Nostr Web Client

Having worked with recycling industry clients, I have a little bit of insight into the practical problems faced.

Aluminium is a dream to recycle, just requires a flux and heat. Scales down to room-sized plants.

Glass is the same, albeit with more heat and larger plant, and you need to keep lead glass out of the input stream.

Plastics, mixed, are a nightmare. If some a--hole adds a bit of PVC to you waste stream, you will get Dioxin in the resulting product, be it liquid fuel or recycled flake/powder/filament. And even if they don't, separating the different polymers is impractical, and failing to do so means your product is only fit for burning.

TL;DR replace plastic with aluminium where possible.

Failing that, use a single plastic polymer and do not allow others to get in.

Failing that, Fischer-Tropsch it for liquid fuel, and burn it only far away from any living thing you care about.

Luke 2y ago

I've always liked the idea of a single plastic polymer on a seastead, or at most two that are very easy to identify from each other. (One could be very soft like rubber & the other hard ABS, for example.)

I don't see a reason to have Glass recycling since we can't print it and hard plastic would do the same job.

But I didn't know that about Aluminum! Good to hear. So that would make a seasteader's ideal recycling bin something like AHSP: Aluminum, Hard plastic, Soft plastic, Paper. Then of course all organic waste gets mulched.

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Discussion

Low Information Voter 2y ago

I like this plan!

Especially the no-more-than-two plastic formulations part.

Glass can do some things plastics cannot - it can be sterilised by autoclaving without being softened/melted, and for work purposes it can contain organic solvents and mineral acids that will eat any plastic except maybe PTFE. But I agree with you, I would prefer to minimise glass and focus on re-using rather than recycling it.

With your organic waste stream, especially the solids, you could also consider sterilising that and using it to grow a cellulose-eating fungi such as Pleurotus (Oyster mushroom).