I wonder how many are Zinc Carbon that consumers erroneously buy not realising they are 40-50% the capacity of an alkaline
Yes Zinc Carbon is better to end up in landfill hazardous materials wise, but the amount of carbon dioxide expended in their production must be enormous globally
Shout out to Ikea selling rebadged Eneloops for ~2-3x cheaper than Panasonic
The trick is to examine the packaging and see where they were manufactured, if they were made in Japan then you know they are from the Eneloop factory because that's the only AA/AAA manufacturer in Japan, and if they're made anywhere else then they are from some other mystery supplier. I think IKEA dual sources LADDA from Japan and China now so you have to check.
Society should evaluate which devices actually need to run on batteries. It makes me feel odd if i have to replace the batteries in a wall clock that is like half a meter next to a power socket. Wall clocks never get moved around...
We do have various regulations. More of those come each year. Have nothing to do with communism. Alternatively - "capitalize profits and socialize losses" is just as bad I think and looks very "communistic".
The gradual increase in regulation and the corresponding size of the government has everything to do with communism. How do you think we have reached 40% in marginal income tax rates?
You're using a different benchmark: standard of living. I'm not sure it's a good one, given it isn't necessarily that linked to taxes, but either way, you're not arguing that the government taxing more doesn't look a lot like the communist countries of the 20th century (which is what I assume what the OP meant by "communist").
Pretty much. Communism is one end of a spectrum where the governments controls the entire economic activity. When the government manages 40% of my earnings, we are 40% there (to first order approximation, of course there are other factors).
Rich do not pay 40%. Not anywhere close. Workers do. We have a system that penalizes workers explicitly and let exploiters get away. It is crony capitalism and has nothing to do with the communism which as was defined had never materialized anywhere.
But since you’re not rich and you pay the peasant tax rate of 40%, you’re 25% closer to communism than rich people who pay about 15%, to a first approximation. Checkmate, liberal.
There’s no possible way you can be asking this question in good faith, but here you go anyway:
> Happy Thanksgiving to ALL, including the Racist & Incompetent Attorney General of New York State, Letitia “Peekaboo” James, who has let Murder & Violent Crime FLOURISH, & Businesses FLEE; the Radical Left Trump Hating Judge, a “Psycho,” Arthur Engoron, who Criminally Defrauded the State of New York, & ME, by purposely Valuing my Assets at a “tiny” Fraction of what they are really worth in order to convict me of Fraud before even a Trial, or seeing any PROOF, & used his Politically Biased & Corrupt Campaign Finance Violator, Chief Clerk Alison Greenfield, to sit by his side on the “Bench” & tell him what to do; & Crooked Joe Biden, who has WEAPONIZED his Department of Injustice against his Political Opponent, & allowed our Country to go to HELL; & all of the other Radical Left Lunatics, Communists, Fascists, Marxists, Democrats, & RINOS, who are seriously looking to DESTROY OUR COUNTRY. Have no fear, however, we will WIN the Presidential Election of 2024, & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!
40% is also the typical government spending as the share of GDP (more in the EU, slightly less in the US). Being concerned with what taxes the rich pay or don't pay directly is just populist and not very interesting. The assets they own generate the taxes. I am more concerned with social mobility, which is decent the US, worse in Europe. As long as a decent chunk of billionaires are first generation, it's not a bad state of affairs.
You don't pay more. And when people own businesses, those businesses also pay taxes. And their employees all pay taxes. And when you buy something, you pay taxes. If you get a dividend, you pay taxes. It's all taxes, all the way down. You don't pay more taxes.
I was talking about personal income tax as a percentage of my income. Spending is discretionary and does not matter. Otherwise I have a proposal for you - let's get rid of income tax and replace it with sales tax.
Also I do own business so no need to explain me all it's virtues.
Probably centuries of socialism (or "lower stage of socialism") as per the Marx and marxist thought. The conflicts of interests in production have to have vanished (in marxist terms the so called class struggle has ended). Many communists doubt whether this is even possible, but find it a good goal nevertheless.
In communism there's no state, and hence no government. Communist parties don't claim that countries they run are communist (it would be an oxymoron), or even socialist yet (China kind of hints at that though).
"In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"
40% is the marginal rate. Only a very small proportion of people will be paying that, and vanishingly few will be paying that on a substantial proportion of their earnings. The average rate of taxes paid will be much more reasonable.
Well if you want deregulation I'll start with all that land and patents owned by big corporations. Why the fuck should I pay money for some invention if I can come up with the one myself? Why some fuckers restricted my freedom of movement?
You can't hand-wave it as "pricing in externalities". What disposal method should be priced in?
In theory, disposal could add $0.05 to the price of a battery, by making drive to the official Battery Fire, tossing it in, and driving back, all the way to making it cost $50000 whereby someone will drive to your house to get the battery, and then over the course of the next 6 months lovingly disassemble it to remove each component and chemical without producing any waste, or anything in between.
Very bad example. Wall clock battery can last a decade. Any isolated power supply will waste much more energy. Also the clock will stop when the power is out.
That may be a bad example, but your analysis seems valuable. Can you think of some easy cases where batteries make sense vs. where they should be avoided?
I've seen battery powered shavers that refuse to work while being charged, so instead of having a failure mode that allow it to be used while wired, you have to throw away the whole thing, these should be illegal
> That at least sounds like it's plausibly for safety reasons, don't go splashing water around the thing plugged into a live socket.
Do many people even use electric shavers wet? That just seems like a bad idea to me - you want the hairs to be as stiff as possible, and getting them wet does the opposite.
I know some of them are advertised that way, so I guess some people do it. But it just seems weird to me.
Blade based razors make sense to shave wet with - you're typically using some sort of foam to keep the hairs elevated. But I've never heard of anyone using shaving cream with an electric.
Not only that, but evaluate which things actually need to be """smart""". People literally scream at their super smart electronics because it doesn't flip the light switch which would've taken you 2 seconds by hand and wouldn't have sent thousands of bytes over the internet
Edit: I also agree that a clock is a rather bad example (obviously depends on your clock)
If you think that is bad, wait until we need to start decommissioning electric vehicles on scale. I've worked on fossil fuel vehicle EOL for quite a while and a very large amount of recycling happens, there is literally zero waste. Nobody I know wants to do the same for electric vehicles, they are simply too dangerous.
The batteries shouldn't be taken apart without proper equipment and processes. Disconnecting them from the vehicle though is not that complicated. I think the decommissioned batteries are going to be sent to specialized facilities while the rest of the vehicles will go through the same recycling process as the ICE cars do now. Most of the battery material is going to recyclable and thus fairly valuable, so there's some economic incentive in there too.
> If you think that is bad, wait until we need to start decommissioning electric vehicles on scale.
There are plans on re-purposing these for grid storage or used-new packs for vehicles, or recycling them to make new batteries. Sadly Google is polluted with weird SEO blogs and other crap, so here's at least one report from a credible source [1].
I don't have a number, and probably it's completely unintuitive, but at least as of today I'm more concerned about disposable stuff, like one-use vape devices and that stuff, where also there's like little incentive to recycle.
At least big (EV vehicle) batteries have a bigger value.
Around Europe I'm seeying a bunch of companies testing and selling second hand EV car battery packs that are at 60 to 85% of their capacity. Some can be used to repair a car, some other for projects that aren't that concerned by the energy density per kg of the batteries (stationary deployments, for example at home). And they're real cheap.
Why would anyone in their right mind discard hundreds/thousands of $ of raw materials in a landfill? In a dead EV, the dead battery is the single most valuable thing for scrap yards to extract. Assuming it is actually dead. Mostly they get a second life in which case they are worth even more.
In any case, EV batteries are already being recycled at pretty high rates.
> Nobody I know wants to do the same for electric vehicles, they are simply too dangerous.
Their loss. Not everybody is that nervous around some simple electronics. Most scrap yard dealers will train up in a hurry as soon as they realize that they have access to a valuable stream of batteries to pass on to re-cyclers who pay good dollars by the kilo. Most clued in owners will actually insist on getting compensated before handing over the valuable wrecked car with batteries included. Worth more than many still functioning old ICE cars.
> I've worked on fossil fuel vehicle EOL for quite a while and a very large amount of recycling happens
If that's the case for relatively worthless things like steel and lead from lead acid batteries, what do you think will happen when scrap yards start processing lithium ion batteries with a way higher kilo price? The obvious of course.
> Nobody I know wants to do the same for electric vehicles, they are simply too dangerous.
Okay? But there are PLENTY of people who are willing to. There are already relatively large EV battery recycling operations up and running. There are already businesses repurposing old EV battery packs for stationary energy storage.
EVs aren't THAT dangerous. You should have safety training to handle their batteries. But relevant safety training is something you need for almost all jobs that are even moderately complex these days. This kind of training is completely routine for all car mechanics in Norway now since 90% of new cars are EVs. I don't see any reason to think car mechanics in other countries are somehow less able to learn these things.
There's no data to indicate that EVs are more dangerous than ICE. There's some risks that are eliminated (gasoline fuel fires, carbon monoxide poisoning) and some new risks (high battery voltage, battery fire). But all-in-all there is no data pointing to more deaths after the share of EVs in Norway hit 90% of car sales (and reaching 20-30% of cars on the road in many areas).
>There are already relatively large EV battery recycling operations up and running. There are already businesses repurposing old EV battery packs for stationary energy storage.
These businesses are nascent, with unproven scale and business models. They might work. We want them to work. But we are a long way from saying "this is happening".
Exactly this. The current process for fossil fuel vehicle decommissioning is a relatively decentralised process. What we're talking about is a significant change to the way things are currently done. It may not be a very positive thing at all, especially as these processing plants will likely be expensive and centralised.
Hopefully they get around to banning disposable vapes sooner rather than later, the needless waste with those is just ridiculous. All vapes use lithium batteries due to their high current requirements, but the disposable ones simply have no way to recharge the battery.
Not to mention the fire risk, the vape juice usually runs out before the battery fully discharges so they end up being thrown away still partially charged, which makes them more unstable and eager to catch fire if they get damaged during processing.
Disposable vapes use C grade lithium batteries that are otherwise low quality and would have been discarded anyway since they're already mostly used and not good enough to go into any other applications.
Though I'm sure it's much easier to recycle those c grade batteries directly after they are sorted out after production, instead of when they are inside an old vape, inside a container with all the other trash.
I work in battery manufacturing and it's not. The type of cells used in vapes are Lithiun iron phosphate. Once you open the cells up, they're essentially rust. There is some material that can be pulled from them but companies pay to remove them because the cost of extraction is more
Than the cost of using fresh materials.
This is the dirty secret regarding lithium cells.
At the very least, using C grade cells in this manner ensures a working product gets used for some application even if it is disposable.
Take solice in the fact that when you throw batteries out in landfill trash that most are picked up by high powered magnets and are separated out for recycling.
From a broader future perspective I try to take into account that there might be a war between the west and east which would cut the west out of a lot of resources which in this specific perspective would be wise to have been accumulated until then.
It's also the case that vapes are entirely a waste of resources no matter how you cut it. There's no good reason they should exist, and so even the smallest amount of waste is still a negative. Conceptually, this is somewhat similar to spraying insecticide to protect people from Malaria (painful to spray so much poison, but there's a clear benefit) vs. a consumer spraying their back yard so they don't have to experience insects whatsoever. (no real benefit, and just as costly if done at scale)
> It's also the case that vapes are entirely a waste of resources no matter how you cut it. There's no good reason they should exist, and so even the smallest amount of waste is still a negative.
I'm confused - do you think that coffee is also entirely a waste of resources? Pretty clearly, many people like stimulants. And vapes seem like a better, although not harm free, version of cigarettes.
> Vapes are proven to be highly effective at getting people to quit smoking.
... Quit smoking cigarettes. It's only replacing one type of litter (cigarette butts) with another (charged batteries plus some contaminated plastics and electronics).
“So they don’t have to experience insects whatsoever”
You don’t live in an area where mosquitoes are a problem, do you? They can get so bad that you simply don’t want to go outside because you’ll have multiple biting you at any given moment. So yes, there is a benefit to consumers spraying for mosquitoes: those consumers can now enjoy their yards! A treatment of Bifenthrin every few months, and the mosquito problem is greatly reduced.
I don’t disagree with the point of your comment, though.
I have thought for a long time that there is an easy solution to the vape battery problem: make vapes without batteries.
I used to have one of these
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mKUdIR6 It worked great from a usb power bank or my car lighter. No reason we couldn't design a disposable on a similar principle. It would be a LOT cheaper and remove the worst environmental concern of vaping.
I mean, vape nerds had this figured out years ago with designs that used standardized 18650 or similar cells in bodies that were designed to be user serviceable. We went backwards from there with the shift towards vapes with rechargable but non-replacable batteries, and then to batteries that can't even be recharged.
That's fair. I used the thing I linked during that time period, but for casual vapers disposables have a legitimate place.
I can't keep a whole vape system in the house or I'll use them constantly, but when my friends are smoking cigars, I like having a vape. The battery is the most environmentally detrimental part, but it's also the least necessary, since usb power sources are everywhere.
>but the disposable ones simply have no way to recharge the battery
I've routinely harvested and repurposed the batteries and the usbc ports from many of these due to how easily discarded ones are found. What brands do you find unable to recharge?
I don’t know anything about economics, so consider this disclaimer, but if it’s a concern that the 78M batteries per day is a problem, then maybe we should tax batteries a lot more now to control for externalities?
There are so many devices that are made without replaceable batteries its becoming a real problem. I want an electric toothbrush that takes 18650 or similar cells, same with a shaver and just about every other small powered tool we need replaceable batteries as the device lasts longer than the cells do and it makes recycling the cells harder.
Yes Zinc Carbon is better to end up in landfill hazardous materials wise, but the amount of carbon dioxide expended in their production must be enormous globally
Shout out to Ikea selling rebadged Eneloops for ~2-3x cheaper than Panasonic
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