
Dixie cups became the breakout startup of the 1918 pandemic - prostoalex
https://www.fastcompany.com/90520298/how-dixie-cups-became-the-breakout-startup-of-the-1918-pandemic
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Simulacra
It's interesting how we've come full circle on disposable, single-use
plastics, particularly with respect to the plastic ban reversals in the age of
COVID. I am curious to see if this will lead in years to come, greater single-
use items, or less.

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microcolonel
The other side of it is that single use plastics are reasonably well accounted
for in North America, so many parts of the bans are more emotional than
pragmatic.

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maxerickson
I get frustrated with the attention that gets paid to trifling amounts of
plastic consumption, relative to consumption of other petroleum products.

Gasoline weighs ~6 pounds a gallon. How many pounds of plastic does a
moderately conscientious person place into waste streams in a month? How many
miles do they drive?

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kijin
Gasoline doesn't get tossed in the ocean and break down into ever smaller
particles. It gets burned up in the atmosphere, creating a completely
different kind of problem but at least it doesn't leave visible trash for
people to rally around.

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maxerickson
Neither does plastic that I put in the trash. It goes into a well managed
landfill.

I can't be certain about what happens to plastic I recycle (but it's sorted
and marketed, so I think it ends up in products that use recycled plastics).

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beerandt
Or it gets shipped to Asia, where it's manually sorted outdoors, at in-situ,
un-regulated dumps by what is essentially slave labor. And then the unwanted
low value stuff (most of it) is left to end up wherever the weather may take
it.

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maxerickson
I don't understand why they would buy it from the recycling center, ship it to
Asia and then dump most of it in the environment.

When I say it is sorted and marketed, I mean they bale up plastic by type and
sell the bales. There's some possibility that the bales, which are 99% the
same material, are then shipped to China and sorted for value, but not really.

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beerandt
What you describe is the exception, and not the norm. It's also what usually
gets shown as an example in the media, but isn't entirely honest. Some
industry with uniform waste streams (zero net waste plants, etc) might do what
you describe, but it's not common for municipal programs, who might have 2-4
different bins for dozens of different plastics.

And keep in mind, for most materials, and especially plastic, the recycling
center _pays_ for someone to take the material. Metals used to be a big
exception, and could be used to offset the cost of recycling the other
materials, but even they have greatly decreased in extractable value recently.

And even bales like you describe might need to be re-sorted for cleanliness,
color, type of contaminate, or anything else. Most municipal programs are not
producing "ready-to-recycle" bundles of plastic, unless it's being used solely
as a filler.

With that in mind, dumping the stuff of lower value in Asia makes sense, where
people can pick out individual things of value, or things that might have
value after getting washed in the local river.

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maxerickson
My description is of a small municipal recycling center.

I've seen the baling done.

I know the person that markets their output. The recycling center gets paid
for the output. If they don't get paid for something, it goes in the landfill
they are located at.

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lifeisstillgood
I just saw the most obvious and brilliant invention - it's a dispensing bottle
of hand sanitizer on a stand - you press a pedal at the base and a gearing
presses down and dispenses a dollop. it solves so many issues !

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polishdude20
Why not just have it hand operated? If you're going to sanitize your hands
directly after pumping it, what's the big deal?

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KeepFlying
I've never understood this about public bathrooms. I don't need my soap
dispenser to be automatic since I only use it when I'm going to be washing my
hands already.

It's weird to see automatic soap dispensers but manual "hand pump" paper towel
dispensers.

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zaroth
The soap dispenser is automatic because in theory it reduces the amount of
soap used. Except for the ones built into the sink which try to shoot soap at
you while you’re rinsing, and it becomes a game to dodge it.

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mmhsieh
Problems notwithstanding, I depend on Zoom now. Maybe 100 years from now it
will be thought quaint that we flew around in metal tubes to meet people in
person.

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rkoten
With the prospect of brain interface development in the next 100 years, it's
possible we'll be able to have a meet-in-person perceptional experience while
being physically away, virtually wherever.

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owl57
Meet-in-person perceptional experience implies at least an order of magnitude
less latency than Zoom. And such low-latency communication will probably be
good enough with traditional video calls, novel brain interfaces will add less
value.

And yes, latency physically can't be good enough if users are on different
continents. So, interestingly enough, this future synchronous communication
tech can have some de-globalization impact.

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beamatronic
They may not be able to keep that name very much longer in the current context

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deelowe
Dixie cups aren't named after the south. They aren't even a southern company.
They are named after the Dixie doll company of New York.

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swimfar
OP never said they were named after the South. Just implied that having the
same name could still be a problem. Github master branches have nothing to do
with slavery but they still got rid of the term to avoid any possible
connections one may make.

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deelowe
Fair enough. I guess some consider things like this progress, but it seems
pretty silly to me. There are still plenty of females out there named Dixie. I
guess they should start submitting their requests for a name change just in
case, ya know, some ignorant person tries to accuse her family of racism...

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theonemind
In the current climate, that latter scenario doesn't seem that far-fetched.

