Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by discardable_dan | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

discardable_dan

Junk mail has a massive ecological footprint.

View on HN

Compared to crypto?

Back of the envelope, they're roughly the same, CO2-wise.

I doubt that

US junk mail volume is something in the 6 million ton range, and paper production releases 3-10 pounds of CO2 / pound of paper, depending on whether it is virgin or recycled.

(Regoogling that second figure returns some ranges as low as 1-2 lb/lb, which would put junk mail at like 0.2-0.4 crypto.)

Your co2 from crypto number seems low. Is that perhaps just bitcoin?

Possibly but the error bars on all of the numbers I'm using are also large, and the age of the numbers matters as well. I find numbers for Bitcoin -- in the same window -- of 30-90 megatons of CO2, for Ethereum of 15-50 megatons, and the figures for junk mail range from 6 to 60 megatons.

The error bars all overlap, so the closest I can do with the level of work I'm willing to put in is that junk mail might be a little bit more CO2 than cryptocurrency (or twice as much as Bitcoin), or like 5% of cryptocurrency at the other extreme.

Brave has that too lol.

https://brave.com/brave-rewards/

Junk mail is sequestered carbon that's been removed from the atmosphere.

Only if it's using recycled paper or wood from sustainably managed forest. Otherwise you're only moving the carbon around and not increasing the 'sequestered' carbon.

That's a given. Nobody's making paper by clearing old growth forests. 98% of virgin paper fiber is from fast growing softwoods in managed forests. The paper industry plants 1.7 million trees per day in the US. Increasing consumption of paper and lumber products from managed forests was one of IPCC's recommendations to the UN on climate change.

Where I live there is a community mailbox for the 60 units in the complex. At the mailbox is a recycling bin where we can put the junk mail. My neighbour takes care of the recycling bin and empties it every week. Based on the volume I get and the volume in the bin, I estimate that about half of the units dump the junk mail straight into the bin. I'm sure the rest eventually makes its way into recycling bags at each unit.

Personally, I'm convinced that the recycling system as a whole requires a certain base amount of input material to even function and that junk mail serves a useful purpose by providing a good portion of that base amount of input material.

I thought everyone knew by now that paper recycling is a scam? It doesn’t happen. Not cost effective.

I thought that's plastic?

There's a local company that, at least back when this article[0] was written, made insulation out of recycled paper. So some people are at least trying to do something recycle paper. Of course, in this case the collection system is so flawed that it's worthless as an input material.

This is a four year old article and Edmonton hasn't changed the recycling system at all. It's still blue bags that get tossed into a truck, compacted, and presumably nothing useful happens.

On the garbage side, we now have bins that can be emptied by an arm on a truck and we separate garbage from organics. The organic material apparently gets composted, but I'm not sure what happens after that.

[0] https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/its-not-worth-it...

As someone who works in the recycling industry (toilet paper & wet wipes). That's just not true for paper. It it plastic that is hardly recycled...

Wood pulp and recycled pulp are both in incredibly high demand at the moment and both incredibly cheap to use.

I can't speak for global stats, but here in England, as of 2018, we were importing over $600 million of just recycled paper to use from abroad! [ https://www.statista.com/statistics/490038/eu27-import-value... ]

I thought paper had to be clean to be recycled, causing a lot of it to be discarded (like used pizza boxes). TIL, thank you.

64.7% of the paper you put in the recycling bin is indeed recycled.

Used pizza boxes?

Yes, those too. According to the American Forest & Paper Association, pizza boxes are almost universally accepted by cardboard recyclers. The small amount of cheese and grease in the cardboard bails they buy from recycling programs do not impact the quality of the paper and cardboard manufactured at mills that use recycled inputs.

> AF&PA and Industry Partners Aim to Set the Record Straight – Pizza Boxes Are Recyclable, Grease and Cheese Not an Issue

https://www.afandpa.org/news/2020/afpa-and-industry-partners...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com