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Um, why are we recycling plastic? We already know that burning plastic for energy is the superior option environmentally. If you have questions about toxins, o

by ars 4y ago

Um, why are we recycling plastic? We already know that burning plastic for energy is the superior option environmentally. If you have questions about toxins, or how it's environmentally superior in every way vs recycling, here is a thread I participated in that covers that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33322845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33322845

axiometry 4y ago
Citation? You didn't respond to mrinterweb in that thread, who cited this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187802961630158X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187802961...
- ars 4y ago
  I mean read the first line: "Incineration of plastic waste in an open field" I am not advocating an "open field". Incinerate it for energy, in a properly designed incinerator (which is existing technology in wide use). That article is talking about waste disposal, I'm talking about using it as fuel.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Also proper incineration can only be done in an incinerator, which burn much hotter and more completely than any pile of trash lit on fire. This is particularly important with plastics, where you really want to reach temperatures high enough to crack the dioxins apart.
jrmg 4y ago
A large and, to me, counterintuitive assumption is backing your argument there: Burning plastic does not release pollutants, and the CO2 released just replaces CO2 released from burning other fuel (oil, natural gas, etc). Humans have a remarkable capacity to use all that’s available to them if unconstrained. Why would we not burn the plastic _and_ the other fuel? Are you proposing we somehow regulate the ‘swap’ here? I could easily make the opposite argument that “putting plastic in landfill sequesters carbon we’d otherwise burn”. That argument seems more intuitively correct to me.
- ars 4y ago
  > Why would we not burn the plastic _and_ the other fuel? Why would we? When you turn on the light, or drive in your car, are you thinking "hmm, they burned some plastic, let me drive extra"? No, the only signal you use is the cost of the product. > Are you proposing we somehow regulate the ‘swap’ here? It's automatically regulated by the fact that you have to pay for it. Plastic for fuel is similar in price to other fuels. You're not going to have extra consumption. > “putting plastic in landfill sequesters carbon we’d otherwise burn”. That argument seems more intuitively correct to me. As a technique to advance the argument sure we can talk about that, but "intuitive"????? I feel like you're missing something major if that feels intuitive to you. We should find out what that is, or we'll be talking across each other, without understanding. Are you theorizing we automatically burn every bit of fuel available to us? That's not how it works - people have a need for energy, they check the price of the energy and see if it's worth spending that much to accomplish their need. Plastic for fuel is very valuable because someone already paid (in energy) to extract it from the ground. So now, you don't have to pay for that energy a second time. This is very good for the environment.
  - happyopossum 4y ago
    > Why would we? When you turn on the light, or drive in your car, are you thinking "hmm, they burned some plastic, let me drive extra"? No, the only signal you use is the cost of the product. If burning plastic for electricity becomes even remotely common, it will impact the price of gas, and the price of gas is historically correlated to miles driven.
    - ars 4y ago
      It is common in Sweden - they burn all their plastic, and actually buy more plastic from their neighbors to burn. Is the price of gas there significantly different from their neighbors?
      - jrmg 4y ago
        Presumably it is reducing the demand for other fuel sources and making them cheaper on a global level. So gas isn’t cheaper in Sweden, it’s cheaper everywhere.
bcrl 4y ago
Glass bottles were reused then recycled for many decades. Why exactly are we using plastic? Plastic is not "cheaper" if the total cost of all externalities resulting from its use are included. One of our local grocery store finally switched back to paper bags this past week. Paper bags used to be the default back in the 1980s.
- im3w1l 4y ago
  Glass is heavier and breaks into dangerous shards if you drop it. Paper bags get soggy and tear when it's raining. Plastic is used because it's better.
  - bcrl 4y ago
    That's a pretty lame straw man argument as I'm pretty sure that virtually every human on the planet learns how to deal with broken glass at some point in their life. Dropping a full plastic gallon of milk on a childs toe will still break it. Should we ban gallon sized plastic jugs then, too?
- ch4s3 4y ago
  More CO2 is released moving that glass around than the whole lifecycle of the plastic by an order of magnitude. A glass bottle on average weighs 40x what a PET bottle of similar volume weighs.
  - louhike 4y ago
    Yes, but isn't the likehood of a reusable bottle polluting our environment (ocean, etc.) lower?
    - ars 4y ago
      What matters more, CO2 or litter? And in any case there are way better way to solve that: A bottle return credit removes basically all bottle litter.
    - ch4s3 4y ago

by ars 4y ago

axiometry 4y ago

Citation? You didn't respond to mrinterweb in that thread, who cited this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187802961630158X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187802961...

ars 4y ago
I mean read the first line: "Incineration of plastic waste in an open field" I am not advocating an "open field". Incinerate it for energy, in a properly designed incinerator (which is existing technology in wide use). That article is talking about waste disposal, I'm talking about using it as fuel.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  Also proper incineration can only be done in an incinerator, which burn much hotter and more completely than any pile of trash lit on fire. This is particularly important with plastics, where you really want to reach temperatures high enough to crack the dioxins apart.

jrmg 4y ago

A large and, to me, counterintuitive assumption is backing your argument there: Burning plastic does not release pollutants, and the CO2 released just replaces CO2 released from burning other fuel (oil, natural gas, etc). Humans have a remarkable capacity to use all that’s available to them if unconstrained. Why would we not burn the plastic _and_ the other fuel? Are you proposing we somehow regulate the ‘swap’ here? I could easily make the opposite argument that “putting plastic in landfill sequesters carbon we’d otherwise burn”. That argument seems more intuitively correct to me.

ars 4y ago
> Why would we not burn the plastic _and_ the other fuel? Why would we? When you turn on the light, or drive in your car, are you thinking "hmm, they burned some plastic, let me drive extra"? No, the only signal you use is the cost of the product. > Are you proposing we somehow regulate the ‘swap’ here? It's automatically regulated by the fact that you have to pay for it. Plastic for fuel is similar in price to other fuels. You're not going to have extra consumption. > “putting plastic in landfill sequesters carbon we’d otherwise burn”. That argument seems more intuitively correct to me. As a technique to advance the argument sure we can talk about that, but "intuitive"????? I feel like you're missing something major if that feels intuitive to you. We should find out what that is, or we'll be talking across each other, without understanding. Are you theorizing we automatically burn every bit of fuel available to us? That's not how it works - people have a need for energy, they check the price of the energy and see if it's worth spending that much to accomplish their need. Plastic for fuel is very valuable because someone already paid (in energy) to extract it from the ground. So now, you don't have to pay for that energy a second time. This is very good for the environment.
- happyopossum 4y ago
  > Why would we? When you turn on the light, or drive in your car, are you thinking "hmm, they burned some plastic, let me drive extra"? No, the only signal you use is the cost of the product. If burning plastic for electricity becomes even remotely common, it will impact the price of gas, and the price of gas is historically correlated to miles driven.
  - ars 4y ago
    It is common in Sweden - they burn all their plastic, and actually buy more plastic from their neighbors to burn. Is the price of gas there significantly different from their neighbors?
    - jrmg 4y ago
      Presumably it is reducing the demand for other fuel sources and making them cheaper on a global level. So gas isn’t cheaper in Sweden, it’s cheaper everywhere.

bcrl 4y ago

Glass bottles were reused then recycled for many decades. Why exactly are we using plastic? Plastic is not "cheaper" if the total cost of all externalities resulting from its use are included. One of our local grocery store finally switched back to paper bags this past week. Paper bags used to be the default back in the 1980s.

im3w1l 4y ago
Glass is heavier and breaks into dangerous shards if you drop it. Paper bags get soggy and tear when it's raining. Plastic is used because it's better.
- bcrl 4y ago
  That's a pretty lame straw man argument as I'm pretty sure that virtually every human on the planet learns how to deal with broken glass at some point in their life. Dropping a full plastic gallon of milk on a childs toe will still break it. Should we ban gallon sized plastic jugs then, too?
ch4s3 4y ago
More CO2 is released moving that glass around than the whole lifecycle of the plastic by an order of magnitude. A glass bottle on average weighs 40x what a PET bottle of similar volume weighs.
- louhike 4y ago
  Yes, but isn't the likehood of a reusable bottle polluting our environment (ocean, etc.) lower?
  - ars 4y ago
    What matters more, CO2 or litter? And in any case there are way better way to solve that: A bottle return credit removes basically all bottle litter.
  - ch4s3 4y ago