Digital Image Studio wrote: > On 29/12/06, Tim Øsleby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Aren't we going OT now? >> >> I have an urge to say that I don't feel that my smoking habits are the real >> issue. To me, this seems like a smokescreen (pun intended) cowering the real >> debate.
> If you stand outside to smoke you're likely doing yourself more harm > than anyone else, it's likely that the production of the products is > having a larger effect on the environment. > > The equations of environmental effect are most often far more complex > than we acknowledge. One instance that I often ponder is in the > recycling of certain plastics used as food containers. The containers > have to be cleaned of remaining foods before than can be recycled > however for some more difficult to remove food types I wonder whether > the expenditure of water and energy to heat the water ends up > outstripping the value of the recycled materials? > > There is a interesting article which outlines "Using Oranges for > Styrofoam Recycling" that also considers the energy cycle at: > > http://www.sony.net/Products/SC-HP/cx_news/vol09/pdf/cxeye.pdf This is a beautiful study of the recycling process, wherein both the solvent AND the solute can be recovered, nearly completely... Amazing! I didn't read the article for it's energy efficiency or how benign it is with respect to the atmosphere, just at how "clean" it all seems! They take a material that's been manufactured (styrofoam) along the way gets dirty with use, and eventually is discarded. These folks have discovered a way to dissolve this waste material and mechanically, and with some added heat, filter the resultant 'mess' to get rid of the dross, and eventually recover the solvent, as well as the material being dissolved, *both* unharmed and effectively recycled for re-use! What's more amazing, it seems that this particular recycling does not degrade either material! I wonder if many other processes like this are similarly efficient? Seems to me that in most circumstances, you lose the either the solute or the solvent. One or both become degraded and/or unusable, to whatever degree. This process, as described above, has it's own beauty... I'm impressed! Thanks for pointing it out, Rob. keith whaley -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
