Just to be clear, the noise and air pollution that a switch to drone shows away from fireworks shows would save, would be incredibly significant. I don’t think the cost makes it viable yet, but it’s something to aim for.
Just to be clear, the noise and air pollution that a switch to drone shows away from fireworks shows would save, would be incredibly significant. I don’t think the cost makes it viable yet, but it’s something to aim for.
I think that with everything like this, it’s very hard to quantify the effects - drones are predominantly plastic that won’t be recycled, lithium batteries from “low cost” sources, and complex electronics. Small drones are by nature expendable, so I think it’s pretty hard to quantify which of these the entertainment forms is “best” for the environment - they’re both kind of excessive. I wouldn’t want to be without either, they both have their place and bring a sense of wonder and awe (great video by the way!), I just think it’s an interesting discussion to have
7,500 reusable/repairable drones in this show vs more than 12,000 single use fireworks in London’s last New Year’s show alone.
I fully agree that fireworks still have their place, but I think the suggestion that they’re in any way comparable to drones from an environmental standpoint is way off base.
I’d like to see a better analysis, that’s all. I don’t know either way, and I’d bet that the co2 of the drone show is orders of magnitude lower than fireworks, for example. But as with lots of emerging technologies, it’s hard to make direct comparisons - is the lithium going to be recycled at end of life, did it come from “good” mines, how much of the plastic will end up in landfill and how much is pla/plant-based, and how does all this compare to the cardboard and explosive in the fireworks. Also, do the electronics contain conflict minerals, and are they recyclable, and what’s the expected life of the drones? How do the chemicals for colour in the fireworks affect their pollution, and how are they produced? Having recently seen an fairly damming look at Formula E (run on generators that are flown from England to wherever the races are, that kind of thing), I’m just intrigued to know more about how the sausage is made, if you see what I mean. It’s in our interest to ask this kind of thing, in the same way that it would have paid to ask more questions about how single-use plastics would be disposed of, rather than just trusting that them using less trees in their construction was worth it. These things never have a simple answer, and I’d like to know as much as possible
This is the exact same argument that I see used against EVs almost daily, while the people making these calls for “better analysis” ignore the dodgy mining practices and literal wars that are the result of oil extraction. But let’s go back to fireworks. I spent all of 30 seconds Googling and found this. I’m sure it’s far from an exhaustive list of firework ingredients but it’s a decent start. Highlights include:
Sulfur - extracted from oil and natural gas.
Aluminum - 28% of US aluminum comes from recycled sources, which is great, but any that goes into fireworks is then lost forever. The rest of it comes from mines in Canada and Jamaica.
Iron and copper - Mined domestically and both are recyclable but gone forever once they’re exploded.
Strontium - Mined in Mexico.
Barium - Mined in China.
Sodium - Mined in Chile and Peru.
How come you’re not asking for a better analysis of the mining practices for the ores extracted in Jamaica, Mexico, China, Chile, and Peru? How much of anything that makes up your average firework, including cardboard and plastic, is recycled at the end of that firework’s life? How many fireworks are reusable even once let alone tens or even hundreds of times? Much like with oil burning cars, these things are ignored because they’ve been around for a long time and it’s normalised. Meanwhile emerging technologies, while demonstrably cleaner/better in pretty much every metric, are held to impossible standards that the old tech gets a free pass on.
No, we don’t recycle much lithium yet but it’s a new technology and battery recycling plants are springing up all over the place all the time, and these same plants often deal in the various other electronic materials that you cited. How much used petroleum is recycled each year? How many fireworks?
I don’t want to argue and I should probably just delete this rather than posting it, having said my piece to myself, but perhaps I’m my own worst enemy…