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The mirror argument is that from a climate perspective, as long as we are still burning low energy-per-co2 fossils like lignite for energy (spot the embarrassed

by usrusr 5y ago

The mirror argument is that from a climate perspective, as long as we are still burning low energy-per-co2 fossils like lignite for energy (spot the embarrassed German) it might be a net reduction if we burn those high energy future landfills instead. Plastics are very useful, perhaps we should consider it wasteful to leave any well-to-atmosphere paths where the carbon did not go through a stage of making itself useful as plastics? Hard to find any numbers, because the CO2/MWh stats of incineration plants always contain a considerable fraction of renewable on the input and that would have to be removed from the equation an all sides (input, CO2 output, energy output) for a useful answer. I'm not enough of a chemist, but I suspect that the process the article is about could also habe potential for the creation of raw materials from bio stocks for plucking into the conventional plastics pipeline? This, combined with landfills (instead of incineration/highly processed incineration) could end up being the most viable carbon capture approach: instead of jumping through hoops trying to capture for the sake of it, it would harness our insatiable demand for plastics consumption. Are there any plant-based plastics already that don't don't with the friendly "degradable" label?

regularfry 5y ago
Probably the most common plant-based plastic is PLA. Or at least, that's the one I come across most often. While technically it's compostable, you need an industrial composting process to do it. It's not something you can just throw in the ground and dig up as usable soil a year later. And it's entirely possible that there would be ecosystem-unfriendly additives in it unless you were careful. This runs the same risk as we currently see with recycling: because it all happens behind closed doors, the door's wide open for the worst sorts of environmental fraud where the claimed process actually only happens on a small fraction of the input, and the rest is just dumped. We really need plastics that can be broken down at the home level so people can take ownership of the process directly.

by usrusr 5y ago

regularfry 5y ago

Probably the most common plant-based plastic is PLA. Or at least, that's the one I come across most often. While technically it's compostable, you need an industrial composting process to do it. It's not something you can just throw in the ground and dig up as usable soil a year later. And it's entirely possible that there would be ecosystem-unfriendly additives in it unless you were careful. This runs the same risk as we currently see with recycling: because it all happens behind closed doors, the door's wide open for the worst sorts of environmental fraud where the claimed process actually only happens on a small fraction of the input, and the rest is just dumped. We really need plastics that can be broken down at the home level so people can take ownership of the process directly.