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Bruno

Administrator
Staff member
47 48 49
Sometimes they don't get 100% clean on the first wash, like the 2 right ones, but after a couple of times they usually clear up completely. If not, then they become ones that I use in my dirty work clothes like when I'm forging.

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jomomoa

New Member
47 48 49
Sometimes they don't get 100% clean on the first wash, like the 2 right ones, but after a couple of times they usually clear up completely. If not, then they become ones that I use in my dirty work clothes like when I'm forging.
Thanks, Bruno. I'm enjoying seeing your finds but there are a few things I'm trying to wrap my head around.
Are handkerchiefs very commonly used in Belgium? Here, in my experience, they are used mostly by older men (80 plus) and more so in some ethnicities. They are usually plain white or the red/blue bandanna style.
Do you run the same route generally or vary and are the routes heavily traveled?
I hope they continue to find you and thanks for sharing with us. It is oddly fascinating.
 

Bruno

Administrator
Staff member
Thanks, Bruno. I'm enjoying seeing your finds but there are a few things I'm trying to wrap my head around.
Are handkerchiefs very commonly used in Belgium? Here, in my experience, they are used mostly by older men (80 plus) and more so in some ethnicities. They are usually plain white or the red/blue bandanna style.
Do you run the same route generally or vary and are the routes heavily traveled?
I hope they continue to find you and thanks for sharing with us. It is oddly fascinating.
It depends. I have the impression that boys use them more than girls. Many girls use throwaway kleenex type paper handkerchiefs including my wife and daughters. Overall their use is decreasing though. Recently, our lead virologist (kinda the belgian Fauci) jokingly said that the cloth handkerchief should be relegated to our historical open air museum where they preserve houses and things from the 19th century. :)

Still, they are still fairly common. Especially with young kids who carry them so they don't have to carry a large amount of paper ones. I just checked with a couple of male colleagues and everyone still carries one. I do use the paper ones but only when I'm really sick and need to keep a box next to me for blowing my nose every 10 seconds.

In terms of running routes, both at work and at home I run mostly on bicycle lanes that are in the vicinity of schools, and get significant student traffic. I obviously don't know how people lose stuff exactly, but I suspect it has to do with taking it out while cycling and putting it back incompletely or such. Also many coat pockets are open on the side and don't really close so if you put something there, there is a higher likelihood of things falling out.

I do vary my routes a bit, but there are quite a few schools in the area so I'm always on some route or other. It doesn't exactly define how I run, but if I haven't run a route in a while, I sometimes choose it solely because there is a higher chance that someone lost a handkerchief since I last ran there. Incidentally, yesterday I rand a new route next to a busy road and while I didn't find a handkerchief, I did find a brand new paint roller, a paint roll and a plastic paint bucket, silly sealed in cling foil :D Which I brought home of course. Not that I need it, but when I find new good things I bring them along. Kinda like a gift from the universe. I did once run 3 km carrying a brand new large tarp for covering trailer beds.

I won't say my wife is appreciative, but she's accepted it as a weird but harmless and free quirk.
 

jomomoa

New Member
Thank you Bruno, I enjoy learning about cultures and customs different from mine.
I have a long time friend that is a German expat in Australia, actually just got her dual citizenship. We often discuss the differences between the 3 countries. She despises Imperial measurements and that is where I learned to use/show both when talking about temperature, she always made me do the conversions:)
Back to the handkerchiefs, the last time I used one was about 35 years ago when I was an American Civil War reenactor and had bad sinus issues. Kleenex was an anachronism and not allowed, at least in view of the public.
Again, speaking from my experience, the U.S. seems to have gone away from reusable to throwaway for many goods, even appliances. It often seems we would rather buy new at $1,000 instead of repairing for $400.
That brings me to another subject I'd like to know about, if you don't mind educating me. How does Belgium handle it's waste and garbage?
 

Bruno

Administrator
Staff member
Ooh that's an interesting question. Belgians are way ahead in terms of recycling and sorting.
Now the details will vary a bit from country to county but in general it's all comparable.
So talking about where I live:

For collection at home by waste management, we have:
  1. A blue box for glass. Any and all empty bottles, jars, broken glasses, ... ar picked up once per month, for free.
  2. A blue garbage bag for plastic. This is for things like shrinkwrap, plastic bags, empty milk bottles, jello cups, and also things like milk cartons and cans. These are picked up every 2 weeks. We have to buy the bags from the county. They're cheap, and collection is free.
  3. A yellow container. This is for paper and cardboard. Collection is free, once per month.
  4. A green container for anything biodegradable like food waste, vegetable waste, flowers, but also hedge trimming waste and outdoors-y compostable things. It is weighed during collection and we pay annually for that. Collected every 2 weeks.
  5. A grey container. That is for any true, non-recyclable waste. It's also weighed and annually paid. Collected every 2 weeks.
But that is by no means the complete picture because every county has a dedicated recycle center where we can drop off the following for free:
  1. Metal
  2. electronics
  3. lightbulbs and fluorescent lights
  4. Anything chemical (paint, acid, paintbrushes, empty spray cans, ....)
  5. Oil and fat
  6. paper and cardboard
  7. old clothes
  8. mattresses
  9. styrofoam
  10. glass bottles and jars.
The recycling center also has a section with a weighing bridge where you can dispose of waste by weight (you weigh the car + trailer before and after). There we can get rid of the following things for varying prices but overall nothing really expensive except for true waste and plaster for some reason which are like 5 cents per pound or something of that nature. Greenery waste is like 1 cent per pound.
  1. Wood (sorted in different containers for solid wood, pressed wood chip boards, ...)
  2. Sand and dirt
  3. Stone, concrete and cement
  4. hard plastic
  5. true waste which is not recyclable.
  6. Plaster and plasterboard
  7. grass, outdoor trimming waste
  8. Asbestos products wrapped and sealed in plastic.
  9. Sheet glass
How does trash / waste management work in general where you live?
 
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jomomoa

New Member
My city currently issues 2, 96 gallon (363 liter) containers to each household, with an option to lease additional. One is for trash, picked up weekly and the other is recyclables, picked up bi-weekly. No Extra charges for these pickups.

The recyclables are unsorted. Glass is prohibited in the recycle and while it can be dropped off at recycle centers, people generally put it in the trash.

The trash can be anything that fits in the bin and isn't hazardous, although if not visible, hazardous items are often disposed of in the trash. We do have a drop off location for hazardous liquids, petroleum products and chemicals at no cost.

Yard waste can go into the trash bin or can be in purchased paper yard bags. There is a 6 week period spring and summer where unlimited yard waste is picked up at no cost, The rest of the time, 2 dollar tags must be purchased and placed on each bag or they will not collect. My lawn produces roughly 8 bags of clippings a week and I generally mulch to avoid those charges. The yard waste is generally picked up by the same truck as the trash and goes to the landfill and not a composting site.
After storms that leave massive amounts of tree damage (we've had 3 last year) drop off sites are opened at several city park. This debris is chipped and used/sold for mulch.

Each spring we have neighborhood cleanups where people can bring large items and miscellaneous trash to be disposed of. These are generally sited in a school parking lot and the location changes to a different neighborhood each week. Other times of the year large items can be scheduled for pick up for a fee or as we often do, unwanted items are placed on then curb/verge with a free sign and is generally picked up rather quickly. We do the same with metal items as there are scrappers who cruise neighborhoods for these items. There is also many independent haulers who will load and haul away unwanted items, my stepson did this for awhile.

Overall, I give my city a low grade for recycling. We could do much better however recycling isn't seen as profitable enough to be a priority and is mostly a feel good thing so people can say they do their part to save the planet.

A few years back I found Precious Plastic's YouTube channel and have followed ever since. They have developed processes and machinery for recycling plastics. Everything is open sourced and plans are available for all of the machinery. It is geared towards small business setups and has enabled many recycling companies in developing nations and all over the world, at relatively low startup expense.

Although I couldn't afford to build the equipment, I've wanted to use recycled plastic for razor scales, ideally using molds to replicate the fancy scales. I have used a toaster oven and an inexpensive tabletop shop press to make small sheets that could be cut into scales. I was never happy with the lack of control over how the colors mix, I want to try making my best imitation of tortoise shell and I'll have to change my methods some to accomplish that.
I have bins and bins of pp and hdpe plastic (the 2 lowest temp melting points) that I've run through a paper shredder and are waiting to become scales. If only I had more motivation.
There is a thread on SRP I started a few years ago about my recycled scales.
 

32t

Active Member
Here we have mixed recycling and garbage.

An interesting thing to myself is that they want the garbaged bagged but not the recycle.

They say that the plastic bags clog up the machinery.
 

verndahl

AKA tintin
we pay a monthly fee which includes sewer, water and trash. We can recycle paper, plastics and metal. They don't take glass so it gets pitched. We take our own grass clippings and leaves to a dump place outside of town. I have my own compost pile so that's where the rest of the household compostables go (then on to the garden!)
 

32t

Active Member
Our city has taken over the garbage recycling from at least half a dozen private companies. With the city running it it has become more espensive. Like most things run by government.

The main advantage is only 2 trucks go through my alley only one day a week.

We can recycle glass. I find it interesting that some people cant.
 

jomomoa

New Member
I just looked up the St Paul recycling web page and saw a few things I found surprising although, they certainly make sense.
Only (1) PETE, (2) HDPE and (5) PP are accepted for recycling and none of those can be black. The types make sense as they are readily recyclable but I'm not sure why black wouldn't be.
Remove caps or lids from glass, but replace caps or lids on plastic containers. This, I'm sure, is to avoid contamination of the glass and the plastic is likely to aid the sorting process but most bottles are PETE and the lids are HDPE so there is a contamination of the plastics.
I guess industry wide, glass is often considered a contaminate for the other materials in single sort systems and for itself if there are mixed colors and the market for recycled glass is smaller than it once was.
I think it's good that St Paul recycles glass and wish they did here as well
 

Bruno

Administrator
Staff member
I just looked up the St Paul recycling web page and saw a few things I found surprising although, they certainly make sense.
Only (1) PETE, (2) HDPE and (5) PP are accepted for recycling and none of those can be black. The types make sense as they are readily recyclable but I'm not sure why black wouldn't be.
Black is equally recyclable but the problem is the color. We have the same with the traditional dark blue boxes that are used to sell mushrooms. It's a very typical blue box that isn't used for anything else. Our industry is getting rid of them because it makes it much harder to recycle plastic back to transparant plastic. It seems to be a difficult color to get rid of.

I think the black has the same problem. Over here they don't mind the black but I think that is because it's separated into an all-black stream that is recycled as black plastic because over here all prepared meals are sold in black plastic trays.
 

Bruno

Administrator
Staff member
Had the following argument with my wife this weekend.
Saturday morning I ask if she can pick up our oldest daughter in the afternoon (I'd dropped her off somewhere i the morning) because I wanted to do some forging now that the sun was shining. She says sure.

During lunch she tells me that after doing that, she's going to visit her mom in the hospital and pick up her laundry. So I tell her to leave earlier and that I'll pick up our daughter (because that would be 4 PM) and she says no. I argue that if I do it, she can go to her mother earlier and thus be back home sooner instead of way past dinner. She says no again, annoyed that I keep trying. I say I just want to help because it would make her afternoon easier she says thanks, noted, but you wanted to forge so you do that. I give up.

Then after lunch she starts turning over the chairs on top of the table which means she's about to clean the kitchen. While she is doing that and doing misc cleanup, I grad the vacuum cleaner and want to start vacuuming and she says what are you doing? I say I'd go around with the vacuum so you won't have to after you're doing cleaning up. She says I got this, you go forge. I argue that I don't think it's right that she is doing household work while I'm doing something fun and she tells me it doesn't matter and since we're both 'doing something' it's ok.

At that point I gave up :)
 

Bruno

Administrator
Staff member
Yes.

I forged a letter opener in complex twisted damascus. It's going to be fancy with narwhale scales. Not a whole lot of detail in forging i left it bulky to make it easier to outline and make the dagger grind.

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Then 2 bars of 80 layer damascus and a small bar of the same twist as the letter opener. Not entirely sure what ill do with it i suspect I'll cut it, put O2 in the middle and make a larger dagger.

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