Re: GIMP 3.0.0-RC1

On 07/01/2025 02:47, rbowman wrote:

There are a few recycling projects that do make money and they don't
require government intervention.  My information is from the '90s but
there were two lead acid battery operations in the LA area and it was
worth hauling junk batteries from Denver or further.

I visited a lead recycling plant in France. It was part of a lead smelting operation. It was dripping sulphuric acid. They took car batteries and mashed them up and somehow fed them back into the ore processing chain.

The Kaiser aluminum
smelter in Spokane also pulled in crushed aluminum cans from all over the
west. The local pulp mill had cardboard hauled in but they shut down.
There must still be a market since the company that handles the garbage
has a separate dumpster for cardboard.
 The oddest one was in Rancho Cucamonga. I hauled past the sell date beer
from Denver. They distilled it for industrial alcohol.
 

Great idea!

Plastic recycling is problematic as is glass. I've got a suspicion after
the people have their feel good moment separating the trash it still winds
up in the same landfill.

The best way is to burn it for power and heat generation. If the temperature is high enough all the nasties like dioxins break down and flue scrubbers take out anything that isn't CO2 or water...
Or you can depolymerise it for making 'fossil fuel'.
In fact feeding plastics into a nuclear reactor would result in plenty of combustible gases being produced.
It can all be done. The problem is cost. E.g. take grinding glass into sand. Its way more expensive than digging up sand that nature has already ground...In reality we ought to simply tip glass into the sea, and let that turn it into pebbles and sand over a century or so...but that's too simple even for Greens.
If we had shitloads of surplus heat and electricity from nuclear reactors that was almost free, many of these expensive processes would become cheap.
--
Climate Change: Socialism wearing a lab coat.