iRex to set up factories in China?

[NatCh]

Curly = Folding, that makes sense. Thanks, dodowolf!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Curly = Folding, that makes sense. Thanks, dodowolf!

If you call the folding iLiad Curly, does that make the current model Moe or Larry?

[NatCh]

Shep. Definitely Shep.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Shep. Definitely Shep.

I think you mean Shemp.

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by TadW

In the article they seem to talk a lot about protection of the environment through shifting to e-paper which is complete nonsense if you ask me. A study I've seen recently seen shows that the indirect damage by using an e-book reader (battery, hardware trash, time spent online, etc.) is at least as bad for the environment as cutting trees. Before someone claims the opposite, I'd like to see proof.

Well, green as I'd like to be, I'm inclined to think like you on this one. The worst paper offender is not the book it's the 'office report' and we're far away from a solution for them. And there is no existing office reader either.

By far the biggest wood waste overall is the 'Transport Pallet'.They account for over 40% of all hard wood cut in North America. That is shocking. Those things are almost never reused and go straight to a garbage container. They measure from 2 to 5 cubic feet each. Compare that with a 0.14 cubic foot HP novel that will be read and reread. Paper can be recycled, I'm not shure we can reutilize much of our readers...

We can't get numbers for the imbedded energy of most electronic stuff, and toxicity involved with production?

The only thing we can say for shure is the weight ratio between a reader and the paper books over the lifetime of the reader, is enormous... there is the savings... if the reader lasts. If you figure to replace your reader when a new one comes along, how many ebooks will you have read? 3000? 1000? 100? Some people have already totalled their readers or lost them without having read 10 ebooks.

We'll have to wait for some time before we see real figures on this. And I'm not too optimistic about the way things are going at this point. Maybe with the plastic cheaper flexible eink displays will we see some tangible difference.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I think you mean Shemp.

Yeah, I probably do.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by dodowolf

You lazy nekokami!
"curly" = 可卷曲 = "folding (iLiad)"

Oh, thank you, that was keeping me up nights wondering.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

By far the biggest wood waste overall is the 'Transport Pallet'.They account for over 40% of all hard wood cut in North America. That is shocking. Those things are almost never reused and go straight to a garbage container.

For what it's worth, they don't stay in the garbage container, at least in our area. There's usually a list of people waiting to scavenge them for firewood and other uses. And I do know some companies that make a point of reusing them. But yeah, that is a problem overall.

If the depolymerization folks get their processes working, ereaders will be easily recyclable, but I'm still not sure how much energy will be required. I think we should compare the median number of books/periodicals/documents that would be read on an ereader, including printing, transport, and recycling costs, to the production, transport, and recycling costs of the ereader to make it a fair comparison. (E.g. "you'd have to read 20 novels and a daily newspaper to come out even in terms of energy" or something like that.)

For what it's worth, I've taken to using my laptop and iLiad as "office readers." I don't print if I can possibly help it. But this is where the iLiad's slow boot and limited battery life really hurt it. If it could display pages instantly and/or stay powered up all day, plus maybe have a peer-to-peer wireless network function to pass documents to others at a meeting, it could be a paper killer. (A4/letter size wouldn't hurt, either.) The limitations built in to the iLiad still surprise me sometimes. I have a hard time guessing what use case they were thinking of to conclude that the current start time, battery life, and network functionality would please anyone.

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by nekokami

For what it's worth, they don't stay in the garbage container, at least in our area. There's usually a list of people waiting to scavenge them for firewood and other uses. And I do know some companies that make a point of reusing them. But yeah, that is a problem overall.

Before working alone I was foreman in a big company. One delivery firm asked for their skids back. The others left them to us because the cost of bringing them back and storage was higher than buying new ones. So we just destroyed them and added them to our production waste. Some guys tried to reuse for heating for some time but at some point they just quit following time consideration expense. It's plainly just easyer to order precut cords of firewood. Most companies also do not let individuals on their premises to make pallets available for recycling because of mishaps and the time involved with surveillance.
I've tried dismantling pallets once. Whew! That's a lot of work! Those things are riddled with big nails and since they're set while the wood's green, they're basically glued in and just break. I've had a few good experiences with skids from Asia build with tropical woods we don't even get here, and built little jewels out of them. Basically, pallets are used once and sometimes a second time at their destruction.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by nekokami

If the depolymerization folks get their processes working....

According to their site, they shipped 6,000 barrels of diesel in April '06, but there's nothing more recent than that.

I had heard that they had opened their first full-scale plant, but the site doesn't say anything about it, so ....

[nekokami]

Yeah, when we used to break them up for firewood, we didn't worry about getting the nails out, since the wood stove didn't care. I haven't done this in a while, though. The last time I looked into it you had to "know someone" at the plant to get on the list for the pallets, because so many people wanted them, but maybe that's less common now. We weren't allowed to scavenge them at one place I worked, because they all had to be reused. I know at least some of them get reused at the university where I work now, and the rest are probably scavenged. I live in the northeast US, and heating fuel is expensive. It might be easier to order cord wood, but it's also pricey. Some wood came with the house when we bought it last November. When we run out, I'll probably start looking into skid salvage.