May the Circle be Unbroken: full cycle cost analysis

     There are a lot of circles, or cycles, in life. The "Circle of Life" which moves between birth to death back to birth. The "Carbon Dioxide" cycle has CO2 arising from combustion (burning) of materials and then being trapped by living plants to strain it out of the atmosphere but providing the possibility of going back to the atmosphere when the "storage" is burned. Number three is a more "macro-" (big picture) view of recycling and reuse (as talked about in my other blog The Houseboat Philosophy). A fourth (which is the primary focus of this blog) arises from manufacturing. There are others.
     Manufacturing starts with a plan. The plan is based around a finished product. In order to complete the plan, there is a need of a list of components. Each component may be composed from individual parts, and the parts will be created from some original resource. Beyond the list of components, there is assembly/manufacturing, and then sales and distribution.
     The parts that occur between the harvesting of the raw materials and the sales and distribution are typically considered a "normal" aspect of business. A company may outsource (farm out, sub-delegate or sub-contract, etc) parts of the work but all of the parts, whether done directly by the company or not, are part of a "normal" manufacturing process. For many companies, this is the end of their process. However, it is not the end of the cycle. A cycle does not complete until everything is back to the beginning (though rarely EXACTLY the same for the next cycle).
     What does an incomplete cycle look like? With the CO2 cycle, we are seeing the effects right now. More absorbers (plankton in the ocean, trees and other plants on the land) are being displaced while historical (fossil fuels and some current biofuels and other combustibles) "fixed" carbon dioxide is being released into the air.
     In the case of a manufacturing cycle, the direct effect of not completing the cycle is pollution. If the company does not take care of it -- making it part of the product cost -- then it is taken care of by the taxpayers. This is a prevalent form of corporate subsidy -- and part of the reason why environmental laws and protection agencies are needed to prevent some corporations from offloading their costs to the general population.
     What methods are used for handling pollution? Recycling is certainly one method. Containment is another. Unfortunately, ignoring it is another common method which causes other, less direct, costs for health and medical treatment and loss of productivity for farmers, fisherpeople, and others who work within the global environment to produce food or provide recreation. Reduced fishing yields, enormous islands of plastic in the ocean, and a hazardous cycle of needing increasing amounts of pesticides/herbicides/insecticides to maintain crop production levels act as hallmarks of improperly handled pollution.
     In 1900, there was probably more pollution produced per person than there is now. However, since the population was approximately 1/5 of today's population, the total amount of pollution was less. Pollution was more concentrated around industrial areas. This created "dead areas" but, outside of the industrially concentrated sections, nature could largely handle the edge conditions and there were still areas which were able to be self-sustaining. With today's population and the spread of urban areas, there are few areas where nature is able to keep up with the demands upon the ecology.
     If a corporation is to sell products according to a full cycle cost analysis, then all must finish (for the single cycle) in as close to an original condition as possible. That extra cost is added to the price and the company takes on the responsibility for taking care of the pollution and side-effects of harvesting resources. Otherwise, the general populace pays the cost via taxes and deterioration of health and the environment. In either case, the cost exists.
     What other circles, or cycles, are important within your life? What happens if the cycle is interrupted?

A divergent possibility : Reuse or Recycle is a fork in the road

    The three "R"s include the areas of Reduction, Reuse, and Recycling (with the addition of the preliminary "Rethink" of the Houseboat philosophy). But how is a decision made whether to resuse an article or to recycle it?

    Generally, this is a matter of how easy is it to do one or another. To reuse, it must be able to be used -- it must be in working order. A book is presumably able to be reused easily unless it is damaged. An old sofa might be moderately damaged -- needing a hole to be repaired or a leg put back on. A piece of electronic equipment may require a diagnosis followed by repair. There is a sliding scale of ease of reuse. No work is needed up to potentially quite a bit of work (perhaps as much as creating the item originally).

    Sometimes, repair can become part of a hobby or enterprise. People may take great pleasure in the work needed to repair a vintage car -- and the parts and labor can be considered an investment. The same can be true for people who buy a house in need of repair and succeed in renovating it such that it can be lived in, or resold, in a much better condition (and higher price).

    But, what about a toaster? There are some "vintage" toasters that can rise in value -- but most of them are "commodities" -- able to be replaced easily or replaced with "improved" characteristics. Is it worthwhile to repair? Is it a part of an internal enjoyment to repair? Possibly for some but for most it is not worthwhile. So, we hit an economic tradeoff which is very dependent on the local cost of merchandise and the local cost of labor.

    Let's say that a new working toaster is priced at $30. A used working toaster can bring $5 at a flea market or local swapmeet. If the cost of labor to repair toasters is $20/hour and it takes two hours to repair it, then making a non-working toaster able to be sold would cost $40 and only sell for $5 giving a net loss of $35. Who would decide to do that? Hopefully, the person would find a good place to recycle the toaster.

    However, if we are in another place where a new working toaster is priced at $20 and a used working toaster can bring $7, we may have a different situation. What if labor costs are only $2/hour? A non-working toaster can be repaired for $4 and sold for $7 -- giving a total profit of $3. We can see that the local prices and local labor costs make a big difference as to whether something is reused.

    Another factor that comes into play for reuse versus recycling is convenience. If I have a paperbook that is not severely damaged I have a choice for reuse by taking it to a used bookstore or recycling it via a curbside pick up. If it takes me 40 minutes (roundtrip) to take that book to the bookstore then recycling becomes an attractive option. If I have a box of books, however, the time needed to take them to the used bookstore becomes less of an overhead. Convenience and net savings come into play -- plus the value one gives to their own time.

    As an umbrella over the choices is the priority one gives to the environment. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle are the three rules but they only apply to people who care about the effects of NOT doing these things. Some may care because of the money involved with not doing it -- some may care because of the environmental costs -- and some may not care at all. What is my time worth in choices needed to help maintain a good environment? Do I care about the state of my surroundings when the next generation is growing up? These are underlying questions with individual answers.