazy (and drunk) to separate.
I realize some may say there are only two containers – one trash and one recycling. They are wrong. I see four of them by that time – two of each.
Bottles are a gentle reminder of the work you must put in to be a proper drunk. Cans are for the lazy. Plus, a bottle can be a pretty effective weapon in a pinch!😂
Oh gosh, here we go again with all the regular lies.
Windmill blades are recycled and produce a tiny fraction of the waste of other forms of energy:
https://news.stlpublicradio.org/health-science-environment/2022-05-27/how-to-recycle-a-150-foot-wind-turbine-blade-haul-it-to-louisiana-mo
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ge-announces-first-us-wind-turbine-blade-recycling-program-with-veolia/591869/
House cats kill a 100,000X more birds every year than windmills:
https://www.businessinsider.com/cats-kill-more-birds-than-wind-turbines-despite-trumps-claims-2020-10#:~:text=When%20it%20comes%20to%20bird,US%20Fish%20and%20Wildlife%20Service.
Dead windmills are dismantled and replaced with next generation windmills:
https://electrek.co/2021/04/02/egeb-a-24-year-old-dutch-wind-farm-is-being-decommissioned-heres-whats-next/
https://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/wind-farm-dismantling-method-prompts-debate-among-north-dakota-regulators/article
Just a quick google gets this:
“Just south of town, on the west side of Highway 70, hundreds of fiberglass wind turbine blade chunks are piled into a 10-acre pasture. They have been cut into three pieces, laid down and piled up like empty straw wrappers discarded by giants. This is one of Texas’ first wind turbine graveyards. Fittingly, a second one has emerged across the street from Sweetwater’s town cemetery, this one more than 25 acres in size. As wind turbine blades increasingly reach the end of their useful lives, normally 25 to 30 years, more of these sites are expected to pop up across the state and nation. So far, no one has figured out a good way to get rid of the blades. And in the next decade, many of the 180,000 blades currently churning in U.S. airspace—more than one-quarter of which are in Texas alone—will come down.”
Use up a buttload of resources to create and recycle, but don’t return much value even as scrap.
TRY COMPARING THE DATES ON THE ARTICLES OF THE ONE YOU POSTED TO THE ONE I POSTED.
BS propaganda. The only thing green about this climate nonsense is the money they are stealing.
OK, so from your first link, it starts with the title, they’re hauling chunks of blade to Louisiana on semi-trucks. You know those burn diesel right?
And the one place in the US that recycles the blades does what with them? Grinds them up and sends them to cement factories. You know, the same cement that according to the BBC contributes 8% of global CO2 emissions every year.
Not mentioned in the article is what percentage of the turbine blades retired every year actually make it to the one place in the US that recycles them by basically converting them into CO2. How many of them are not converted into global warming and are still beautifying our landscape is not discussed.
And that’s just your first link. Lets just say you’re not off to a good start.
I had no idea your interest in how to recycle wind mill farm blades was so keen. Here is a more expansive article about companies that recycle blades.
https://blog.ucsusa.org/james-gignac/wind-turbine-blades-recycling/
The long term fix is to use blades that can easily be recycled.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/17/huge-offshore-wind-farm-to-use-recyclable-turbine-blades.html
So far as your ideas on how the cement factory recycling works, they are wrong like most other things you post.
https://www.up-to-us.veolia.com/en/recycling/recycling-used-wind-turbine-blades
They are also used to make flooring as well.
Third link (I didn’t bother with the second, it was basically the same story as the first, just from a different outlet).
The estimates of birds killed by wind turbines is very much in dispute, but even if both estimates of bird deaths by wind turbine and by cat are accurate, that point is completely irrelevant (unless your only goal was to point out that President Trump’s admittedly hyperbolic statement was…well…hyperbolic; if so then congratulations).
Cats aren’t going anywhere (unless your proposal is to outlaw them and hunt them to extinction…which I wouldn’t especially mind, I’m not a fan) so how many birds they kill each year has no bearing on the fact that wind turbines add to the toll on top of other causes of bird death. Adding more and more wind turbines will result in killing more and more birds.
Plus cats don’t often kill less populous birds like eagles, falcons, owls and hawks. Wind turbines do so easily and often.
Don’t give left/libtards any crazy ideas; they’ll be killing cats faster than babies.
Next thing you know they will be saying wind farms cause cancer. Sounds like something Biden would say….
The point about cats is that wind farms ate an insignificant source of bird deaths. If you are trying to say that by having more wind farms we have less Eagles or raptors we’ll that is a load of shit. Eagle populations are at their highest point in 50 years and growing as well as most other raptors. So are wind farms.
So, in your parlance, fail. Thanks for playing.
Fourth Link: An anecdote about a wind farm in the Netherlands that’s being replaced by newer models.
“The plural of anecdote is not data”
Execute an internet search for “abandoned wind farm” for lots and lots of anecdotes to counter the one you provided.
By the way, the fifth link goes to a 404 error. Fake news that had to be taken down? Who knows.
Your arguments fail on every count.
But, hey, thanks for playing.
Yeah, um no.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/oct/25/chain-email/no-there-arent-14000-abandoned-wind-turbines-litte/
All the usual lies about wind power. You guys are remarkably hard headed and consistent even when shown the truth over and over again. When my other post clears (being reviewed due to all the links) you can read it all over again if you wish.
Can’t say much about cans except that recycling is generally way cheaper than digging up Bauxite ore and processing. If you are looking towards California towards well run government of any kind, well good luck with that.
My town stopped recycling almost 3 years ago. Why? Not cost effective.
That makes sense. Bauxite is energy intensive to mine nd refine. Energy was record cheap 3 years ago before you know who wrecked the economy.
They stopped recycling everything. Paper, plastic, cans, all of it.
Read the original article. For whatever reason cited, the bottom line is that recycling isn’t happening at the rate needed to sustain recycled production.
Re the wing turbines: one or two plants, and thousands of miles of transport, says blade recycling is not happening on a significant scale. And a turbine recycling plant in the Netherlands where they have had a mature wind industry for years is as relevant as saying “in Europe you can go everywhere by train, why not here” ignoring the US train system and US distances.
The point of the articles is that people only start solving a problem when all aspects of long term solutions are addressed. Otherwise you are doing the equivalent of buying a brand new car with no dealer network, trained mechanic, or replacement parts capability. It will work fine…for a while.
In the grand scheme of things there simply aren’t that many blades to recycle. A couple of plants is all you need.
And horrors of horrors, there is a beer bottle shortage in Germany. Seems like a lot of the raw materials for beer bottles come from the eastern front.
On the first story just grin and beer it and on the second story, I’m running out of wind typing this out.
I was a fan of the reusable glass German “flippy” beer bottles.
The answer is so damn obvious, how come nobody has thought of just attaching an electrical motor to move the windmill blades, thereby generating the necessary electricity?
Sad.
Rest In Peace.
“Donald Trump’s ex-wife Ivana Trump dead at 73, former president announces
Former President Trump announced her death on Truth Social”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/donald-trumps-ex-wife-ivana-trump-dead-former-president-announces
The Progs are celebrating, cuz anyone ever connected to Trump needs to die.
Sooo, looks like we might have to start buying cold beer by the keg now? Works for me.
Put a treadmill with a pully mechanism at the base of all the turbines. Then assign the greenies a shift of jogging on the treamill when the wind isn’t blowing. Let them build their houses out of the worn out blades.
Everyone here needs to take a deep breath and just settle down. Ol” Poe has it on good authority (well, actually, LC’s even more liberal counterpart in Berkley) that the global warming cultists have developed a very effective plan to keep these discarded blades from becoming a blight on America’s landscape.
According to Poe’s somewhat secret source, the Biden administration intends to erect walls around all these phased out fan blades…walls sufficiently high to block these ugly blades entirely from view.
The walls are to be constructed from worn out and also non-recyclable solar panels and depleted electric vehicle batteries.
See? Easy-peasy…problem solved… 😜 🙄 😜
Yes, that will be a wonderful aesthetic solution. Maybe they could add a little landscaping. But then the plants will need water, which means each site will need a water well with an electric pump to feed water to the sprinkler system to water the plants.
As that great old country song goes, “And the road goes on forever…”
Yep, Newsom shut down the recycle sites here, but still charges the recycle tax on every purchase!
I have 9 leaf bags of cans in the shed. Can’t recycle, and the landfill won’t take them (not degradable).
You couldn’t find a discarded can or plastic bottle in the county, thanks to the homeless grabbing them up for drink and drug money. Now, the terrible litter is back as thick as ever.