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EV experience so far

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GlueGuy View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote GlueGuy Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: EV experience so far
    Posted: 09 Feb 2023 at 12:43pm
This is one place where a little regulation might be a good thing. The triangular "recycle" icon they put on plastic products should only be approved if the plastic is, indeed, recyclable. We were putting all of the different types in our recycle bin until we learned that only 1, 2 & 5 were recyclable.
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Post Options Post Options   Quote offgrid Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Feb 2023 at 1:53pm
And only a few recyclers take 5 so I wouldn't count on that being recycled either.

I agree that there should be regulatory controls, but the burden should be on the manufacturers not the public. If they're producing a product they need to be responsible for it cradle to cradle.

One intriguing thing is to look at rates of recycling by state. Maine has the highest rate at around 72 percent based on whatever criteria the study I looked at used. VW wins the booby prize at 2% based on the same criteria. So there's something like a 36x difference between the two. That's crazy. No one recycles in WV basically. Most states are somewhere in the 20's it 30s.

Which makes you wonder how VW can be so dang bad at recycling. Can't be just because it's very rural since Maine is really rural too.

I would guess that it's because there aren't community programs making it convenient and expected to recycle. Most people I think will do it if its easy and your neighbors do it too.

Here in SWVA which probably has a similar recycling rate to WV, if you show up with your own grocery bags thats weird. Half the time I go to the transfer station the recycling bins are full and everything is going in the dumpster except cardboard. There's no awareness of the benefits of recycling to the community or the environment.

When we lived in CA not only was it easy and expected to recycle but you really didn't have much of an alternative. The gray waste can they emptied weekly would only fit one 13 gallon garbage bag, maybe two if they're not too full. Nowhere to put any more unless you went to the transfer station and paid a fee (or found a dumpster when no one was looking). Meantime you got a full size blue recycling can plus a full size green waste can. And now a little brown food waste can. You paid for paper bags at the grocery store and ppl thought it was weird that you didn't bring you own. No plastic grocery bags.

So there doesn't really have to be any kind of law that says you have to recycle, you just need to make it easier than not doing it, and get the message out that it's something your showing pride in you community by doing it.


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David and Danette View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote David and Danette Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Feb 2023 at 4:24pm
  I think the manufacturers should be responsible for recycling their produts and their packaging everthing should be delivered back to the macfacurer and their responsibility to recycle it. Hopefully that will change things or even have it sent back to the country where the product was made. I heard something I think perhaps politicians saying that countries like china should be charged to have their products disposed of properly. Who ever produces the waste should be responsible not the cities or counties having to pay land fill fees. We live in a small county and they pay alot to have the counties trash dumped at a land fill.
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Post Options Post Options   Quote offgrid Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Feb 2023 at 5:37am
What you're suggesting is what is done in the EU with E-waste with one exception. The waste is not just sent back overseas to where it came from, because the EU has no jurisdiction there. The importer/distributor that brought it in that the EU countries can go after has to deal with it. There is a long history of developed countries dumping their waste in undeveloped countries with no regulations. Or worse, it never gets there but gets dumped in the ocean instead. There are giant Sargasso Seas of plastic in both the Atlantic and Pacific now and that stuff didn't get there by accident....BTW, the EU has recently implemented plastic waste regs too, including a single use plastic ban.

There is a very good reason that this hasn't happened here. 99% of plastic feedstock is, you guessed it, petroleum and natural gas. As the world transitions off fossil fuel, plastic is plan B for Big Oil. Some project 50% of all petroleum produced will go into plastics by mid century. That is a whole lot of plastic. The growth is mostly expected to come from the emerging economies in the developing world, which often have no effective waste disposal programs at all, so the crap just piles up in vacant lots and blows around the neighborhoods. Anyone who has traveled much in the developing world has seen it.

Do you think Big Oil likes the idea of recycling plastic? Of course not, they'd rather see our oceans and landfills and vacant lots fill up with single use plastic and our communities bankrupt themselves managing the waste.  More profitable.  Big Oil doesn't care,  they're corporations, not humans,  they have no emotions or empathy. And those corporations own the politicians to get what they want, and the PR firms to make up nonsense reasons why its all going to be OK, don't worry. 

The manufacture and transport  of this stuff isnt safe either, 5000 ppl in Ohio just had to evacuate for days due toxic exposure risk to vinyl chloride, a known liver and blood carcinogen,  from a train derailment. Its the primary feedstock for PVC plastic, which is number 3, so not getting recycled currently, although it could be. 

The Ohio governor wants the railroad to pay for the cleanup, which is fine, but shouldn't the producer of the vinyl chloride also take responsibility? No one talks about who made the stuff BTW. There is one big plant in Calvert City, Kentucky,where the manufacturer just got a million dollar fine last year for improper waste stream disposal. Drop in the bucket. Most VC in the US comes from Cancer Alley in LA. Whats the thread linking Calvert City, Cancer Alley, and the developing world disposal sites? Hmmm.. Could it be lots of poor people maybe?

Which brings me full circle back to my EV experience. I now smile every time I plug in my Bolt, because that's less pennies going into the pockets of Big Oil so they can spend it corrupting a politician. Yes, I'm still on Appalachian Power's relatively high fossil fuel mix right now, but even they are at 30% renewable and nuke generation. And soon I'll be 100% solar...Then Ill be hurting Big Oil's bottom line just a little bit  whenever I get behind the wheel. Helping to break the back of the fossil fuel oligarchy, now that is a true "feel good" experience. Thumbs Up




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Post Options Post Options   Quote offgrid Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Feb 2023 at 6:53am
Originally posted by David and Danette

   I beleve all Walmart stores has the soft plastic recycling bins as you enter their stores. We collect all our soft plastic ( plastic bags, bubble wrap, and plastic wrapping ) and drop it off in the Walmart plastic recycle bins. I don't know how much gets recycled but my thinking is the plastic will hopefully be kept in one location and if it can't be recycled now hopefully it will be in the future. There are companies working on ways to recycle plastic I watched a program on TV that a bacteria was being researched that would eat the plastic. Hopefully someone will find someway to process the plastic to make use of it or destroy it because I don't think there will be a substitute for plastic anytime soon.

While its certainly possible to recycle HDPE (its number 2, which is most of whats in most plastic grocery bags), in practice few bags get recycled, because they're hard to clean and manage. Its very hard to find out how much actually does, that information is not tracked.  Most recycled HDPE goes to Trex and the other polymer composite lumber manufacturers.  It for sure doesn't get stored for alter use either, no one has room for it all. So it mostly goes to the landfill if were lucky and the ocean if we're not.  

The bacterial decompostion stuff is just marketing fluff, no one is actually doing that, And yes, there are replacement products for the vast majority of our plastic uses. We grew up with paper cartons, cloth bags, etc, they're nothing new. So bring your own bags when you get your groceries, choose paper cartons over plastic bottles, no plastic waste to worry about then. 
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Post Options Post Options   Quote GlueGuy Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Feb 2023 at 10:05am
Originally posted by offgrid

I agree that there should be regulatory controls, but the burden should be on the manufacturers not the public. If they're producing a product they need to be responsible for it cradle to cradle. 
 
Not to pick nits (but I am), I think you meant cradle to grave?

Separately, I think that the number of times "leaving it up to the manufacturers" has succeeded has been a distinct minority.
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Post Options Post Options   Quote hogone Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10 Feb 2023 at 2:36pm
i think i got all caught up in this raquet of recycling which obviously is a large percentage a scam......and as far as padding the pockets of others, i am by no means ready to be padding the pockets of the battery makers for ev's.  jon
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Post Options Post Options   Quote offgrid Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11 Feb 2023 at 4:34am
Originally posted by GlueGuy

Originally posted by offgrid

I agree that there should be regulatory controls, but the burden should be on the manufacturers not the public. If they're producing a product they need to be responsible for it cradle to cradle. 
 
Not to pick nits (but I am), I think you meant cradle to grave?

Separately, I think that the number of times "leaving it up to the manufacturers" has succeeded has been a distinct minority.

I did mean "cradle to cradle",  "Grave" implies that the material ends up in the landfill rather than getting reused. So you're only looking at the first half of the process.  If its getting recycled it becomes feedstock for a new product (the cradle).  So "cradle to cradle" captures the whole process. 

And for sure, there should be no "leaving it up to the manufacturers", they won't do anything unless required to. As others have said, this is a place where regulations are needed. 
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Post Options Post Options   Quote offgrid Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11 Feb 2023 at 5:07am
Originally posted by hogone

i think i got all caught up in this raquet of recycling which obviously is a large percentage a scam......and as far as padding the pockets of others, i am by no means ready to be padding the pockets of the battery makers for ev's.  jon

Of course, when it comes time for you to buy your next vehicle you're free to get anything you want.

But before you decide that shouldn't be electric, consider that practically all the vehicle manufacturers are on board with the conversion to evs. They wouldn't do that if they didn't see a profit in it. These are huge companies with lots of clout to drive and keep their battery and other costs down. You and I have no equivalent leverage over fuel prices. We go to the pump and pay what its set at, or we don't drive. So I don't think we need to worry much about what Ford, Tesla, GM, VW, Toyota etc are paying for their batteries. They will be sure to get the good deals.  In many cases because the are partnered with the battery manufacturers. 

My Bolt, batteries and all, already cost me about the same as an equivalent ICE vehicle (thanks GM for not gouging your customers like Tesla has been up till now). And we're only at the beginning. Li battery cost has dropped like a stone over the past few years and continues to go down. The rest of an EV drivetrain is simpler and cheaper than a gasser's. So overall EVs will soon be cheaper to buy and offer better performance and reliability than ICE vehicles. Tesla just had to drop their prices dramatically, they are no longer the only game in town.

Then there are the much lower energy costs. I'm paying about 4 cents a mile in my Bolt, half what my (very efficient) Prius cost me.  So, buy an ev because its cheaper,more fun to drive,  and you get a better ownership experience, let the car manufacturer worry about battery sourcing. 

Or by all means don't buy one and stick with a gasser because it meets your needs better (like towing range) for now. No one is forcing you to go electric. 
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Post Options Post Options   Quote David and Danette Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11 Feb 2023 at 7:06am
  Didn't Consumer Reports just say that over all EV's are not as reliable ICEV's? I remember while having a vehicle serviced at the dealership the service advisor told me the majority of vehicles in for service are electronic related. So I don't know which has more electronics the EV's or ICEV's so I think of relability when I am buying a vehicle perhaps in time the electronic part will be more reliable but right now it seems the more electronics the least reliable. If I am wrong hope I am corrected because the main reason that would keep me from buying EV is their reliability.
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