PVC is more or less an environmental disaster.
Breaks but doesn't breakdown, hideous if its ever burned.
Theoretically recyclable but doesn't seem that it is much, at least in Australia AFAIK.
I suspect most ends up as landfill, where it lasts, for all practical purposes, forever.
Not even nice mechanical properties to justify the downside.
Best wishes
David
A broken dinner plate will also sit in landfill forever. Would a kilo of inert plastic be worse than a kilo of broken crockery, or a kilo of old tiles, or any other inert bulk?
Honest question.
In my own case, I have optic implants (they are essentially permanent contact lenses), and one of the things that convinced me to get them is reading that some WWII aircrew injuries involved getting tiny shards of their perspex canopies embedded in their eyes. In many cases, those shards were still there decades later - biologically inert.
Other surgery leaves various plastics inside people incidentally - e.g. polypropylene sutures in dural repair. Again: biologically inert.
If inert plastics can remain inside one's eyes or skull for decades without causing any harm, why would they be worse in landfill? Surely they'd only be bad if it they:
a) weren't inert - and broke down to form some toxin(s)
OR
b) caused problems macroscopically, such as being eaten by an animals
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A bit off topic so I won't attempt a detailed answer here, we can start a thread elsewhere if you like.
I just wanted people to think about the environmental consequences before they buy, personally I don't want to have a speaker for a few years at the cost of trash that will be around for thousands of years (or potentially much more).
Kind of selfish, I listen to the speaker but the future has the cost of landfill remediation or repulsive trash dumps, microplastic pollution, etc.
Best wishes
David
I must confess that I am wary of traditional plywoods and their use of industrial glues that compell the vigilant wearing of a VOC type particle respirator.
Instead, I use recycled laminated paper and card glued with a natural organic adhesive. The finished item can, if needs arise, be composted or broken down for fire kindling.
Instead, I use recycled laminated paper and card glued with a natural organic adhesive. The finished item can, if needs arise, be composted or broken down for fire kindling.
? Being OT wasn't a problem when you bought it up
Please do give a detailed answer, here or elsewhere.
Note that you made exactly the same suggestion (~ 6 weeks ago), and I'm still waiting on a result:
Which are?
Yea. The trick is: Don't burn it. Incinerate it.
If melted, scorched or burned incompletely - like in an bonfire - PVC will smell bad and generate toxins*, notably dioxin.
If burned completely, in a high-temperature incinerator, it is OK. Japan is a good example - they don't have space for landfill the way we do, so they burn almost all their waste. There are 19 incinerators in central Tokyo, yet air quality in Tokyo is fine - there are many smaller western cities (such as London or NY) which have lower air quality**.
Despite incinerating everything, dioxin levels in Japan are recorded as dropping, both in the environment, and in humans (as measured in human milk).
Wasteland: Tokyo grows on its own trash | The Japan Times
An 18-Year Follow-up Survey of Dioxin Levels in Human Milk in Japan
...so it looks to me like they are doing incineration the right way, on a very large scale.
Lasting 'forever' means it must be pretty inert. If something is buried and inert, why care? I'm sitting on a thick layer of of rocks that are buried and inert. I gotta say: those rocks don't disturb my tranquility.
Since PVC is used for most water pipes, most of my bodyweight will be made from materials that have been in close contact with buried PVC.
How does something benign when buried as pipes for carrying drinking and irrigation water become "an environmental disaster" when buried as landfill?
*this is not unique to PVA or plastics. Incomplete combustion of completely natural substances - like when fat drips from BBQ meat - also generates toxins, notably PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons).
**and Japan has the disadvantage of receiving China's largest export: Japanese complaints about pollution from China to get louder
I think chronic exposure to any fine dust is bad for you. Almost every type of dust exposure has a characteristic disease, eg:
Bird fancier's lung - Wikipedia
Silicosis - Wikipedia
Short-term exposure is usually fine.
If worried, you could shop around for the least harmful variant. My guess is that phenolic resins are the safest. They have a long history of use. Factory workers who are heavily and chronically (5+ years) exposed to phenolic resin dusts do get some reduction in lung function, but no obvious rise in cancer rates ...so I doubt that a quick DIY project would kill ya.
That seems fine for what you've built - a big gramophone-style horn (which looks great, by the way).
How far do you take this organic construction? Can your fridge also be composted?
What I wrote was -
No one started a thread, so I didn't try to explain.
I do like to see a certain minimal level of interest before I spend the time to write a reply, that someone is sufficiently interested to start a thread is a fairly low bar.
In respect to "Off Topic", I think there's a difference between a few sentences in one post and the sort of protracted debate/dispute that is so common.
At least, I personally find it tedious in threads I start (or read).
So I adopt the Golden Rule, treat the OP as I would wish to be treated, and offer to take it elsewhere.
Best wishes
David
I think chronic exposure to any fine dust is bad for you. Almost every type of dust exposure has a characteristic disease, eg:
Bird fancier's lung - Wikipedia
Silicosis - Wikipedia
Short-term exposure is usually fine.
If worried, you could shop around for the least harmful variant. My guess is that phenolic resins are the safest. They have a long history of use. Factory workers who are heavily and chronically (5+ years) exposed to phenolic resin dusts do get some reduction in lung function, but no obvious rise in cancer rates ...so I doubt that a quick DIY project would kill ya.
That seems fine for what you've built - a big gramophone-style horn (which looks great, by the way).
How far do you take this organic construction? Can your fridge also be composted?
A few years ago, I built a wooden kayak from marine plywood using epoxy resin, fibreglass and yacht varnish. I often had to wear a tyvek bunny suit, nitrile gloves, a full facial respirator and goggles, and hated every minute of it. Never again will I work with toxic materials in a confined space.
Both my parents died from cancer, and I am a full time career for someone who has cancer. Believe it or not, I contracted pigeon lung many years ago, and it took a year to fully recover my lung function. I no longer smoke or drink, eat an organic diet, breath particulate free air, and drink fossilised water from a well. With a bit of luck, I will live to be 120.......and please don't tell me otherwise
As a matter of fact, I have worked all my life with toxic materials, in one form or another, and to be now working with organic materials derived from sustainable resources is the new radical - and an absolute hoot.
So yes, I can and do work with plywood, because I can now make my own.
And no, I cannot compost the kitchen fridge, that would be plain silly - wouldn't it?
My mistake; I missed that someone else creating the thread was a requisite.
Post one does ask about plastic.
If you could provide information on why Pano's suggestion is "hideous" and "an environmental disaster", that might go some way toward explaining why.
Plus I'm curious. I've never seen this explained properly. The closest I've seen is:
a) plasticisers can react with / leach into foods. Not an issue here, assuming nobody licks their speakers.
b) pulverised / powdered PVC can bind to and thereby concentrate some long-lived toxins, e.g. pesticides in agricultural runoff. But that to me looks like a problem with pesticides, more than it is a problem with PVC.
You are confusing the two. What 'looks' is not necessarily what 'is'.
The problem with plastic materials (including PVC) is that they do not naturally occur in nature. Instead of harmlessly breaking down by natural biological processes, they disintegrate into ever smaller and smaller pieces to become particles tiny enough to eventually lodge inside the cellular structure of all living creatures. We have only become aware of this within the last decade or so. In fact, the jury is still out on what we are collectively dealing with here as a whole raft of complex issues concerning the long term use of plastics - especially single use plastics within the biosphere. Put it this way, 50 years ago there was no plastic litter - none.
So, from a personal perspective, every time I set eyes on a piece of discarded plastic litter, I see a micro ecological disaster rendered in slow motion. And yes, there are plenty of alternatives to plywood for making loudspeakers, PVC pipe is a very good alternative, but not very good for our environment after it has fulfilled its original intended purpose.
This is why I advocate the use of recycled paper products for making loudspeakers, even though at face value I can easily see why that Baltic Birch ply is considered a superior material without necessarily being so.
I certainly agree that litter and plastic recycling and the ecological ramifications of plastics are problematic, but the plastic litter problem is a lot more than 50 years old!
Timeline - Beginning of the Plastic Era with Semi-Synthetics
1839 - Polystyrene or PS discovered by Eduard Simon
1872 - Polyvinyl Chloride or PVC - First created by Eugen Baumann
1894 - Viscose Rayon - Invented by Charles Frederick Cross and Edward John Bevan
Timeline - Thermosetting Plastics and Thermoplastics
1926 - Vinyl or PVC - Walter Semon invented a plasticized PVC.
1933 - Polyvinylidene chloride or Saran also called PVDC - Accidentally discovered by Ralph Wiley, a Dow Chemical lab worker.
1935 - Low-density polyethylene or LDPE - Invented by Reginald Gibson and Eric Fawcett
1936 - Acrylic or Polymethyl Methacrylate
1937 - Polyurethanes tradenamed Igamid for plastics materials and Perlon for fibers. - Otto Bayer and co-workers discovered and patented the chemistry of polyurethanes
1938 - Polystyrene made practical
1938 - Polytetrafluoroethylene or PTFE tradenamed Teflon - Invented by Roy Plunkett
1939 - Nylon and Neoprene - Considered a replacement for silk and a synthetic rubber respectively by Wallace Hume Carothers
1941 - Polyethylene Terephthalate or Pet - Invented by Whinfield and Dickson
1942 - Low-Density Polyethylene
1942 - Unsaturated Polyester also called PET patented by John Rex Whinfield and James Tennant Dickson
1951 - High-density polyethylene or HDPE tradenamed Marlex - Invented by Paul Hogan and Robert Banks
1951 - Polypropylene or PP - Invented by Paul Hogan and Robert Banks
1953 - Saran Wrap introduced by Dow Chemicals.
1954 - Styrofoam a type of foamed polystyrene foam was invented by Ray McIntire for Dow Chemicals
1964 - Polyimide
1970 - Thermoplastic Polyester this includes trademarked Dacron, Mylar, Melinex, Teijin, and Tetoron
1978 - Linear Low-Density Polyethylene
1985 - Liquid Crystal Polymers
At any rate, please properly recycle your speaker cabinets, and the other 98% of the waste stream...
Oh dear! I didn't mean to start all that with my post about sheet PVC. In fact I had forgotten all about it until I saw this thread again today.
Similar to cutting board, but very slick. No texture to speak of.
And it looks good.
What's the wall thickness? Can you take a picture of the cross section?
Do you have any way of comparing the strength with that of normal ply?
Is this speculation, or do you have a source for this information?
A glucose molecule has only 6 carbon atoms, but is too large to pass through a cell membrane via simple diffusion.
I'm curious to know how a plastic (by definition a polymer - meaning many carbon atoms) would make it across.
The wall thickness is between 4mm and 8mm, depending on the placement of stress lines along joins in the design. I have no idea how strong the material actually is, except that I do know that Samurai armour was made from laminated paper, and they sure were fit for purpose in a sword fight. Particularly good at fending off arrows, too.
Weight
This thread was originally about weight, before the foray into environmentals. It amused me, because here I am considering siliconing a layer of roofer's lead (I just happen to have an old roll lying around) inside my work-in-progress sub enclosure to provide additional constrained layer damping.... Definitely won't reduce the weight!
This thread was originally about weight, before the foray into environmentals. It amused me, because here I am considering siliconing a layer of roofer's lead (I just happen to have an old roll lying around) inside my work-in-progress sub enclosure to provide additional constrained layer damping.... Definitely won't reduce the weight!
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