How to make me angry

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 3:26 pm

Easy. Leave the car idling in the driveway while you're standing in the door talking to someone inside the house when it's 5*C outside.

Apparently a massive tax courtesy of the government and "ripoffs-r-us" pricing courtesy of gas companies isn't enough to make people actually get a clue. These are probably the same people that clear 7 cm of snow from their driveways with a snowblower.

Gah. Can Bush invade Iran now so gas goes to $2/L?

Beyonder · Post by **Beyonder** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 3:39 pm

My personal peeve along these lines is when people purchase coffee and get a paper cup. I always carry a mug in my bag, which generally earns me a discount and prevents the wasting of paper. You'd think people would be outraged that they have to pay for the cost of a cup every time they get a drink (not to mention that it's blatantly wasteful), but I see the same people every morning, lining up to pay an extra 25% for their coffee (the shop by my university gives $.25 discount for your own cup).

Second peeve: people printing out power point presentations with ONE SLIDE per page. It's easy to format it to print out four slides per page, front and back, to fit eight slides per page. I've even seen someone do six on front and back for twelve slides per page. Alas, Joe "decimate the forests" Six-Pack insists on printing out 57-slide power-point presentations, ONE SLIDE PER PAGE.

Last peeve: people driving when they could walk or bike.

GUNNER · Post by **GUNNER** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 4:55 pm

If you want to get upset about people being wasteful of resources, paper usage should be VERY low on your list. It's about the most renewable resource there is and is generally produced with little enviromental impact.

I'd get upset about plastic being used in place of paper (being non-biodegradable) and filling up landfills, first.

mr. poopyhead · Post by **mr. poopyhead** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 6:09 pm

some of the older folk at work PRINT out emails and hand them to you. "did you get this email i sent?"

get with the times! the "e" stands for ELECTRONIC!

paper waste is the biggest problem at my work...

disphenoidal · Post by **disphenoidal** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 7:16 pm

I hate it when people leave their cars idling too, for any reason. And I really hate it when people leave appliances on when they don't need to. I'm sure you all know those people who have the TV on ALL THE TIME, even when nobody's watching it. Not only is it a waste of electricity, the noise alone is enough to make me angry.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 2:19 am

GUNNER wrote:If you want to get upset about people being wasteful of resources, paper usage should be VERY low on your list. It's about the most renewable resource there is and is generally produced with little enviromental impact.

I'd get upset about plastic being used in place of paper (being non-biodegradable) and filling up landfills, first.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_pollution

? I mean I know of plenty of worse processes (eg extracting tar sands) but I was under the impression paper production isn't that environmentally-friendly, esp. in places like China etc.

Beyonder · Post by **Beyonder** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 7:43 am

GUNNER wrote:If you want to get upset about people being wasteful of resources, paper usage should be VERY low on your list. It's about the most renewable resource there is and is generally produced with little enviromental impact.

I'd get upset about plastic being used in place of paper (being non-biodegradable) and filling up landfills, first.

I'm not as upset from an environmental standpoint as an economic standpoint.

When I was younger, I managed a coffee shop that had never been profitable. One way I made it profitable was by cracking down on waste of paper cups, lids, sleeves, straws, napkins, etc. In a business with slim margins, that can be the difference between red and blue ink. For what it's worth, the cost of a paper cup, lid, and sleeve was greater than the cost of coffee.

On a semi-related note, I have a friend who used to work for Johnson and Johnson. When he was working there, J&J was beginning to sell their products in India. After trial runs in several cities, they found that sales were not what they'd predicted, so they did some investigation. What they found was interesting:

Indians were not happy with the portions. In dense, packed cities where people don't have a lot of living space, nobody wanted gigantic containers. They wanted smaller containers.
Across the board, Indians were outraged that J&J didn't have a refill policy. It was bad enough that the packaging was the wrong size, but having to pay for perfectly reusable, massive packaging repeatedly felt like highway robbery.

After reducing the packaging size, and offering refills, their business improved dramatically.

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 9:25 am

My work canteen used to serve coffee in china cups (with saucers, very classy!

) and metal spoons, sugar was served in bowls, you just spooned the sugar from the bowl in to your cup.

A few years ago they changed to using disposable polystyrene cups and disposable plastic spoons, and presenting sugar in small individual paper tubes. This was on the grounds that it was more environmentally friendly to make cups and spoons out of oil and shove them in landfill when done, than heating up all that water and using all that (biodegradable) detergent to wash the china cups and spoons. The individually wrapped sugar portions used less packaging than a 1kg bag of sugar shared between hundreds of customers, apparently.

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 12:04 pm

Ditto the orignal post, but put a 19yo behind the wheel and him booming his system at 12am outside my apt window and screaming to talk over the radio...in his car...that he's not in...

Stupid chavs (sorry, I'm not british, but I love that word).

GamingGod · Post by **GamingGod** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 12:29 pm

How about everyone and their grandmother owning an SUV or Hummer now. Before rap got big people use to drive cars. But now everyone wants to be a gansta

BlueCan · Post by **BlueCan** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 6:44 pm

GamingGod wrote:How about everyone and their grandmother owning an SUV or Hummer now. Before rap got big people use to drive cars. But now everyone wants to be a gansta

How about people who make cause/effect mistakes...

(It was fuel efficiency mandates made by the Gov't that caused "trucks" to be more economically viable for both the producers and consumers than "cars"--hence the "truck-based" SUV that cost the automakers less to produce than an equivalent car...)

Ouch.

Techno Pride · Post by **Techno Pride** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 7:17 pm

computer hardware experts recommending 600w PSUs for a typical Core2Duo + nvidia XXXX GT setup. (those 2 components don't even break 200watts!)

And hardware distributors refusing to bring in Antec/Seasonic 380watts because of lower margin and lower demand compared to 430w versions.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 11:52 pm

qviri wrote:Easy. Leave the car idling in the driveway while you're standing in the door talking to someone inside the house when it's 5*C outside.

Well I guess it's easy to make you angry.

When I still had my car I used to do this for a number of reasons. First of all, my car was old and it needed some time to warm up, before it ran well. I'm sure it polluted less, when the catalysator had some time to warm up as well. It's also far more strenuous for the engine to start, then to leave it idling for a moment, especially in a cold weather. I also did it to prevent my windows from building up condensation (which they did anyway) and to generally keep the car at steadier temperature, to improve my safety and make driving a bit more comfortable experience.

kater · Post by **kater** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 12:01 am

How about a dude on a forum (not here) who has 8800GTX in SLI and only a 17" display? That's over 300 "socket" watts used in idle

And for what? +200 FPS he won't even notice? Also, he desperately wanted a 1kW PSU, but that's another story...

I work in a translation agency - means lots of computers, CD's, paper etc. Hard to believe, but when proofreading, one works better with printed text, than when the text is displayed on the screen. Kinda makes it easier to spot mistakes, typos, etc. It happened to me many times that I proofread someone's job, it got printed and there were still things like typos to correct. It means more printing in the end. But... if you first check the thing on paper, you'll spot everything and you'll not have to print the final version again and again. Of course for draft printing we use smaller fonts etc. - as long as it's possible and won't destroy the layout.

What makes me go grrr are advertising leaflets I find in my mail. I don't read them. I certainly don't need +10 leaflets every time I open up the box. You collect it for a week and you suddenly realize you've got plenty of paper in perfect condition that you can't use. A real LOT of paper.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 1:23 am

kater wrote:How about a dude on a forum (not here) who has 8800GTX in SLI and only a 17" display? That's over 300 "socket" watts used in idle And for what? +200 FPS he won't even notice? Also, he desperately wanted a 1kW PSU, but that's another story...

What makes me go grrr are advertising leaflets I find in my mail. I don't read them. I certainly don't need +10 leaflets every time I open up the box. You collect it for a week and you suddenly realize you've got plenty of paper in perfect condition that you can't use. A real LOT of paper.

I hate that too, especially since I have put up a "NO ADS!"-sign on my door and I still get them.

Beyonder wrote:My personal peeve along these lines is when people purchase coffee and get a paper cup. I always carry a mug in my bag, which generally earns me a discount and prevents the wasting of paper. You'd think people would be outraged that they have to pay for the cost of a cup every time they get a drink (not to mention that it's blatantly wasteful), but I see the same people every morning, lining up to pay an extra 25% for their coffee (the shop by my university gives $.25 discount for your own cup).

I think that's a great policy, wish my university had it as well. Just out of curiosity, you are already carrying a cup, why not buy a thermos for your coffee and make it at home, that would save you more money. I just recently bought a 0.4l Thermos just for this purpose. When I make coffee at home, I usually make something like 0,75 liters at a time, that's like 3 mugs of coffee. I fill up one mug and then pour the rest into the thermos and then turn the coffee maker off, so it's not just sitting there keeping the coffee warm and wasting energy.

GUNNER · Post by **GUNNER** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 3:22 am

I mean I know of plenty of worse processes (eg extracting tar sands) but I was under the impression paper production isn't that environmentally-friendly, esp. in places like China etc.

I can only speak to US production.

First: Trees grow back and all US tree harvesting is either from managed land that is being immediately replanted or trees from land that is being cleared for other reasons than to just harvest the trees.

Second: Production. US paper mills produce their own power and steam. These are fueled, in part, from the by-products of the mill. Wood chips from the debarking operation are used in the steam boilers which produces the steam and electricity. "Black Liquor", a by-product of the pulp digesters, is burned in the boilers, too, rendering it back into "Green Liquor" which is put back into the digesters to repeat the process. Water (and a mill uses a LOT of water) is treated and returned to it's source (one of the reasons paper mills are on waterways). This treated water is, oddly, often cleaner than the water that was taken in originally from the same source.

Third: Paper. It's biodegradable, so disposal is no problem. Compare that to the substitutes that are used in place of paper.

Fourth: Recycling paper. This is actually a bad thing for the environment/resource use. It takes more energy to transport recycled paper back to a paper mill and treat it so it can be reused than it takes to produce new paper (with trees that are usually coming from land that is much closer to the mill than the cities that are sending back the bulk of the recycled paper). This is why recycled paper is actually more expensive to businesses than "virgin" paper.

As to the cited article, it makes some broad statements in the beginning that it never supports. The rest of it is detailing the individual effects of some of the chemicals used in a single type of paper production (white paper produced by chlorine bleaching when it admits there are other process that don't use chlorine). And if you believe that paper production is "...one of the most environmentally Un-friendly industries there is...", take a look at the EPA "superfund" site list ( http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/quer ... plfin1.htm ) and see what industries really deserve that description.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 3:54 am

GUNNER wrote:As to the cited article, it makes some broad statements in the beginning that it never supports. The rest of it is detailing the individual effects of some of the chemicals used in a single type of paper production (white paper produced by chlorine bleaching when it admits there are other process that don't use chlorine). And if you believe that paper production is "...one of the most environmentally Un-friendly industries there is...", take a look at the EPA "superfund" site list ( http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/quer ... plfin1.htm ) and see what industries really deserve that description.

Well it is wikipedia, and as we all know it's not the source of definite truth. I agree alot with what you wrote, especially about the recycling part. Same applies to just about every recycled material out there, excluding aluminium.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 4:51 am

I agree the wiki article is pretty poor, that's the problem with pages which have only been edited by a handful of people and don't get much "traffic". Still, I think we can all agree that environmental standards are nowhere near as stringent in the developing world as they are in the EU and US (although China has tighter fuel economy standards than the US, amusingly enough), so it's a good bet that paper production is dirtier in those countries (although this is probably true of all industrial processes).

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 5:32 am

Speaking as a member of the label industry (mainly fabrics, but paper too), paper and textile mills in the US are much cleaner than they used to be even as recently as the 1980s. Many of the textile mills have been shutdown and moved overseas (China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan) and many paper mills have followed suit. The shutdown usually happened because the mills were old (sometimes up to 200 years old in the South) and could not be made to comply with new environmental regulations. As a result, while there are still quite a few paper mills in the US, there are a scant few domestic fabric weavers and most are barely scraping by. They were lucky enough to have plants that were new enough or open enough to accommodate the changes the EPA imposed. The result, much cleaner mills with little or no hazardous wastewater or airborne emissions.

But like jaganath said, the other side of the globe is a whole 'nother ball of wax. Many of these places are almost nomadic in nature. They are started up in one area on the cheap using old mill equipment and crank out product like crazy till the enviromental police or other government body comes by and kicks them out. They dismantle, move 50 miles downriver and start up again. My boss went to China last year and passed by a fabric mill and said he was surprised the town wasn't glowing with all the crap going into the river! It's pretty insane.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 5:39 am

jaganath wrote:Still, I think we can all agree that environmental standards are nowhere near as stringent in the developing world as they are in the EU and US (although China has tighter fuel economy standards than the US, amusingly enough), so it's a good bet that paper production is dirtier in those countries (although this is probably true of all industrial processes).

I think we can agree on it, at least to some degree. Luckily though paper is mostly made in industrial countries, even a small countrys like Finland and Sweden combine for 7% of all paper and paperboard produced in the world. Add Japan, Canada, USA, Germany, France and Italy and you have over 55% of the paper produced in the world. Add China and Korea and you have 72.5% of the worlds paper production.

Wood is the green gold in Finland and we are the worlds 6th largest producer of paper and second largest exporter of paper, which is pretty well for a country with population of 5 million. Only USA has bigger paper companys then we have, for example out of 7 largest paper companys in the world, 5 are from USA and 2 from Finland. We also have a highly developed education and engineering around the pulp and paper industy. We train two thirds of Europe's paper industry engineers and I know for a fact that Finnish companies supply and supervise the construction of many paper plants in China and South America. It's a huge business for us. I'm pretty sure, that the paper industry in third world countries is also primarily run by the big companys from industrial countries. And even, if they are not run by our companies, they sure as hell have to use the same technology we use (and sell) to be competitive. It's in their best interest to buy advanced paper factorys that are desingned by us. So I wouldn't be that worried about the paper industry in the less developed countries. They only produce a small fraction of all the paper produced in the world and most likely the paper plants are better build and more environmental then some other comparable areas of industry.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 6:07 am

My boss went to China last year and passed by a fabric mill and said he was surprised the town wasn't glowing with all the crap going into the river! It's pretty insane.

IIRC China has 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities/places. I remember watching a documentary about one of the coal-producing areas, the pollution was so bad you literally couldn't see the sun during the day, the town was permanently in a kind of twilight. Some of the pollution in the third world is just unimaginable for anyone from the West.

Beyonder · Post by **Beyonder** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 7:15 am

GUNNER wrote:
I mean I know of plenty of worse processes (eg extracting tar sands) but I was under the impression paper production isn't that environmentally-friendly, esp. in places like China etc.
I can only speak to US production.

First: Trees grow back and all US tree harvesting is either from managed land that is being immediately replanted or trees from land that is being cleared for other reasons than to just harvest the trees.

Having recently moved to Oregon, I find this hard to believe. In Oregon, they're still clearcutting gigantic swaths of trees and they might replant. Even if they do replant, it takes decades (50+ years for anything resembling a "forest") for it to grow back. The damage is far greater than I would have ever imagined. It is painfully obvious to spot out vast expanses of clearcut in oregon that are not going to be replanted.

Just last year I went backpacking in the cascades, and the drive in was through miles of clearcut, on logging roads that often had four, five, and six way intersections. Eventually we came to old-growth, relatively untouched forest, but the drive in was thirteen miles of some of the most devastated terrain I've ever seen.

Granted, this is for lumber and not paper, and most of the clearcutting that occurs is on private land (e.g. owner sold logging rights to lumber company), but I would never delude myself into thinking it's some sort of "gentle" process that is easily replenishable. Even if they do replant, the damage that's done is absolutely nuts.

alleycat · Post by **alleycat** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 9:05 am

In my state logging companies are still clearfelling irreplaceable virgin forest in places like Errinundra Plateau. What's worse, most of it is sold overseas for cents per ton as woodchips to make paper. I've heard that some of this old growth forest ends up as toilet paper. So we get to wipe our arses on ancient rainforest. I have lost all hope for the human race.

disphenoidal · Post by **disphenoidal** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 10:20 am

Erssa wrote: When I still had my car I used to do this for a number of reasons. First of all, my car was old and it needed some time to warm up, before it ran well. I'm sure it polluted less, when the catalysator had some time to warm up as well. It's also far more strenuous for the engine to start, then to leave it idling for a moment, especially in a cold weather. I also did it to prevent my windows from building up condensation (which they did anyway) and to generally keep the car at steadier temperature, to improve my safety and make driving a bit more comfortable experience.

I can understand doing this, I own an old car too. In fact, I think warming a car up for a minute or two in the morning will make it last a lot longer, as it gives time for the oil to warm up and get pumped to the top of the engine. But most people I see doing this aren't warming it up, they have new cars and are already at their destination, and are leaving it on because they can't handle turning the heat off for a few minutes. And keep in mind, I see this is places much warmer than Finland.

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 10:41 am

mr. poopyhead wrote:paper waste is the biggest problem at my work...

Really? Energy definitely takes the prize for me.

The energy-happy university campus with their "hey, let's leave the lights on in the lecture hall all night" (or "hey, let's build a lecture hall without windows" in the first place), "hey, let's leave this audio system on all night even though it doesn't work and just makes the speaker buzz annoyingly", or just simple "hey let's illuminate the campus at night like it's new year's" does not help. And that's not even mentioning the 1000+ computers on campus that stay on all night.... suspend to RAM, anyone?

My last workplace wasn't much better; I know that some servers and build machines have to stay on 24/7, but really, locking the desktop is not the only way to prevent people from accessing your computer when you leave work. You could have them start everyday at 8:30 AM if timely log-in was important to you...

Erssa wrote:
qviri wrote:Easy. Leave the car idling in the driveway while you're standing in the door talking to someone inside the house when it's 5*C outside.
Well I guess it's easy to make you angry.

It really is.

Erssa wrote:When I still had my car I used to do this for a number of reasons.

Hokay. Except that the temperature wasn't -20*C, it was 5*C. There's no need to warm up and if your windows fog up, open the window a little bit.

Beyonder · Post by **Beyonder** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 3:05 pm

Erssa wrote:Just out of curiosity, you are already carrying a cup, why not buy a thermos for your coffee and make it at home, that would save you more money. I just recently bought a 0.4l Thermos just for this purpose. When I make coffee at home, I usually make something like 0,75 liters at a time, that's like 3 mugs of coffee. I fill up one mug and then pour the rest into the thermos and then turn the coffee maker off, so it's not just sitting there keeping the coffee warm and wasting energy.

I don't make it at home for one big reason: I drink too much coffee. I make a single french press, which is like ~24 ounces of coffee, which is about 12 ounces more than I should be drinking. And being a person with poor impulse control, I end up drinking it just because it's there. One day I tried to make less, but I ended up just making a second helping later in the day. Like I said: poor impulse control. Tattoo it on my forehead.

Second, coffee (or good coffee anyways) from the store isn't cheap. It's five or six bucks a pound, minimum (seven to nine bucks if you want free-trade crap, which is what they sell at the coffee shop). At a dollar a mug ($.75 on tuesdays) it doesn't end up being a lot cheaper to make it at home.

That, and I'm a lazy person.

I also end up using the mug everywhere I go, more or less. I don't actually wash it that much either, simply because all it every holds is water and black coffee.

How to make me angry

How to make me angry

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Re: How to make me angry