Recyclables Price Data Crunch

[naterhansen]

The big waste management companies of the world have had a stronghold on the recycling industry for ages now and have made it almost impossible for these programs to make any money from their materials.

We are in the process of building an automated sorting machine for recyclables so that small communities can cut out the middle man and start profiting from their recycling programs rather than losing from them.

One of the most critical elements is in finding out exactly how much the price difference is between selling it straight to market versus just selling it to big companies. Our hope is, with this data, that we can determine if the cost of the machine can cover the profit gain of sorting and selling the materials.

I have an abundance of data already and just need a team to hunt down a bit more and create graphs, charts and calculations out of the findings.

[whalliburton]

How would you propose this as a Hackathon project?

An interactive online application detailing the respective recyling
streams, their local transportation and processing capabilities, the
potential profits from sorting and reusing material here vs sorting and
shipping vs bailing and shipping vs ?. Scrapers for the current
recycling price indexes so that the data is real-time.

We've set up a wiki page for project proposals at

https://github.com/Blue-Sky-Skunkworks/missoula-civic-hackathon-notes/wiki/Projects

that you can flesh your ideas out before the hackathon. Probably make
sense to create a separate "Project: Recycling Infographics" or some
such page and flesh it out there and link to it from the "Projects"
page.

I have help you with wiki work if you need. I agree that the online
editor is not ideal, but will work. I prefer to git clone the repo and
edit in emacs.

Peace and recycling,
Will

Nathan writes:

The big waste management companies of the world have had a stronghold on the recycling industry for ages now and have made it almost impossible for these programs to make any money from their materials.

We are in the process of building an automated sorting machine for recyclables so that small communities can cut out the middle man and start profiting from their recycling programs rather than losing from them.

One of the most critical elements is in finding out exactly how much the price difference is between selling it straight to market versus just selling it to big companies. Our hope is, with this data, that we can determine if the cost of the machine can cover the profit gain of sorting and selling the materials.

I have an abundance of data already and just need a team to hunt down a bit more and create graphs, charts and calculations out of the findings.

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#1

William Halliburton
406-830-5031

[whalliburton]

I'd like to see a Sankey chart of this data. I've found these are effective
visual representations of flow quantities and form changes, though they
don't show the stocks resulting from these flows, AKA the landfill,
scrapyard, etc. I pulled the picture below off the web as an example.
Unsure about the data's source or scope.

[image: Inline image 1]

On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 12:06 PM, William Halliburton <
will@blueskystewardship.org> wrote:

How would you propose this as a Hackathon project?

An interactive online application detailing the respective recyling
streams, their local transportation and processing capabilities, the
potential profits from sorting and reusing material here vs sorting and
shipping vs bailing and shipping vs ?. Scrapers for the current
recycling price indexes so that the data is real-time.

We've set up a wiki page for project proposals at

https://github.com/Blue-Sky-Skunkworks/missoula-civic-hackathon-notes/wiki/Projects

that you can flesh your ideas out before the hackathon. Probably make
sense to create a separate "Project: Recycling Infographics" or some
such page and flesh it out there and link to it from the "Projects"
page.

I have help you with wiki work if you need. I agree that the online
editor is not ideal, but will work. I prefer to git clone the repo and
edit in emacs.

Peace and recycling,
Will

Nathan writes:

The big waste management companies of the world have had a stronghold on
the recycling industry for ages now and have made it almost impossible for
these programs to make any money from their materials.

We are in the process of building an automated sorting machine for
recyclables so that small communities can cut out the middle man and start
profiting from their recycling programs rather than losing from them.

One of the most critical elements is in finding out exactly how much the
price difference is between selling it straight to market versus just
selling it to big companies. Our hope is, with this data, that we can
determine if the cost of the machine can cover the profit gain of sorting
and selling the materials.

I have an abundance of data already and just need a team to hunt down a
bit more and create graphs, charts and calculations out of the findings.

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:

#1

William Halliburton
406-830-5031

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Stephon Smith
Co-founder
Blue Sky Stewardship
120 Hickory St. Missoula, MT 59801
406.407.2671 <406.396.7706>
www.blueskystewardship.org

[whalliburton]

The networkD3 library has a sankey renderer we can use:

http://christophergandrud.github.io/networkD3/#sankey

Stephon Smith writes:

I'd like to see a Sankey chart of this data. I've found these are effective
visual representations of flow quantities and form changes, though they
don't show the stocks resulting from these flows, AKA the landfill,
scrapyard, etc. I pulled the picture below off the web as an example.
Unsure about the data's source or scope.

[image: Inline image 1]

On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 12:06 PM, William Halliburton <
will@blueskystewardship.org> wrote:

How would you propose this as a Hackathon project?

An interactive online application detailing the respective recyling
streams, their local transportation and processing capabilities, the
potential profits from sorting and reusing material here vs sorting and
shipping vs bailing and shipping vs ?. Scrapers for the current
recycling price indexes so that the data is real-time.

We've set up a wiki page for project proposals at

https://github.com/Blue-Sky-Skunkworks/missoula-civic-hackathon-notes/wiki/Projects

that you can flesh your ideas out before the hackathon. Probably make
sense to create a separate "Project: Recycling Infographics" or some
such page and flesh it out there and link to it from the "Projects"
page.

I have help you with wiki work if you need. I agree that the online
editor is not ideal, but will work. I prefer to git clone the repo and
edit in emacs.

Peace and recycling,
Will

Nathan writes:

The big waste management companies of the world have had a stronghold on
the recycling industry for ages now and have made it almost impossible for
these programs to make any money from their materials.

We are in the process of building an automated sorting machine for
recyclables so that small communities can cut out the middle man and start
profiting from their recycling programs rather than losing from them.

One of the most critical elements is in finding out exactly how much the
price difference is between selling it straight to market versus just
selling it to big companies. Our hope is, with this data, that we can
determine if the cost of the machine can cover the profit gain of sorting
and selling the materials.

I have an abundance of data already and just need a team to hunt down a
bit more and create graphs, charts and calculations out of the findings.

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:

#1

William Halliburton
406-830-5031

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Blue Sky Skunkworks" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
email to blue-sky-skunkworks+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to blue-sky-skunkworks@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/blue-sky-skunkworks/87povgpsca.fsf%40black.williamhalliburton.com
.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Stephon Smith
Co-founder
Blue Sky Stewardship
120 Hickory St. Missoula, MT 59801
406.407.2671 <406.396.7706>
www.blueskystewardship.org

William Halliburton
Blue Sky Stewardship
120 Hickory St. Missoula, MT 59801
406-830-5031
www.blueskystewardship.org