Questions you'd like answering, regardless of how trivial they may seem

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AndyRM

XOXO
Location
North Shields
Interesting. How does a machine differentiate between the different materials?

If your local recycling centre is anything like mine, machines aren't really involved. Humans do the sorting.
 

Animo

Über Member
If your local recycling centre is anything like mine, machines aren't really involved. Humans do the sorting.

I always assumed that was the case, hence my original question as to why it would be preferable to now have glass mixed up with everything else.
 

DRM

Guru
Location
West Yorks
Interesting. How does a machine differentiate between the different materials?

I haven't got the slightest clue, but I saw the various waste electronic items going up the conveyor belt , and saw the bags filling up with the separated items, the thing did vibrate quite violently, and this must have been key to how it worked, as the various materials would have different weights/density to them
 

DRM

Guru
Location
West Yorks
If your local recycling centre is anything like mine, machines aren't really involved. Humans do the sorting.

And once separated , then all your plastic waste goes to a recycling facility in Washington, where it gets bailed up and shipped off to eventually be ground up into pellets to make more plastic stuff
 
Location
Widnes
I saw a programme about how it is all separated a while ago

They started off with a vibrating conveyor belt that basically just got everything spread out and spread out
then passed it under a massive magnet that grabbed all the iron and steel and took it of elsewhere
Then it passed under another magnet thing that induced a current in other metals - mostly Aluminium - and then another magnet thing could grab all that

Then they had a camera linked up to a computer that could detect glass by the shape. Thing about that was that it could easily see anything like a bottle
unless it was black - the optics could not see black bottles!
Plastic bottle were grabbed the same way further on

I am sure this had developed a lot with AI being able to detect other things more easily but that was how it was done in that place at the time

I suspected when I was watching it that they were probably hiding the more "mucky" bits but the front end bits were pretty impressive
 

glasgowcyclist

Charming but somewhat feckless
Location
Scotland
AFAiK it comes from the Latin for ‘protuberant’.

Not quite.

They were distinct words in Latin, with different meanings.

Eminent is from Latin eminentem, present participle of eminere: to stand out, project; be prominent, be conspicuous.

Protuberant is from Latin protuberantem, present participle of protuberare: to swell, bulge, grow forth.
 

Alex321

Guru
Location
South Wales
And once separated , then all your plastic waste goes to a recycling facility in Washington, where it gets bailed up and shipped off to eventually be ground up into pellets to make more plastic stuff

That, of course, depends on your local council.

Ours (Vale of Glamorgan) sends most of the plastic to Roydon Recycling, who recycle some in England and some in Wales.
This is the Welsh plant - https://roydon.com/roydon-bottle/

Vale of Glamorgan are also expanding the trial of kerbside soft plastic recycling to the whole county from next week - with that being recycled into bags for life and other plastic bags at a plant in Barry.
 
OP
OP
Accy cyclist

Accy cyclist

Legendary Member
Spotted today in an optician shop's window. How does wearing a contact lens induce 'family fun'?!🤔

20260404_181825.jpg
 

Beebo

Firm and Fruity
Location
Hexleybeef
We all get spam adverts on line, usually for cheap tat. But I just got one for a Gulfstream private jet.
Surely this is ineffective marketing, as 99.99% of viewers couldn’t afford it and no one in the market for a new private jet would ever buy it from a spam advert.
Why would Gulfstream bother with this type of marketing? They must be able to better target their potential customers.
 
Location
Widnes
We all get spam adverts on line, usually for cheap tat. But I just got one for a Gulfstream private jet.
Surely this is ineffective marketing, as 99.99% of viewers couldn’t afford it and no one in the market for a new private jet would ever buy it from a spam advert.
Why would Gulfstream bother with this type of marketing? They must be able to better target their potential customers.

Market awareness probably

Not expecting any sort of sales just to increase the awareness of people to the brand

so that when people think of a private jet then GulfStream is the one they think of

99% of the people who see it may never buy one
but with something that costs a lot of money then you only need to generate one sale to make a cheap advertising tasks worth doing
 

Alex321

Guru
Location
South Wales
We all get spam adverts on line, usually for cheap tat. But I just got one for a Gulfstream private jet.
Surely this is ineffective marketing, as 99.99% of viewers couldn’t afford it and no one in the market for a new private jet would ever buy it from a spam advert.
Why would Gulfstream bother with this type of marketing? They must be able to better target their potential customers.

Nobody buys direct from the majority of adverts.

Adverts are mainly to raise awareness of the brand, and if it means that a few of the tiny number of people who are in the market for a private jet think of Gulfstream first, then the advert has done its job.
 
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