The Camera Industry & The Environment

For my part, I feel it behoves all of us to be better educated on environmental issues, to not be suckered into believing the disingenuous and sometimes blatant misinformation about what we purchase.

As a recent example I have a good friend who this year, after getting rid of his diesel powered car, has bought a fully electric car, lauding to me its environmental ‘greeness’, until I pointed out it isn’t: not in manufacture, shipping to the dealer or the fact it relies on electricity produced in a power station. Yes, it is pollution-free running around the streets but in its charging the vehicle is just pushing pollution farther down the national power grid to the source, a convenient fact not mentioned in the glossy advertising.

As has been pointed out, enormous volumes of ’stuff’ ship from the East, principally by sea on ships powered by diesel engines; in their sheer size the ships are efficient carriers but their combined total exhaust pollution footprint per year globally is huge, and rising.

The only way I, as an individual, can get my own head around all of this is to attempt to keep my purchase miles as short as I possible, in essence buying locally produced, un-prepackaged goods, which at present mainly is food; it isn’t at all easy. We can all do our bit at an individual, micro level if we just challenge ourselves to do better, smarter.

Again, I thank everyone contributing to this thread. I thought when I made the original post it might descend into an uncivil ‘environmentalist vs deniers’ argument at the lowest common denominator, but it hasn’t.

I am delighted to say I have learnt at lot from the posts. I hope that others have, too.
 
In my teen years I was an AVID bottle digger. Show me an ol dumping spot, I’d dig it. Of course I found other things, broken silverware, music box “works”.... a lot of everyday junk. I do not ever recall digging up anything like a Kodak Autographic Style Camera....but I’m Sure thousands were discarded in the 30s 40s.
 
Out to Lunch said:
Which is the annoying message from rich Americans unaware that in many countries around the world average diets are protein deficient.
Click to expand...


Protein is far more efficiently obtained by plants, except in a very tiny part of the world that is arid.



Further, the industrial meat complex vastly overstates how much protein is actually needed in a diet. It is far less than one would be led to believe if you buy into the propaganda from Big Meat.
 
Out to Lunch said:
Which is the annoying message from rich Americans unaware that in many countries around the world average diets are protein deficient.
Click to expand...


What are the signs of protein deficiency, and do you believe that it's possible to get enough protein without eating animals?
 
I believe it was in the new documentary "The Game Changers" where it's claimed that animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined. But my own reason for cutting back on animal products was because I felt healthier for it: Clearer-headed, better energy levels, fewer random aches, etc.


How to gauge the full environmental impact of one's lifestyle? I haven't got a clue. So I started with easy stuff like tech gadgets: Buy less but better, keep things longer, or simply go without.
 
JeffS7444 said:
I believe it was in the new documentary "The Game Changers" where it's claimed that animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined. But my own reason for cutting back on animal products was because I felt healthier for it: Clearer-headed, better energy levels, fewer random aches, etc.

How to gauge the full environmental impact of one's lifestyle? I haven't got a clue. So I started with easy stuff like tech gadgets: Buy less but better, keep things longer, or simply go without.
Click to expand...

I had the same result when I gave up meat (19 years ago). My health dramatically improved in that I felt I had much more energy. I gained 5 pounds (I was a serious lightweight), and was enjoying a vastly expanded diet full of vegetables I never even heard of before (mostly Asian as I started traveling to Asia and then eventually living there for 7 years).

Yes, the meat industry is a huge polluter generating enormous green house gases as well as huge fecal ponds by the pork industry that lays waste to rivers and ground water. And all the animals are eating a plant based diet anyway (soy beans and corn) so it is grossly inefficient.

You certainly do not need meat to grow if you have enough plant based food. Both my kids have never had a bite of meat and my son is 6' 4" tall and never been sick a day in his life. My daughter is the same, but having a more average height.
 
Brian Atherton said:
For my part, I feel it behoves all of us to be better educated on environmental issues, to not be suckered into believing the disingenuous and sometimes blatant misinformation about what we purchase.

As a recent example I have a good friend who this year, after getting rid of his diesel powered car, has bought a fully electric car, lauding to me its environmental ‘greeness’, until I pointed out it isn’t: not in manufacture, shipping to the dealer or the fact it relies on electricity produced in a power station. Yes, it is pollution-free running around the streets but in its charging the vehicle is just pushing pollution farther down the national power grid to the source, a convenient fact not mentioned in the glossy advertising.
Click to expand...

You might want to ascribe to what you say as well.

First of all, fully-electric vehicles are massively more efficient in transferring power to actual vehicle motion. While gasoline has an efficiency of about 20%, the electric motors in EVs are upwards of 85% efficient.

Regarding the electricity manufacture, the mix of power is heavily dependent on where you live. At worst, coal-fired power-plants work at an efficiency of 37% according to Wikipedia. So, an EV should be about 10% more efficient than a gasoline car (37% * 85% = about 30%, compared to the gasoline efficiency of 20% at best). Meanwhile, someone receiving power from a mix of natural gas, renewables, and/or nuclear will be at a much higher overall efficiency, perhaps 50% or more.

If you want to quibble over the manufacture/mining of materials to make the EV battery-pack, that's another topic altogether. Unleaded gasoline also doesn't come out of the ground ready to consume in a car.

Personally, I may be buying a hybrid next year, which seems to be the best compromise, especially for long-distance driving, where EV costs are actually higher due to less regenerative breaking and higher charging rates than typical home electric. Some of the newer full-size sedans get over 50mpg. That 20% efficiency of gasoline spread out over double the typical in-town mpg starts to look a bit better then.

Oh - I'm not looking at EV's / Hybrids because I'm an environmentalist, I'm looking at costs related to the amount I drive. If folks want us to change habits to help the environment, push the companies/manufacturers to develop better, cheaper alternatives. Free markets and all that.
 
Corran said:
You might want to ascribe to what you say as well.

First of all, fully-electric vehicles are massively more efficient in transferring power to actual vehicle motion. While gasoline has an efficiency of about 20%, the electric motors in EVs are upwards of 85% efficient.

Regarding the electricity manufacture, the mix of power is heavily dependent on where you live. At worst, coal-fired power-plants work at an efficiency of 37% according to Wikipedia.
Click to expand...

Coal is not the worst. Solar is.

"How efficient are solar panels? Most solar panels are between 15% and 20% efficient, with outliers on either side of the range. High-quality solar panels can exceed 22% efficiency in some cases (and almost reach 23%!), but the majority of photovoltaic panels available are not above 20% efficiency."

Solar panels also have a much shorter lifespan than a coal fired power plant.
 
Ted, the efficiency of solar panels to convert sunlight into energy has exactly zero to do with the efficiency of any energy source to convert power into a vehicle's motion.

You are conflating input energy efficiency with output efficiency. And as should be obvious, the "wasted" sunlight would be hitting the earth regardless and isn't creating CO2 emissions.

A discussion of solar (or other "renewables") as a power source for the world is a whole other can of worms. Personally, I think we should've been using the last few decades gearing up new-generation nuclear power plants. And built them anywhere NOT in a flood or earthquake zone...
 
While the ranting about the manufacturing and the environment is laudable, I think you need to look at the total impact across the life of ownership.

How do you measure it? By frames (files) captured, gallons of developer and fixer used, silver washed away, battery size / # of recharges?

We should not kid ourselves and look at one aspect of a manufacturing process and declare it bad-bad-bad. Let's look at the bigger picture for comparison that might be more meaningful.

B2 (;->
 
The environment here on earth is complex, with no single cause or solution to changes that take place. Some of the ingredients that cause environmental change are beyond humans ability to control. Yes, we need to be aware of it and try to live and do things that work with the environment.

However, changes have taken place on earth long before humans ever existed. And changes will take place until the end of earth, a long time from now.

My wife and I just visited our daughter, her husband and family. They live in LaCanada California located near Pasadena. When I lived in Long Beach, after returning from Vietnam, I could look out at the horizon and on most days there was this yellow haze in the sky. This was in the early 1970’s. Now that is gone. The air quality is much better now than when I lived there. The temperatures are about the same now as back then. Fires happened back then; it’s just with 24 hour instant news we hear about them more.

There is a lot of stuff most if us have that can contribute to the detriment of the environment.

At any rate, everyone contributes to the environment. I try to watch out what I do.

So far, earth is the only place we can live. Each of us should do our best to take care of it.

I’ll suggest two things that could help:

Grow more green plants.
They absorb CO2.

Eat less red meat.
Look up methane and its contribution as a greenhouse gas.

Here is some info from Wiki:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane
 
It seems fairly obvious that large scale effects are created from the sum of individual choices and decisions. What these decisions are, however, are up for analysis and debate.

As mentioned above, electric cars are much more efficient in terms of fuel to power ratio, and the kind of electricity used depends on where the car is located. On an individual basis, there's a video on YouTube about a rural house that uses hydroelectricity, drawn from the nearby river, to power an electric car. This is completely divorced from the coal and nuclear systems in other places. I would be interested to know about the environmental effects of solar panel manufacture vs the equivalent per house impact of a coal burning plant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzragsRr5lU
 
Bill Clark said:
When I lived in Long Beach, after returning from Vietnam, I could look out at the horizon and on most days there was this yellow haze in the sky. This was in the early 1970’s. Now that is gone. The air quality is much better now than when I lived there.
Click to expand...
You can thank China for your cleaner air. They now have the polluting industrial jobs that used to be in the US. In one single province in China I saw more industrial plants than I have ever seen in total in the US. They have terrible air because they are the manufacturer of the world. Bring those jobs back to the US and the pollution comes with it.

Bill Clark said:
Eat less red meat.
Click to expand...

No, eat less meat, period. Hog farming is horrific for the environment. Just ask the people who live within 20 miles of a hog farm how much they like it.

Chicken farming produces BILLIONS of animals for slaughter. All those animals eat plant based food. It's inefficient. Why eat animals to eat plants?
 
You can thank China for your cleaner air.
Click to expand...

I don’t think that statement is accurate. Have you ever traveled China? My son works for GE and lived in Shanghai for about a year. He speaks Mandarin. My wife and I visited him and much of the pollution is from cars and coal use.

When I lived in Long Beach, two major sources of pollution were cars and other vehicles and oil refinery's. Not much manufacturing. I believe the Midwest was noted for heavy industry and pollution. Back in the 60’s a river in Ohio caught on fire. Have you ever been to Gary Indiana? Back in the 60’s even in the 70’s you could see smoke from the steel plants from Chicago. Interesting thought, Minnesota supplied much of the iron ore to those plants. Could it be that Henry Ford had a little to do with the location of these plants? The Ford rouge plant would bring in raw materials and out of the facility came cars.

I know a little about animal pollution as in Minnesota we have two nice sized businesses, Cargill and Hormel which I have studied. Cargill is family owned while Hormel stock trades on the NYSE. Minneapolis has never been a heavy manufacturing community. What about where you live?

You are correct about other meat products and their sources of pollution with the environment. You seem to know about farming. Did you grow up or have experiences farming? My wife grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. I use to sell products to both CHS snd Midland COOP, farm cooperatives.

Info on CHS and Cargill and Hormel Foods:

https://www.chsinc.com/

https://www.cargill.com/

https://www.hormelfoods.com/
 
Corran said:
First of all, fully-electric vehicles are massively more efficient in transferring power to actual vehicle motion. While gasoline has an efficiency of about 20%, the electric motors in EVs are upwards of 85% efficient.

Regarding the electricity manufacture, the mix of power is heavily dependent on where you live. At worst, coal-fired power-plants work at an efficiency of 37% according to Wikipedia. So, an EV should be about 10% more efficient than a gasoline car (37% * 85% = about 30%, compared to the gasoline efficiency of 20% at best). Meanwhile, someone receiving power from a mix of natural gas, renewables, and/or nuclear will be at a much higher overall efficiency, perhaps 50% or more.
Click to expand...

Sorry to knock the shine off your figures but that's not quite correct. The *motors* in an EV might be 85% efficient (actually, they probably do better than that) but there are losses all the way down the chain to the motors. There are losses in power generation, losses in transmitting the power down the grid, losses in converting mains down to DC to charge the batteries, losses in the batteries themselves (not insignificant ones) and losses converting the battery power back to drive the motors - followed by mechanical losses in the power reaching the wheels.

Some losses apply to fossil-fuelled vehicles too but all the electrical inefficiencies do not and they add up to quite a bit. Like most things, 'it all depends' so I doubt there's a reliable figure to compare EVs with conventional vehicles, in terms of pollution from fuel source-to-wheel but I seriously doubt that there's as big a difference as the marketing for EVs and the politicians would have you think.

Add to this the fact that a huge proportion of a car's lifetime-pollution is in manufacturing it in the first place.

I think the unpleasant fact is that to cut vehicle pollution requires us and all our products to travel far less, something which few people are willing to consider or talk about. Legislating to restrict travel freedoms and freedom to purchase what we want isn't going to win votes!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom