Welcome to today’s daily kōrero!
Anyone can make the thread, first in first served. If you are here on a day and there’s no daily thread, feel free to create it!
Anyway, it’s just a chance to talk about your day, what you have planned, what you have done, etc.
So how’s it going?
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Yeah, cycling today made me wish I’d packed my face mask and snorkel
We recently moved (Auckland) and noticed that there were two “recycling” bins only.
Can we just use one of them as a “Rubbish” Bin by putting a Rubbish Bin Tag on it?
The blue one with the yellow lid is the old recycling bin and they gave us a new and bigger one (green). You can now either use the old blue on for rubbish with the tag, or buy the pre-paid rubbish bags. Bin + tag is cheaper I think.
Ahh thank you for that explanation as to why they were both labelled “recycling” :)
Ended up looking at what the neighbors were doing last night and copied what they were doing haha.
You will have a glass bin and mixed recycling bin https://wellington.govt.nz/rubbish-recycling-and-waste/when-to-put-out-your-rubbish-and-recycling/suburban-and-inner-city-collections they go out alternate weeks. Rubbish goes into yellow bags you get in 5 packs from the supermarket, usually kept at the checkout. Ask for them there.
Looks like they are in Auckland and you’ve linked to the Wellington page. But likely it works in a similar way.
It’s also possible you can get a rubbish wheelie bin from a local company. I’m not in Auckland but normally the cost of collection is paid for in when you buy the rubbish bags, so you aren’t paying twice if you use a wheelie bin from a private company. They also often let you choose a smaller bin, have fortnightly collection, and other options like that.
True, ignore me then, i read that as they had moved from Auckland.
We have council wheelie bins here and pay for tags for each collection.
I’m guessing they don’t have a problem with people using “recycling” wheelie bins as rubbish bins when clearly marked with a rubbish tag, as that must’ve been what the previous owner was doing.
Morena everyone. Off to recycling later, got lots of bottles (hic) both plastic and glass to get rid of.
A few years back, I remember a NZ business set up to turn waste plastic into a road topping. Not seen anything about that recently, I wonder if it’s still operating? Might make a search.
There was some talk of using old plastic to make new playground equipment too but I’m not sure if anything ever came of it.
In the late 90s there was a show called Beyond 2000 that showcased up and coming technologies. Most of it was about recycling and what we call green tech these days and I often wonder how much better off we’d be if any of it had actually been adopted.
With all the concern about micro plastic in our water and pretty much everything now, maybe there’s less enthusiasm for it, especially something that degrades into the environment
The disposal of waste, especially plastic, is a real issue. I heard recently that up here in Northland, land-fill is still the most used method.
Yeah I’m sure that’s the case too. Doesn’t most of our recycling consist of shipping it off overseas still?
No, I believe it’s almost none now.Edit: I may be wrong about this. We can recycle 1, 2, and 5 in NZ but I can’t find good data on what proportion is actually done in NZ. Articles written a few years ago talk about lots still going overseas, but there has also been new regulation in the past few years to prevent “low quality” plastics being exported, so this may have changed. Here is a page that lists everything except metals being processed in NZ for Wellington City, but it may be different in other parts of the country.1, 2, and 5 plastics can be recycled in NZ.
If your council accepts 3, 4, 6, or 7, they are going to landfill, no exceptions. I think most now will say they don’t take them, but I’ve read a while back that some councils say they take them to make things easier for people, then they sort them out during processing and send them to landfill.
Huh interesting, I just checked our council and they take 1-7, but they just send 3, 4, 6 & 7 to landfill. Good info, thanks. Hopefully they sort something out for the rest soon.
Those plastics are harder to recycle. It would be better to stop using them. I purposely avoid buying things that aren’t in 1,2, or 5.
Now if you’re really keen, you can recycle almost anything. But it’s super expensive. But just in case: https://zerowasteboxes.terracycle.co.nz/
Remember when people used to be concerned about plastic bags because they can take a long time to break down? Turns out they were breaking down into smaller pieces of plastic, so in reality they weren’t “breaking down” at all as people would have imagined.
Future generations are going to look back at us like we look back at the Ancient Romans. They knew lead made you crazy yet they still used it for their aqueducts. We are gonna get that same look of disbelief from future school kids.
It’s crazy right, I feel the people who had developed the plastics would be well aware it’s not it’s not actually breaking down.
I did read awhile back they were finding micro plastics literally everywhere now. I wonder if we can develop some bacteria or insect that can digest plastic. I remember someone was doing something with mealworms and styrofoam or similar
So it sounds like a good plan, except one thing: the lack of microbes breaking it down is exactly what makes it useful. If you have a microbe breaking down plastic into an organic, then it won’t be long before you jump in your car and the plastic parts of the engine have been eaten by the microbe. We will end up having to develop a new substance that doesn’t break down.
I think we should be focusing our efforts into moving most things away from using plastic. We should focus on developing non-plastic products that can take the place of plastic for short term/single use places, so plastic can stay useful for longer term uses.
I’ve heard that old tyres are being used for roads, or part of them at least. Maybe plastics are included too?
Apparently there are 2 NZ companies using waste plastic to produce road surfaces. Apparently Downer have a contract to lay roads using Plas Mix in New Plymouth for the next 10 years.
I guess it’s new technology atm so the pollution impacts are to be determined.
Morning! I’m testing out the new Lemmy version. It’s not released yet but the Show context bug is super annoying so we might end up doing the update with a pre-release version.
I’m currently running it in a test environment and it’s been going longer than 10 minutes and still appears to be starting up. I used to be able to do updates in under a minute up until the last couple. I probably need to schedule some downtime to update it, when I do I’ll put a post in !support[email protected] but there may not be a lot of notice.
If you’re not on Lemmy.nz, you won’t notice anything except perhaps some missing images and a lack of lemmy.nz users.
Fixing the show context bug would be great!
The test instance is not running at all with the update, so it’s not going to be as easy as I’d hoped. I’m going to try to spend some time today working out why it’s not working.
For those following the saga, I finally got to taste the bourbon barrel aged coffee this morning. It definitely tastes bourbon-y. I guess you could describe it as tasting like bourbon coffee. It was pretty nice to sip on but I think it’s something to try for it’s uniqueness, not really an every day blend.
It took this long because I ordered it, then I had to chase it up because it hadn’t arrived, then it arrived about an hour before I headed to the airport to visit my parents for a week and they don’t have equipment to deal with beans and I was only taking carry on… I’m home now and finally got to taste it.
…
Your parents live in the airport?
Yeah, my Dad is a 777 and my Mum is an A380.
That explains why they don’t have the equipment to deal with beans.
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Hey keep it clean, there are kids here.
What? Where??
I’m sure they get in the way of my shenanigans and I’ll be unmasked or something…
@[email protected] @[email protected] an update above. Jokes on you, “Show context” doesn’t work on the website so you might have trouble finding the comment I’m replying to 😀
At least it got sorted! I’m too lazy these days to do good coffee at home, we just buy instant now.
Funnily enough I had a post haste delivery shortly after you mentioned it. Didn’t show up the whole day it was scanned as on board, then the guy knocked on our door at 9.30PM because he was driving by and didn’t want to come back the next day.
I’m not really one for caffeine hits, honestly too much caffeine makes me tired. No idea why. I’d rather drink no coffee than instant 😀
I’m not even a coffee connoisseur, I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about a coffee except whether I liked it or not.
I cut back sometime ago to only one black coffee a day in the mornings, it was tough breaking the habit. Used to get a headache in the afternoons when I’d skip my afternoon coffee.
Instant’s not THAT bad once you get used to it… some of the really cheap ones are much worse than others though
I also recently cut down on my caffeine consumption and have felt a lot better.
I used to feel a bit weird sometimes in the afternoon - a nauseous/sickly feeling, and after doing the math on how much caffeine I was having on a regular basis (morning capsule coffee, 3~4 cups of green tea during the work day, and a drip coffee just after lunch), figured it might of been the cause.
Have really cut down to a coffee in the morning, and a cup or two of tea throughout the day, and haven’t felt ill since.
I realised I needed to try cutting down when skipping or delaying that afternoon coffee would leave me with a headache. I’m pretty much just drinking one in the morning now. The only tea I really drink is rooibos at night which happens to be caffeine free.
Ooh I love rooibos. Just a really nice drink to have :)
Interesting to see your comment about a coffee seemingly stopping your pm headaches.
Mrs Floofah sometimes suffers from Hypnic headaches at night. Always has a coffee shot in a glass ready to hand and it stops the headache very quickly. Her headaches seem to come in phases, 2 weeks every night, then nothing for 2 weeks.
That is interesting. For me it was more that I pretty much had a coffee at the same time every afternoon every single day. I’m guessing my body expected that caffeine hit every afternoon and wasn’t happy when I started cutting it out.
I feel like instance coffee is just a different flavour. I prefer making coffee from grinds, but like you I’m typically just a one black coffee in the morning kind of guy. Sometimes I go weeks without having any.
Today I had two because I made one before remembering about the bourbon beans I got, so I had to have a second.
I’m not sure I could do the weeks without. It’s so ingrained as part of my morning routine now… get up, boil water, make coffee.
I do find mixing the instant with some cold water first then filling with the boiled water tastes better though.
Only a barbarian would pour boiling water right onto their coffee 😄
Yeah same here!
I will still do the occasional drip coffee from home ground beans, but I see myself more often than not using Pods with Allpress capsules, or even more recently Korean “Maxim” instant coffee.
Is that a 3 in 1 style coffee? I prefer no sugar so stopped with all the Asian style ones. Usually just get what’s on sale at the supermarket
Yea that’s the one.
Got Coffee, powdered milk and sugar. Can feel a little guilty sometimes because its pretty sweet, but it’s nice to have sometimes :)
Yesterday, I found my new favorite potato chips - Heartland’s nude (no salt) and nearly nude (209mg/100g). Prior to this Proper Crisps had the lowest amount salt (300mg). I still like Proper’s Big Cut chips though, hopefully they bring out a low-salt variant as well.
Do you suffer from a salt induced high blood pressure, or is it simply the taste?
No blood pressure issues here, just trying to cut down on my salt intake. Also, I absolutely love potato chips , so I’m always on the lookout for healthier chips (and food in general).
My next goal is to find chips which are cut with their skins intact, and baked (not fried). Maybe I should write a letter to Proper and Heartland…
Glad you’ve got no blood pressure issues. I do have BP issues, so am aware how sodium can, and does, raise it for some people.
It’s fairly easy to bake your own potato chips. You just need a mandolin style slicer for appropriate thinness
