3 ms·

Is burning plastic better than just burying it? It seems like burying plastic waste would be a decent way to sequester carbon long-term provided it's done in a

by elihu 5y ago

Is burning plastic better than just burying it? It seems like burying plastic waste would be a decent way to sequester carbon long-term provided it's done in a way that's not going to cause harmful chemicals to get into the water table. Burning it just turns it back into CO2. You get energy in the process, but is it worth the trouble? Some materials like PVC emit chlorine gas when burned... it seems like that would be a problem, but maybe there's a reasonable solution.

colechristensen 5y ago
Eh, if you think about burning garbage displacing burning fossil fuels, it seems to be more or less a carbon neutral act (in that the decision doesn't increase the amount of carbon burned, just switching from burning fossil fuels to making oil into something useful for a little while before burning it. It has the added benefit of not having the things like radioactive soot that burning coal has. Is burying better than burning? I would bet there's a complex cost-benefit analysis to be done there which might not be all that obvious which one is better.