Off Topic The Environmental & Pollution Thread

oh I always thought it was included in the price and you got that back if you returned the bottle

 

Pretty much agree with almost every point you make here FLT. The only point I would question is, "is it easier to offer people a better alternative, rather than educating them flat to stop what they are doing and do something else?"

For example, I am forever being asked why Tesla have to make their cars so good [therefore they have cost more in the past] compared to the opposition. Well, the truth is, if they made their cars the equal of other manufacturers, at the same price, just the environmentally concious people would buy them [and incidentally, they would go out of business]. Instead of which, they are a far better alternative to a similarly priced fossil fuel car and Tesla can't make enough of them quickly enough. That's going to change with the new factories opening and in the pipeline. Bad example? It was all I could think of in 5 minutes.

 

Well that's a refund.

 

Ok fair enough.......

 

A charge is like watching commercial TV and thinking it is free. It isn't. Every time you buy anything you are paying more for it because of commercial TV. That's a charge on top.

 

Yes, but if you bought a crate of lemonade. If you didn’t hand in a crate of empties you would be charged another 3 bob back in the day. (from my school days sat working in the accounts) Is that not considered a charge? I agree it was a kind of a refund. Reality is probably we are both talking from different angles I think.

 

Sure, you may have been charged a penny extra, which was built into the price. But you were incentivised to bring the bottle back and be refunded the penny. An actual charge does not include an incentive to get money back. It's not the same thing.

 

They're baling out Flybe. So London based millionaires won't have to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi on their way to Padstow for the weekend.

 

ive just managed to get an old diary down. The charge was called a deposit. The deposit was refunded on the return of the bottles. The lemonade was 1s and 9 pence with a bottle exchange but 2 bob with out.

 

Yep, I just about remember that too. However, even deposits are sometimes non-refundable. But good point on that old case.

 

In a previous life I ran a wine and beer warehouse to the trade.

We used to sell CO2 gas to publicans as well. We charged x amount for the gas and £20 for the canister. One in one out, so after your first if you just bought one and gave one back, you only paid for the gas.

Peeved me off when my driver came back looking all happy and said you know those kegs for that pub, he only had enough for one so I collected 8 empty gas canisters. He didn’t realise they were our charge not what we paid from the supplier and actually only got a fiver per canister.and we never supplied them in the first case .....

 

I really cannot see the harm in a deposit scheme. We as kids used to check people’s bins and the like to earn ourselves a few bob. I’m not sure about cans though. I saw somewhere someone said the deposit scheme wouldn’t work as it was too expensive to carry out. For the life of me I cannot understand this?

 

We have a can deposit. Rarely see them on the streets. I often see people looking through the trash to get out the cans. I wish the deposit was more money and on more cans and bottles. It isn’t on water bottles and now we see many of those on the street.

 

I don't think pubs, restaurants etc. are encouraged to recycle - they can just chuck it all in the bin - all that plastic and glass.

 

Several aeons ago I bought a large canister of pressurised propane for the (new) barbecue. I distinctly remember signing an an agreement which meant I was effectively buying a lifetime lease on the canister so I could just trade it for a full one for a relatively small sum. Of course, the British weather being what it is there’s still at least another summer’s worth in the tank, so I have no idea whether the deal still works.

 

If it is like renting/leasing acetylene-oxygen tanks for gas welding, then it carries on for the lifetime of use, I believe. You won't face an additional charge for having the bottle longer than anticipated.
Answer under your fingertips, of course.

 

A post above mentioned hardware games against downloadable. Overall, downloadable is cheaper. Ok, that's a fact.
But did you know that the word is out foe people to reduce unnecessary emails? Because they use so much computer and server power. The latest power issue I've heard is that whilst Bitcoin is a marvellous cryptocurrecy, its take up is being slightly restrictedbecause it is power hungry.

 

Swings and roundabouts to me.

Send 10 emails rather than 10 letters to different places, think of the carbon footprint saved (Paper, car to the post box, vans etc).

Also, Computers are so much more efficient over the last few years - especially with the emergence of virtualisation (How did we live with out it - i mean it?). For example our data centre has 5 servers with over 250 virtual servers running on them - 10 years ago that would have been 250 server all running.

 

Yes, I also realise that it is swings and roundabouts. But it is an appeal originating from Silicon Valley to the amount email traffic that goes on.
The Bitcoin thing is for real though. Apparently it takes a lot of computational power.

 

Yep it does - I have a friend that spent over 15k on a server farm to mine bitcoin, he got his money back (and some) in about 4 years, but the running costs were horrendous .