Calculating the economics of belly button lint

[Koloss17 She/They]

I’m no economist, but I am interested in the amount of money I can get from loose cloth in my tum. So I want to know, how much would belly button lint make you? I do need to know the context in which the quote was said. It said something like “and don’t get me started on the economics of belly button lint” I forgot what he was talking about at first, but there is implications that the belly button lint is worth more than that thing. 

Do you think we could find the worth of belly button lint?

[KBIsASlytherin]

First, we need to see what the lint can be made into. Somewhere, I learned that you can turn lint into clay, but dryer lint probably has a slightly different composition than the belly button kind. It's a start though.

[Koloss17 She/They]

Yes, yes it is.

 

[Kelsier'sGodComplex she/her]

If the lint acted like wool, you could make clothes out of it, but I do not know if I would be comfortable wearing something made of another persons belly button lint. 

[KBIsASlytherin]

Okay, so most lint has small amounts of thread from clothes, which we can extract. With it, we can further make felt, paper, yarn, clay, or fire starters. 

Let's go with yarn

So yarn goes for about $5 a skein of 200 feet. Lint is say, about 90% actual clothes, after some math and research, the average amount of lint produced in a day is 1.9mg. cotton (assuming that that's all that is being worn) is 770 kg per cubic meter.(here I converted to yds but I forgot to keep track of the original decimal I got for meters soz) That equals ≈.000000002698526323272091017 of a cubic meter of lint each day. Dividing by 200 (for the avg length of a skein of medium yarn) you get 741145262417 days of belly lint needed to make one skein of yarn, or about 27073799.5 lifetimes. Moving on, that means that a days worth of belly lint is worth $.0000000000067463158 or .00000000067463158¢.

-Your friendly neighborhood Slytherin Sunagakure shinobi

[GoWibble he/him]

just want to say, not an approved method of making money. not effective, either. 

[+ILuvHats he/him]

Ah, but everyone has forgotten about marketing. I can imagine an instance where 20 people get together and spend a decade extracting their belly button lint and putting it into a jar. Once they reach a certain threshold, they can get it into the Guinness Book of World Records. And even something as stupid as a ball of belly button lint could be auctioned off if it set a world record. 

[KBIsASlytherin]

 

1 minute ago, ILuvHats said:

Ah, but everyone has forgotten about marketing. I can imagine an instance where 20 people get together and spend a decade extracting their belly button lint and putting it into a jar. Once they reach a certain threshold, they can get it into the Guinness Book of World Records. And even something as stupid as a ball of belly button lint could be auctioned off if it set a world record. 

It'd take 2138830161 people 1 year to make the yarn. I'm down to join.

[+ILuvHats he/him]

2 minutes ago, KBIsASlytherin said:

It'd take 2138830161 people 1 year to make the yarn. I'm down to join.

That's less than a third of the world's population. Easy. I'd be in too.

[KBIsASlytherin]

 

Just now, ILuvHats said:

That's less than a third of the world's population. Easy. I'd be in too.

It's 2.1 tril. The earth only has ≈7 bil

[+ILuvHats he/him]

33 minutes ago, KBIsASlytherin said:

It's 2.1 tril. The earth only has ≈7 bil

What? I only count 10 digits in your previous post. Must have missed a few zeros.

[KBIsASlytherin]

1 minute ago, ILuvHats said:

What? I only count 10 digits in your previous post. Must have missed a few zeros.

Nah it's my mistake. Yeah it's 2.1 bil

[Kelsier'sGodComplex she/her]

I am also in. 

7 hours ago, ILuvHats said:

That's less than a third of the world's population. Easy. I'd be in too.

 

[Koloss17 She/They]

Just realized this is in the wrong forum. How do I move it to acatraz? 

[Stumpythecognitiveshadow]

On 1/18/2020 at 11:14 PM, KBIsASlytherin said:

Okay, so most lint has small amounts of thread from clothes, which we can extract. With it, we can further make felt, paper, yarn, clay, or fire starters. 

Let's go with yarn

So yarn goes for about $5 a skein of 200 feet. Lint is say, about 90% actual clothes, after some math and research, the average amount of lint produced in a day is 1.9mg. cotton (assuming that that's all that is being worn) is 770 kg per cubic meter.(here I converted to yds but I forgot to keep track of the original decimal I got for meters soz) That equals ≈.000000002698526323272091017 of a cubic meter of lint each day. Dividing by 200 (for the avg length of a skein of medium yarn) you get 741145262417 days of belly lint needed to make one skein of yarn, or about 27073799.5 lifetimes. Moving on, that means that a days worth of belly lint is worth $.0000000000067463158 or .00000000067463158¢.

-Your friendly neighborhood Slytherin Sunagakure shinobi

 

I didn't read it or check the math, but I appreciate the ridiculous amount of effort that you put in. 

[Thaidakar the Ghostblood he/him]

hahaha, this is awesome, I will join the donators.

[The Oculator he/him]

This is amazing