Selfsufficientish.com

Wrong tense, okra.

greenorelse wrote:Wrong tense, okra.

Point taken

Another interesting documentary is Crude - the incredible journey of oil . It is a television documentary by filmmaker Dr Richard Smith.

A short summary of the documentary can be found here:

http://www.turtugablanku.com/news.php#Crude

http://www.wolfatthedoor.org.uk/

Brilliant link

With oil fast approaching one hundred dollars a barrel the so called recovery will stall

What about this------

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWf9nYbm ... re=related

it sounds like this would nearly solve the problem, and reduce pollution, etc....

niknik wrote:What about this------

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWf9nYbm ... re=related

it sounds like this would nearly solve the problem, and reduce pollution, etc....

Hmm. So you make some diesel from the trash and your poo, drive to mall, buy some stuff, throw it in the trash, go for a poo, make some diesel from the....

So the more you buy, eat and throw away, the more you can drive to the mall to buy stuff! Whoa!

my 2p - It probably makes more sense to reclaim the oil energy in plastics (by burning it in your woodburner, commercial incineration or by some high-tech process that creates an oil-substitute) than to dump the stuff in landfill.

dave45 wrote:my 2p - It probably makes more sense to reclaim the oil energy in plastics (by burning it in your woodburner, commercial incineration or by some high-tech process that creates an oil-substitute) than to dump the stuff in landfill.

Would not burning plastics in a woodburner release toxic fumes!!!

dave45 wrote:my 2p - It probably makes more sense to reclaim the oil energy in plastics (by burning it in your woodburner, commercial incineration or by some high-tech process that creates an oil-substitute) than to dump the stuff in landfill.

It would, except that the burning of plastics has to be managed extremely carefully if contaminants such as dioxins are not to be released. Given the corner-cutting that is characteristic of modern commerce I'm not sure we could really trust 'em!

There is no plastic that cannot be recycled in some way. It's a question of will. At the very least, recycled plastics can make a fine insulation matarial.

Toxic fumes: burning wood produces toxic fumes ! The answer depends on the exact plastic - most are simple hydrocarbons - PET, HDPE, LDPE (polythene) etc, I wouldn't burn PVC though. If you google the plastic's safety sheet it tells you the details.

And you need to understand the difference between generic dioxins (simple organic chemicals) and Agent Orange Dioxin.

dave45 wrote: And you need to understand the difference between generic dioxins (simple organic chemicals) and Agent Orange Dioxin.

Ah, well, I'm pretty up on that: my degree is in chemistry.

PVC is a known bad actor, and excluding it from the combustion mix could be a trick. As for PET...well, certain phthalates are suspected carcinogens. And burning polystyrene badly can chuck out benzene and some jolly interesting polycyclics.

Rather then burning them, plastics could be pulverised and fed back into pyrolysis, but I'd be very unhappy living down wind of anyone burning plastic as fuel.

It's a blind alley and the two projects are greenwash.

We try very hard to avoid plastic. I think we do the absolute best we can - we have bags full of bags which do get re-used over and over again - and rarely accept them. If there's potential plastic waste involved in a purchase, it weighs against the purchase; we're less inclined to buy it.

There no intention of gaining an upper moral hand here as I'm sure lots of you try your best too - I'm simply stating what we personally do and putting it forward as an angle. Not having a bin collection means we have to think hard about stuff we buy that we can't use. We have to store 'waste' until it's worth a trip to the recycling centre, about twice or three times a year. Despite our best efforts, plastic remains the single biggest item by bulk.

What if, just what if, a miracle occurred and everyone in the world decided to do like we do and tried extremely hard to not buy plastic in the first place?

dave45 wrote:Ah, well, I'm pretty up on that: my degree is in chemistry.

excellent - do you know of a reference to the combustion products of wood vs those of the various plastics burned or pyrolysed at various temeratures?

btw I tried a simple pyrolysis experiment with a plastic milk carton - chopped plastic bits into a sealed can with holes in it - into the woodburner.. gave off combustible gases... absolutely no residue. Is that better than simple combustion?

need some facts and experimental evidence!