Car battery "core charge" scam

[Marco Giustini]

But laws are meaningless unless they are enforced consistently (how many drivers actually obey the 20mph speed limits in London and the Home Counties; especially those who know where the speed cameras are?),

Your point is good - but you picked the wrong place! London is covered by cameras, I hate driving in London because it's so easy to get a fine even if you're super-careful!
Yes there are people who don't care but I'd say the vast majority obeys that 20mph - because there are more cameras then trees!

I'm aware of the difficulty in recycling plastic - but we cannot always drive our decisions based on the Money God. We cannot thrash our planet. If recycling plastic is a bit more expensive than new, be it. The price will be added to the product, new or recycled. If that's not possible, then we must find alternatives or new technologies.

I bet that new techs and products would come up if the legislator started making appropriate laws where recycling is compulsory and costs were pushed on the manufacturer. And if plastic recycling was widespread, even more new processes would be developed etc.

In any case, what you say is sad. If it depended on me, a business caught disposing of a battery in a landfill would get shut down. Straight away. It's very easy.

[Ryan Gallagher]

The US's fondness for "single stream" recycling is also a relative disaster unless you have a plant willing to accept and sort single stream in your actual region. Austin lacks one, but does single stream anyway out of the impression that is the only way people will bother to recycle anything. Then they load it all on a train to San Antonio's plant. This extra transit and extra cost of sorting defeats much of the economics of it for sure, even on economically viable materials. Would be better if we all just sorted ourselves, but in most of the US, we can't be bothered or trusted with that minimal effort.

[Marco Giustini]

ah - that happens in some wealthy neighbours in London! I've always found that unnecessary - though space in London is a luxury so NOT having to keep baskets full of rubbish in a small flat is convenient.
But AFAIK, you have plenty of space there in the US! ? I am not in London and I don't mind keeping my rubbish separated.

[Leo Enticknap]

Your point is good - but you picked the wrong place! London is covered by cameras, I hate driving in London because it's so easy to get a fine even if you're super-careful!
Yes there are people who don't care but I'd say the vast majority obeys that 20mph - because there are more cameras then trees!.

The last time I was in London in a rental car (December 2023), I was advised by Hertz when I picked it up from Heathrow to take the 20 limits seriously, because cameras were everywhere, Hertz would add a big processing fee to any speed camera ticket I acquired, and furthermore, because they also had a presence in the US, they were legally required to notify the California DMV of any demerit points I pick up in the UK. The result, she warned me, is that if I wasn't careful, I could rack up enough points to get my license suspended in a single journey. So I did take the limits seriously, and as a result was repeatedly honked at, aggressively tailgated, and then recklessly passed. What the locals tended to do was drive on urban surface streets at 35-45 on average, then slam on the brakes as they approached the cameras, the locations of which they had memorized from previous journeys. What made the 20-limits even more insane is that a manual transmission (which you have to pay a big price premium not to have to deal with when renting a car in the UK) makes them especially difficult to observe, because 20mph is exactly on the cusp of the change between second and third gears. So when you should be paying attention to hazards on the road around you, your concentration is diverted to managing gears and engine RPM.

A relative later told me that she voted for Farage's lot in last year's election, purely in protest at these speed limits. If I'd still been living there, I might well have done likewise.

The US's fondness for "single stream" recycling is also a relative disaster unless you have a plant willing to accept and sort single stream in your actual region. Austin lacks one, but does single stream anyway out of the impression that is the only way people will bother to recycle anything.

I think Austin made the right decision. If you want to influence behavior by public policy, you have to find the right balance of carrots and sticks. If you just provide incentives, taxpayers lose money, and wealthier people for whom the incentive isn't really an incentive at all (for example, the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit isn't going to influence the car buying decision of a multi-millionaire one way or the other) will be unaffected. But if you impose disproportionately harsh laws/rules and/or enforcement of them, people will rebel, and elections results will be skewed by single issues. I remember reading a story a few weeks ago about a truck that had been stopped at the Mexican border, inside of which was concealed not fentanyl, illegal immigrants, or any of the things you'd expect to be hidden in a truck crossing that border. It contained bottles of a refrigerant gas needed by older HVAC systems that had recently been banned in the US on environmental grounds, but remains legal in Mexico. Less wealthy households who cannot afford to drop $20K on a replacement HVAC system that uses the much more expensive refrigerant that is still permitted are therefore resorting to contractors who obtain the banned stuff by this method, to be able to continue servicing the older compressors.

[Frank Cox]

Several years ago smugglers were bringing "full flush" toilets into the USA from Canada since only water saver toilets were legally available there and none of them worked particularly well at the time. Full flush toilets were still legal in Canada so there were a lot of midnight trucks rolling across the border.