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Pumping oil from inside the Earth and then converting it into plastic and then into CO2 has a much bigger impact than putting the plastic into a garbage dump. T
by DANK_YACHT 4y ago
Pumping oil from inside the Earth and then converting it into plastic and then into CO2 has a much bigger impact than putting the plastic into a garbage dump. The oil to make the plastic came from a hole in the ground. A garbage dump is a hole in the ground. You've essentially done nothing. If you decompose the plastic into CO2, then that has a major impact on the atmosphere.
- barbazoo 4y agoA landfill also emits e.g. CO2 and CH3, it's not that it's a sealed process.
- DANK_YACHT 4y agoThe CO2 is from decomposing food, not from plastic. The CH3 can be harvested, or it will breakdown on its own after a decade.
- adhesive_wombat 4y agoWell it will be from plastic once a hypothetical plastic-eating microbe makes it into the dump. Also, what do you think CH3 breaks down into?
- adhesive_wombat 4y agoThe estimate I've seen is that 25 million tons of plastic are added per year. That much carbon is added to the atmosphere every 6 hours. Plastic in the oceans is not a worrying amount of carbon, it's just a worrying amount of plastic. Even if you burned every single kilo of plastic produced, that's still "only" 380 million tons a year, or about 4 days worth of CO2.
- krona 4y agoPerhaps we should put plastic in to the landfills, and not the oceans?
- adhesive_wombat 4y agoAbsolutely, but if the choice is "burn" the plastic if you could (via an oxidative process like digestion, rather than combustion) in place in the oceans or just leave it there forever, then adding to the carbon in the atmosphere is not the thing to worry about.
- DANK_YACHT 4y agoThis is a good point I hadn't thought of. One adjustment to your calculations is that the CO2 emitted from plastic would weigh over 2 times the weight of the plastic due to the additional oxygen atoms, but that doesn't change the calculus substantially.
- moonchrome 4y agoOil deep underground somewhere in the middle of nowhere is not remotely close to landfills close to surface, next to understand waters and relatively close to cities
- orangepurple 4y agoIt is more efficient to burn the already refined petroleum product (plastic) than to dig up more unrefined petroleum products (crude) and put them to use