I'm still trying to figure out why taxation helps the planet???
At the moment 'recycling' is more a salve to people's conscience than it is an environmental boon.
Here we are in the midst of getting rid of tungsten light bulbs and introducing the spiral lamps which use mercury. We talk about the reduction in mercury in the atmostphere from power plants offsetting the mercury in the lamps.
The problem is that dropping a spiral bulb in the home releases a concentrated form of a mercury salt. And that is similar to the problem with digital. Digital this and that contains mercury, arsenic, selenium and a host of other things that are concentrated in the device. These cannot be eliminated. They can go to a dump and be recycled (we hope), but see the article in last weeks Time magazine about the problem of waste dumps in China. Digital products use heavy metals both in the device itself and in the manufacturing process of the device.
Analog photography uses organic chemicals along with silver. Silver is a very benign metal, used medically for years as an antisceptic. The organic chemicals can be easily disposed of. Any heavy metals present are used at such low concentrations they are difficult to detect and present no significant problems.
Developers can be evaporated and burned safely with a good environmentally correct incinerator and color bleach and blix, when desilvered, can be used dilute as an approximate substitute for miracid on some plants. We worked long and hard to insure that photographic chemistry is as harmless as possible.
And now, digital printers want to use pigment inks. Well, some pigments rely on the use of heavy metals. I think this is another potentially harmful item to be aware of.
This same type of question keeps coming up over and over and over.
PE
PE -
you mention that computer-stuff uses selenium, so do a lot of photographers.
where does their wash water go? into the environment, just like their silver.
while silver is a benign element, it is still illegal in many places to just pour
it down the drain. if someone makes money off of their photographic work,
often times they have their waste hauled away ( i do, or i get fined ), and if someone is a
hobbiest, often times the believe their little amount of whatever toxic
chemical they pour down the drain doesn't matter, the sewer system will
take care of it, or their septic system can handle it ... every little bit
matters.
yes, silver is used in the medical industry as a ointment for burns and with
newborns ... just as selenium is an mineral found in seawater and vitimins,
but just the same, we keep dumping this stuff we are only making our
environment toxic. and we all know, we reep what we sow ...
You are correct about selenium toning. That is the only source of selenium in processing except for burning selenium toned prints. That generates selenium vapors which are toxic. The selenium toner itself contains toxic selenium compounds. I personally have stopped using it.
However, to expand on my point, properly disposed of photographic solutions (minus selenium toner) can be evaporated and burned in a special incinerator and the only products are carbon dioxide and water. In burning, any silver residue can be found in the ash. Yes, I realize that the CO2 is ungood, but the organics can be used in this case as fuels for electrical generation, as they are all flammable in their solid states and are easily handled in the proper incinerator. Kodak does just that with scrubbers in the flue of the incinerators.
Unused blix or bleach (or ones with the silver removed to a safe level) are so nearly totally non-toxic that they are capable of being usable as fertilzer on flowers and shrubs. I don't recommend this, I merely point it out.
This level of recylability cannot be said of any electronic product. They are sources of concentrated heavy metals which leach out in rain and water in dumps. The alternative, burning, releases the toxic gases. And, when the US converts to the HDTV standard soon, there will be a lot of lead containing tube tvs out there to be disposed of on top of the old junk computers.
By comparison then, the toxic nature of photographic processing solutions world wide is far lower than that of electronic equipment by some estimates that I have seen. Read the Time article for more.
I have run (and have recorded in my EK notebook) a color process that uses recycled wash water over and over again, having cleaned it totally of all chemicals by a special process. All overflow chemicals and removed chemicals went into a small pack using this process, and that was then easily destroyed by any one of several benign methods leaving no significant toxic residue. As you point out, Selenium would be the exception. This process produced drinkable water by analysis, and a disposable pouch.
I emphasize that this cannot be done with heavy metals or non-metal ingredients that are toxic to the environment.
PE
I use completly mechanical cameras to last me a long time and take special care with water waste, so I don't print FB.
Furthermore, the enlarger wastes a lot less energy than my computer workstation.
If you are careful with chemical disposal and water waste (which it seems our privileged brothers and sisters care little about), you are set.
Now if you could get the enlarger running with solar power...
aside from a lab,
who has the ability to incinerate
their spent, dried out photochemistry ?
in a lab, yes, these things are possible, but in reality,
the "everyday photographer" doesn't have an incinerator
(with a vapor hood ! ) and an epa permit to do use it ...
There are city-funded recycling places where I live where I can drop off junk like building materials, ewaste, motor oil, batteries, etc. but after I drop them off I'm not sure what happens to them. I know a lot of my friends are into recycling and re-using plastic bags but when I asked them what happens to their recycling after it's dropped into the recycling bin, none of them could give me an answer.
Well, quite frankly, you are right in one sense, but in another it is a simple matter to set up a mixed bed resin and an organic resin, and then run your 'effluent' through that. Out comes clean water, and what is left is a burnable residue which can be given to the recovery center that incinerates such trash.
Kind of like a water softener. In fact, the resin would be a mixed bed water sofener cartridge. Simple and clean and efficient.
You have a dry cartridge when done instead of buckets of glop to dispose of.
PE
i guess so ..
but unless "joe" can get that "stuff" and do it himself, and it is pretty much FREE
seems like he is just gonna dump as he is already doing ... he doesn't see the costs related to his dumping
not to be a pita PE, but "joe" doesn't wanna spend money on anything
but gear, and building a "mixed bed resin and organic resin filter"
seems like a lot of work ...
having a waste guy come to the house every few years costs about $25 a year - it is painless and he doesn't
even want to do that ...
at least you are giving "joe" an optiontoo bad he doesn't care
Who knows where they will wind up? But congrats are due to HP for at least trying to do the right thing.
These are refurbed, refilled with toner, and sold. Many public schools in our area collect toner cartridges and get paid for them by the printer mfgrs. They do it as a fund raiser. Rather than sending it back for free, you might see if there's a good place locally that can make a couple of bucks off each cartridge you donate to them.
Lee
Yes, there is no total win-win; but the damaging effect of increased carbon emissions is presently a much greater concern than is the risk of careless disposal of mercury carrying light bulbs.
Well, quite frankly, you are right in one sense, but in another it is a simple matter to set up a mixed bed resin and an organic resin, and then run your 'effluent' through that. Out comes clean water, and what is left is a burnable residue which can be given to the recovery center that incinerates such trash.
Kind of like a water softener. In fact, the resin would be a mixed bed water sofener cartridge. Simple and clean and efficient.
You have a dry cartridge when done instead of buckets of glop to dispose of.
PE
i guess so ..
but unless "joe" can get that "stuff" and do it himself, and it is pretty much FREE
seems like he is just gonna dump as he is already doing ... he doesn't see the costs related to his dumping
not to be a pita PE, but "joe" doesn't wanna spend money on anything
but gear, and building a "mixed bed resin and organic resin filter"
seems like a lot of work ...
having a waste guy come to the house every few years costs about $25 a year - it is painless and he doesn't
even want to do that ...
at least you are giving "joe" an optiontoo bad he doesn't care
As an aside - this evening I replaced the toner cartridge of the HP printer I use at home.
It's relatively new (1-1/2 years) and hasn't seen too much use so this was the first replacement.
I opened the box with the new cartridge and did the swap out. I was about to throw out the brochure inside the box when I realized that it felt "kind of heavy" for simple newsprint.
So I opened it and found a prepaid UPS return label attached to a multi-lingual brochure explaining how to return anything from one to twelve cartridges for recycling.
Who knows where they will wind up? But congrats are due to HP for at least trying to do the right thing.
Oh, and yes, I realize that "built into" the price I paid for the cartridge was the UPS charge etc. - but, so what? If its disposal is handled "properly" it's a sunk cost anyway and both HP and I can feel better for having taken the trouble.
It's the small steps that change the consciousness that are important.
westly,
the filtration system PE mentioned --- he also suggested was inefficient.
a waste hauler can sell you a "ironcore" trickle tank.
it will last for several years, and get you down to between 1 and 3 parts / million which is where you want to be.
don't look for anything but "ironcore" filters because the other ones channel.
that means, if you don't run liquid through the filter all the time, the filter dries out, and doesn't work right.
a trickle tank is basically a big filter, not a double bed filter that PE suggested, but
a simple metalic filter. you pour your spent fixer and washwater
into it, and it removes the silver, replacing the silver with iron. when it is "spent" you can bring it to your hauler for replacement.
(this should land me on a few more ignore lists)
I always find it fascinating that "Joe" is someone else and not the poster.
Kino;
The resin I used is commercially available, but I've forgotten the names of the 3 resins used. I may be able to dig them up. It is not a trade secret.
PE
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