ยป Folk Environmental Pseudoscience
It’s surprising how bad folk environmental science is, even when practised by people who are active environmentalists – there’s something about life cycle assessment that makes it not work on the back of napkins, I guess. Results that I’ve been aware of for a while are that plastic cups are better for the environment than paper or ceramic and McDonalds was ignorantly bullied in switching from styrofoam to cardboard packaging.
Just recently I learnt that machine dishwashing is more efficient than manual, which is a relief because hippies literally are dirty when they conserve soap and water. I’m still looking for a full life cycle analysis of driving old cars into the ground or commissioning a new hybrid (never mind the Prius EV Button conspiracy).
Of course the big questions are probably too complicated for such an approach, but I’m holding out hope that majority intuition comes around.
I’m probably just sensitive about this after recently watching Idiocracy, but:
What about the costs for disposing and landfills for all this paper and styrofoam? It doesn’t look like it’s accounted for in the ILEA paper you linked to.
Ryley
8 Feb 07 at 1:50 pm
Hocking does briefly discuss disposal in his paper, which I will make available if someone promises to read it, but otherwise here’s a summary:
Disposal is hard to calculate because it differs between communities. von Eijk et al found in 1992 that if you just look at landfills 1 ceramic = 125 styrofoam = 99 paper. Of course ceramic is not recyclable nor compostable, and glass recycling is energy neutral. Paper and styrofoam waste can also be used in energy generation.
Note that McDonalds was starting styrofoam recycling when they were forced to change, and as far as I know they aren’t doing anything with paper packaging. Environmentalists should lobby for better waste disposal, not “better” materials.
Jared
8 Feb 07 at 8:28 pm
[...] Unfortunately, to me, it also symbolizes the widespread use of folk environmental pseudoscience. Many people, especially in frozen Canada, will pass Earth Hour by candlelight. Yet as Kyla sarcastically commented to me: Yeah, there’s no way burning an object made of refined, treated, moulded, coloured, shipped, and stored petroleum could possibly be a less efficient use of fossil fuels than generating electricity. [...]
[MPF] MentalPolyphonics.com » Candle in the Lightning
29 Mar 08 at 5:07 pm
[...] Andrew Potter gives a scathing criticism of both eating organic and eating local in Macleans. It turns out that the nutritional benefits of organic do not appear in laboratory tests. The economies of scale from industrialized farming make it better for the environment than either niche food (remember: your intuitions about environmental cost are wrong). [...]
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