In reading this, it seems that Paul was nitpicking things rather than addressing larger points.
Is my counter-pointing of Tim’s unsubstantiated complaints about the Price Waterhouse report really nit-picking or have I addressed the ‘larger issues’ he brought up? I thought I was doing the latter. I don’t see any larger points that he’s put forward.
Tim was the one who brougth up the Price Waterhouse review, so let’s review Tim’s charges. There were five ‘large points’ in his argument. The remainder of what he said seemed fairly polemical to me, not much of which was well supported by facts, stats or logic. Tim more or less admits he doesn’t like to get into details like this, although he says he’s happy to stand by what he’s said so far.
1)“The analysis does NOT include an analysis of the impact of the tamper-evident foil used for covering the cork.”
I offered 3 page references showing that foil had been counted against cork and synthetics in the study. Either Tim didn’t read this report thoroughly or he left these references out purposefully. They weren’t buried in footnotes.
2)“The analysis did not include a component of recycled aluminum in SC production”
Contary to his second charge, I’ve just shown that this didn’t matter because there weren’t trust-able figures to use in calculations, so PW counted SC production on a zero CO2 use basis, only calculating CO2 use for synthetic and cork production (pg 18).
Prior to finding this new fact, I showed that the report did in fact include a (generous estimate) of 35% rate for aluminum recycling in France (pg Page 63). Again, either Tim didn’t read this report thoroughly or he left out this information purposefully. These figures were in the main body of the text, not buried in footnotes.
3)“The assumption that cap aluminum is not recycled”.
I found the best figures for SC recycling I could find, and examples for how SC weren’t being recycled as claimed. Tim conceded maybe SCs needed to work a lot harder on that one.
After more searching I see that on pg 25 according to the ISO 14044, §4342 Allocation procedures PW adhere to in this report it appears that SC are not credited for recycling because they fall short of ISO standards in this respect. Corks aren’t credited with recycling either, although there are active cork recycling plans on several continents.
4)The assumption that 100% of the energy required for refining aluminum comes from non-renewables
Originally I conceded that to claim that aluminum was made from non-renewable wouldn’t be accurate if that was actually the case in the study (not keen to reread the whole damned thing just to make a point). But while Tim made this charge, at the same time he ignored the fact that mining and transport of bauxite is very CO2 intensive. That on top of SC manufacture.
Afterthoughts made me revise the more likely scenario that it was difficult, if not impossible, to define any industry’s (%) sourcing renewable energy unless that industry can detail that precisely in a verifiable way. All told, the use of renewables for aluminum production is unlikely to be any higher than for any other closure. So it becomes a constant for all concerned I assume.
5)The final point was his complaint about the ‘silly’ inclusion of the entire cork forest’s substantial contribution as a CO2 sink in ‘a cradle to grave’ CO2 study.
On that point I showed that Tim had taken that specific ‘peer review’ challenge out of context, consciously ignoring the counter-pointed paragraph below. And so I included the full quote where the the report conceded that point claiming back a more conservative figure, only the carbon sink associated with stoppers.
The hard pill SC has to swallow here is that in a cradle to grave CO2 audit, you get pinged for the source of your materials, bauxite mining in this case, and the cost of transport, manufacture and disposal. Corks are luckier here, because the source of their material scrubs CO2 out of the atmosphere, their manufacturing uses much less energy and they are completely biodegradable.
Fact is this is all done to standards ISO 14044 and ISO 14040. If the aluminum industry asked PW to do an independent audit on them, they’d be using the same standards, just fed in with different stats. These same auditing standards are being used all across the globe to document CO2 footprint. They ain’t going away.
Tim invited us all to read the report for ourselves, and when I did, it seemed to me either we weren’t reading the same report or he was reading what he wanted in to the report, not what was actually there.
As he wasn’t supplying any facts or figures to support his attack, there wasn’t much to be done beyond checking the veracity and logic of what he was charging against either the report itself or other evidence to the contrary. If that is nit-picking, then so be it. I was under the mistaken impression I was focusing on Tim’s ‘larger’ points. I don’t see that he was correct on any of these larger points. Perhaps he is least incorrect on point 4.
I’m getting to you.