Japanese town uses adult diapers to heat public baths

[cathdiap]

Interesting mini documentary about the Japanese town of Hoki where they use adult diapers to heat public baths. The video also shows that yhere is no taboo whatsoever on using adult diapers there. They sell and buy them in a way much like the way like we do with baby diapers.

 

[~Brian~]

@cathdiap

I think it's pretty awesome that they're able to do this! the problem is that they always say that diapers cause problems because they take 500 thousand years or some crazy amount of time to degrade. To be able to use them, you need a process by which to help them degrade so you can get down to the pellets. using pellets to be able to heat Is not a novel idea, cause it's been around for awhile. the only difference is that it takes a lot more pellets to heat something Then it does cords of wood. however, it is more economical to be able to turn diapers into pellets so that they can be used for other things. this way, a country does not have to feel guilty about making diapers comment doesn't have to feel guilty about using them, because they serve their purpose, and then on the return on the go round, they can turn around and use something that has been used, to be able to be used to help someone else.

I don't know if one of the things they will do eventually is make it so that cloth backed and plastic backed diapers such as Mega Max's can be recycled: the reason why I think they go cheap is because of the fact that they want people to be changed every two hours, but that causes more garbage than anything else, but then of course there is no way to turn diapers in the United States to my knowledge into pellets like they do in Japan. japan seems to be more environmentally conscious than anywhere else, because of where they are, and what they teach their children. For example, you go into a Japanese school, and you notice a heck of a difference. everybody Is respectful, everybody is happy, everybody works together, everybody gets along. i'm sure that there's going to be times when kids don't get along common they deal with temper tantrums and other issues, but I'm sure that there are ways that they have to deal with such indiscretions.

For me school was kinda fun: especially when I could go out with my friends and enjoy Doing whatever I used to do. as I get older though or as I got older even, it got to be more of a chore for me, because 90% of the time I doing homework inside, so going outside really didn't We didn't make sense to me. i'd rather sit in front of a computer, or do fun things inside, then go back to what I was doing, because it would take me longer to get dressed to go outside than it would to just be able to change tasks, or change subject During a long day. Japan seems to have it together: they know how to teach children to be respectful models to other people, and they treat them the manners and respect in camaraderie and other things that make it Awesome.

They always say that recycling diapers is hard, or that something is a lot more expensive More expensive than it should be. let me let me put it to you this way: does anyone remember love canal in the 70s? when all of those chemicals were dumped were dumped into all of the rivers in Niagara Falls in New York, or they would just bury drums of god knows what God knows where, and it causes a whole bunch of problems, an environmental emergency had to be called and then all of the homes at Love Canal were destroyed except for like 2, and then there were people that were still sick?

People shouldn't just be dumping stuff where it shouldn't be. that is always why whenever, recycling is the best way to do it. I hope that someday people understand that, but I do understand that there's some things that are impractical to be recycled. I talked to several people online last night about Tesla's and  lithium ion batteries, and the fact that they allow my chair to stay charge longer, but of course the problem is is that when you have a situation like that, and a tessellate you have several of those lithium ion batteries in series, and they can cause fires and cause trouble. they say that ev's Are better for the environment, but they cost more to replace batteries and other parts than just regular cars. while recycling certain things may be appropriate in some cases, i'm not sure how that works with cars.

Back to the topic at hand: diapers are OK to use and should be used when necessary. people should not be afraid to use them and people should not be afraid to buy them. what needs to happen is that people need to understand that if they can recycle these comments, and they have a way to recycle them, and I mean even if they're plastic back and even if they're quite thick, it shouldn't matter one way or the other period if Japan can turn these diapers into pellets to be able to heat their own public baths, why can't the US do the same thing, rather than to end up having insurance companies for example telling people to go cheaper, and make them worse off? I mean if my dad wanted to get a new gas tank for his car come he's not gonna go to a particular dealer for example, put a brand new gas tank on, and it has a hole in it! if dad did that common realize there was a hole in it, they would fix it and they would put something over the hole or they would replace the gas tank and they wouldn't think twice. However, because of the fact that people sometimes don't recycle, or they find that some other things are harder to recycle, they end up making them cheaper and cheaper, and one thing that we talked about last night was we ended up bringing the fact that these EVS really don't last, and they don't have any resale value either. i'm not sure how that would be achieved, because who wants to buy a used EV, if you can't even replace a battery for much less than maybe $50,000 Or some outrageous amount?

I like the idea of doing it this way: this way the diapers are used by the people that need them, they are thrown away to be changed into pellets, than those pellets are used to heat The public baths. schools in my area always do that as well. they get there pellets and then they put them into their furnaces, which, which is supposed to lower the heating bill but I'm not sure with everything going on with gas prices and oil prices being so high if it makes a difference. I pray one day one day that our oil and gas will go down in price, but we should always try to find ways to not rely so much on fossil fuels, because if we can't we're going to be seriously Hurting if for some reason we cannot get anymore fossil fuels because it cost too much to do it. our oil reserves are there for a reason, but sometimes I wonder.

Where to go Japan keep It up!

Brian

[Dubious]

In Norway we burn trash for heat and electricity.
Heat get sent to nearby homes in large insulated pipes. 

[babykeiff]

17 hours ago, Dubious said:

In Norway we burn trash for heat and electricity.
Heat get sent to nearby homes in large insulated pipes. 

Do you, in Norway, similar to the rest of the world, pay (directly in charges or indirectly via tax) to have your rubbish collected AND pay to get the heat from burning same? If so, why send your rubbish to be burned? Remove the transport costs, and the relevant carbon emmissions, and burn the rubbish at home!

Back on topic:

Recycling waste diapers to be burnt is always an increase carbon cost which is the transport and recycling cost on top of the original emissions cost of burning. If these were recycled to become something else - like roads, buildings, etc then they would be used and not burnt and therefore, it would be cost effective to transport them and recycle them.

As a way to force manufactures of product into recycling / reuse, they should be footing the bill to recycle and/or the relevant fine per gram of carbon produced in all transport of their product. The choice of using product/packaging A over B should not be on the basis that A is cheaper and lighter... and charging these companies the disposal cost of their item/packaging will force them to use sustainable / reusable packaging / product. 

An example is that soft drinks makers chose plastic bottles over glass as they are lighter, can be made on-site, and less care is required in transport - which means more of their soft drink can be transported at less cost to the maker. We are faced with the empty plastic bottle and packaging and figuring a way to recycle / reuse same while the soft drink maker has increased profits at our cost. When they used glass bottles, a return incentive existed so that users would return the bottles and the maker could reuse them. Today, that does not exist. This tells us that the maker used to make profit with a glass bottle - so there is no reason other than their greed to use plastic bottles.

[Dubious]

7 hours ago, babykeiff said:

Do you, in Norway, similar to the rest of the world, pay (directly in charges or indirectly via tax) to have your rubbish collected AND pay to get the heat from burning same? If so, why send your rubbish to be burned? Remove the transport costs, and the relevant carbon emmissions, and burn the rubbish at home!

Its illegal to burn trash, and the emissions from the trash facility mosly release damp as they have filters that remove almost all the pollution.

People pay for the size of their bin.  Its mandatory for all.

[Mars.inDiapers]

Lots of cities, including the one where I live, have modern trash incineration stations that have very low emissions and have positive net energy output (the trash needs to be burned at very high temperature, which requires forced air induction, and natural gas burners are used to initiate the incineration). It's lot more eco-friendly than a simple landfill, and as for the released CO2, if it's used for electricity and/or heat generation, and when the majority of electricity is generated by burning fossils fuels, it would be released anyway (it's slightly better than brown coal in terms of kg of CO2 per MWh generated, and slightly worse than natural gas). For example, our electrical energy mix is 37.1% brown coal, 36.5% nuclear, 7.8% natural gas, 6.6% bio, 3.2% anthracite, 3% hydro, 3.4% other renewable and 2.4% other fossil. With that mix, incinerating waste for heat/power generation will not make our overall CO2 level per total generated energy any worse. It would make it relatively worse if we had much higher share of nuclear and renewable, but at that point our absolute figures would be so low that we could afford to release the extra CO2, and there would still be the benefit of less trash in landfills.

[Dubious]

We have 100% power from water, wind is to use less water, and the trash need to be burnt anyway. 

[babykeiff]

On 12/22/2022 at 2:41 AM, Dubious said:

We have 100% power from water, wind is to use less water, and the trash need to be burnt anyway. 

Iceland's renewable energy provided almost 100% of electricity production, with about 73% coming from hydropower and 27% from geothermal power. Icelands carbon emissions is 4.55 metric tons as compared to Norway of 6.75 metric tons (as of 2019/2020) As of 2022, Norway is 42.18; Ireland 32.65; Iceland 3.17 and Japan, the country of topic 1061.77. USA releases 13.68 metric ton per person, which means that four Americans release as much carbon dioxied as all of Norway.

Ireland has a high dependency on LNG for electric production, which is slowly being changed to hydrogen power and added Solar and Wind power. The second alternative, available in any country worldwide, is closed loop geothermal energy - rather than incineration. One of the pilot programs in Ireland is the phased removal / blocking of the import of all plastic in packaging - which means that all packaging will be 100% reusable / recyclable - which decreases the amount of rubbish to be incinerated. Both the production and disposable of plastic is extremely costly to the environment, and most of it is single use. The alternatives are waxed paper / paper / glass - all can easily be reused. It will not be surprising if the rest of the world follows our lead - after all, 2004 is when we introduced a Smoking ban (the first in the world), where countries worldwide followed. We may extend that to banning the import of all plastic - except in very specific uses (diapers etc). The alternative before the introduction of plastic was a tree-resin based solid, wood and pressed metals.

The program of reusing diapers / nappies as insulation / road surfaces / building material is also being investigated. After all, there is a company in Wales that recycle used diapers / nappies into roads. This Japan based company turn used nappies / diapers into pellets. Instead of pellets, these can be shreaded and used as insulation material. As a result, it will reduce heating and cooling costs, and provide a place for these nappies / diapers to go after they have been used without incineration / landfill / dumping in sea.