General separation

[Elessar_warrior]

Overall the general separation doesn't feel worth it for a lot of industries. Most industries only have 10% left of something useful.
It seems good for residential waste though.
Thoughts?

[Deco Boladasso]

So, you mean its like in real life?

[KJ]

Originally posted by Deco Boladasso:

So, you mean its like in real life?

When there is waste in industry, it is usually seperated already from the get go. Only in residential waste stuff just gets all thrown together. Organic waste with metal etc.
Type of waste in industry is just often a "nasty" type and not profitable to clean/recycle -> gets dumped in rivers in countries without laws against it.

[Beast of War]

The steel coming off the vehicle scrapping facility is worth it. Certainly since the game is charging you an outrageous amount of money if you "sell" an old vehicle. You don't get money for an old vehicle, you have to pay -again- to get rid of it. So then are the materials coming off it a very good deal for the effort.

The separation of iron scrap which you can reform into steel rolls is too.

There is a fair amount of gravel coming off construction waste, but gravel is a cheap material you can easily get yourself ( with a simple mine and excavator, and a processor ) at minimal investment

Point is, gravel and metal do not burn. You will have to separate it or you will be stuck with a mountain of excess waste you cannot get rid of. Or you will have to pay at customs. Then you lose money instead of making some.

Biological waste can be made into fertilizer. I guess that increases your farm's yield, so that is interesting.

I don't think you can actually make money with waste if you deduct all the material cost of the buildings and vehicles ( and keeping them repaired ) but it is a choice to make the game more complex/realistic.

[Deco Boladasso]

Exactly. Recycling is costly. That's why its not fully implemented/wasn't implemented before in the real world. We're only doing it to avoid environmental issues, not to get profit per se; if it was at least kinda profitable, enterprises wouldn't go as far as they go to extract new resources instead of reusing the ones that are literally avaliable on the street.
I would like to be able to import it, as many other kinds of waste like nuclear waste so we could recycle it.

[Beast of War]

In my country - and i guess in many countries - there still are millions worth of copper in the ground in obsolete cables, like the old telephone networks. These cables are to slow for modern age data transport demands and with introduction of glassfiber cables pretty much everywhere the copper cables fell into disuse. And there were a lot of copper networks : civil, military, the railroad company and early ICT companies all had their own.

There are PLANS to get the copper out of the ground but the costs are too prohibitive. For this, the price of copper needs to be much higher. Since new copper from mines is cheaper, no copper will be dug up from old cables.

So yes, IRL it is a cost thing. If you can get new material for a lower price no one cares about recycling. The only recycling that was always necessary is of harmful chemicals and materials. And even that is only done if gouvernements can't get away with just dumping it somewhere or burning it which causes harmful air pollution.

Kinda fun in this game you can ( and probaby will ) dig up old cables and reuse the materials. The game is doing better then RL.

[Silent_Shadow]

I found that the general separation facility is a decent way to get rid of construction waste from mines, as 35% will be converted to "other waste," which can be burned instead of needing processing into gravel.

[Beast of War]

I have seen fertilizer appear in a dump for biological waste. I could not extract it from there, it is strange since fertilizer is created with chemicals and not separated, and the dump was selected for fertilizer only. But it also disappeared again.

What was even more troubling is my fertilizer plant stopped production and it was not possible to unclog it's internal storages of biological waste, mixed waste or fertilizer. Trucks simply refused to load for some reason. Their destinations were not full. This paralyzed the waste system so much my coal processor stopped working ( full waste bins ) after that my coal power plant and i had to emergency import electricity battling the effects of power cut to the fuel distribution system. ( traffic jams )

Such chain reactions can be swift, severe and sometimes irreversible ( without a savegame ) Was a first for me the waste system ( or rather a bug in it ) caused an apocalypse.

[Onbird]

Rule of thumb: Workers should be brought to power plants using fuel-powered vehicles, not electrically powered ones. Thus the vehicles keep on rolling despite a power cut caused by temporary lack of power plant workers.

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by Beast of War:

I have seen fertilizer appear in a dump for biological waste. I could not extract it from there, it is strange since fertilizer is created with chemicals and not separated, and the dump was selected for fertilizer only. But it also disappeared again.

Biological waste will decay into fertilizer in dumps, but fertilizer will also decay away in dumps. I find it is best to either take biological waste straight to dumps connected with farms and allow them to use it as it becomes fertilizer, or to take it to a composting facility (and not a connected dump) for a higher yield.

Originally posted by Beast of War:

What was even more troubling is my fertilizer plant stopped production and it was not possible to unclog it's internal storages of biological waste, mixed waste or fertilizer. Trucks simply refused to load for some reason. Their destinations were not full. This paralyzed the waste system so much my coal processor stopped working ( full waste bins ) after that my coal power plant and i had to emergency import electricity battling the effects of power cut to the fuel distribution system. ( traffic jams )

You can always dump the internal waste storage of a building to keep it functioning. I am not sure if this creates pollution or not, but it hardly matters for most industries.

Originally posted by Konrad von Richtmark:

Rule of thumb: Workers should be brought to power plants using fuel-powered vehicles, not electrically powered ones. Thus the vehicles keep on rolling despite a power cut caused by temporary lack of power plant workers.

Or just backup your power systems; there are even ways to do this automatically.

[KJ]

Originally posted by Konrad von Richtmark:

Rule of thumb: Workers should be brought to power plants using fuel-powered vehicles, not electrically powered ones. Thus the vehicles keep on rolling despite a power cut caused by temporary lack of power plant workers.

they cant refuel at gas station either without power ;)

[Beast of War]

Originally posted by KJ:

they cant refuel at gas station either without power ;)

Yes that is what happened.

And i even kept the map start foreign electricity import network for emergencies. But the chain reactions in the entire populated area were so severe i could not recover anymore. And all this from 1 link in the chain of waste management failing. It can depopulate your build up world just a sure as heating problems can.

Sounds a bit dramatic as you can load a save game, but i think it was caused by a bug.