

One Man’s Trash ... (check out the slide show too) - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/garden/03recycle.html

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JacobAldridge
I feel the lack of scalability is what ultimately dooms these worthwhile
concepts - while the subject has a passion for it and the skill to make it a
reality, transferring that to other people is both difficult and costly.

My grandad could come and fix any maintenance issues around my house for free,
but it's hardly a solution to low cost housing.

 _Edit: Good on him for doing it though._

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likpok
Right. You can train a person to put 2x4's together to frame a house fairly
easily (it's not hard).

Teaching someone to collate nonstandard bits into a structurally sound
building would be much harder. The base problem therefore is that while yes
he's reusing goods, the houses are only cheap because he values his time so
little.

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gloob
_the houses are only cheap because he values his time so little._

An alternative way to put it is that the houses are only expensive if he
places negligible value on the enjoyment he gets from doing this. Your
criticism could be applied to most of my favourite activities, in any case. I
don't really see much of a market for a flagrantly-inefficient Scheme-
to-32-bit-x86-assembly compiler, but I'm bloody well doing it anyway, because
I just like it.

~~~
nopassrecover
You missed the point. It is not scalable because most people value their time
higher.

~~~
gloob
No; it's not scalable because most people wouldn't gain any enjoyment from it
and it takes a non-trivial amount of effort to train them to do it so you can
pay them. How much they "value their time" has little to do with it.

~~~
nopassrecover
Two sides of the same coin. I was just countering what I saw in your comment
which was that we can all get by doing the things we love simply for the love
of them.

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stuntgoat
"he was disturbed by the irony of landfills choked with building materials and
yet a lack of affordable housing."

Similarly, grocery stores and restaurants throw tons of food away.

~~~
lupin_sansei
I'll get voted down for this as it's taboo to ask, but what is this obsession
with keeping things out of landfills?

It's a myth that there's a shortage of space for landfills. According to the
guest on Penn and Teller you need something like 30 square miles to store 10
thousand years of trash for the US at the current rate - sounds like a lot but
work out how much space there is in the US.

And it's also a myth that toxic chemicals leech into groundwater. They don't
put landfills near groundwater sources, and they put many feet of clay down to
stop things leaking through.

~~~
jedc
I'm personally not obsessed with keeping things out of landfills, but it
definitely appeals to my sense of efficiency.

Sure, you can throw out everything you personally don't need, but isn't it
more efficient to recycle? Why waste anything, whether that's materials, time,
or effort?

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RiderOfGiraffes
Shift of viewpoint, what we currently think of "landfill" has the potential to
be the "mine" of the future. Valuable minerals and materials will be extracted
from rotted down landfill, "refurbished" or refined, then re-used as raw
materials. Effectively recycling, but having gone through an extra phase.

It will happen when current sources of raw materials are less economical than
raiding the landfill.

~~~
lupin_sansei
Exactly! It's storing up plastic (which you can get petroleum from) and metals
etc if/for when it's too valuable to leave sitting there.

If you're interested Mike Munger an Economist talks about these ideas here:
[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/07/munger_on_recyc.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/07/munger_on_recyc.html)

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jeremyw
This guy is chock full of invention. Bravo.

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olliesaunders
I wish there was a video about this. Stills don't do it justice.

