Gestion des déchets
How garbage is produced, recycled and sorted, and how to keep its losses and pollution down.
Garbage Blocks
Crafting, recycling and sorting all collect their waste until it fills a whole block, then output that block. What the block becomes depends only on what that block-sized share contains:
- A single material gives a pure block of it, such as IronScrapItem.
- Several materials of the same family give that family's mixed block, such as MixedMetalScrapItem. Residuals mixed in do not change this.
- Only residuals give MixedResidualsItem.
- Anything else gives MixedGarbageItem.
Whatever is left below a full block carries over and mixes with what comes next, so one odd craft can change the next block.
Sorting at the Source
A crafting table keeps one garbage store for every recipe it crafts. A table dedicated to recipes producing the same waste therefore outputs pure blocks, which skip sorting and the losses that come with it, and most pure materials no longer pollute. A recipe that produces several kinds of waste always comes out mixed. The table's status shows what the next block will be.
Efficiency
Recyclers and sorters lose part of what they process. Their efficiency is the share of each material that keeps its type; the rest degrades into a residual, such as GarbageItem for metals or CompostItem for food. The RecyclerItem keeps 75%, the ToolBenchItem 50%, and sorters between 75% and 100% depending on how specialized they are. Efficiency is fixed for each machine: skills and talents do not change it. Residuals are never degraded further, and each garbage item's tooltip shows what it degrades into.
Transport
Polluting waste carried in a vehicle only pollutes once the vehicle has stayed ten minutes in the same spot, so driving it to a sorter or a dump does not poison the road.