4 ms·
Surely it's still not good to put that plastic in the atmosphere though, especially while spending extra energy. If it can't be recycled the next best thing is
by chpatrick 4y ago
Surely it's still not good to put that plastic in the atmosphere though, especially while spending extra energy. If it can't be recycled the next best thing is to bury it.
- radicalbyte 4y agoIf we pump it back into the oil fields (and stop using oil!) then it is essentially a carbon credit. The cost of doing that would be an excellent basis for the cost of a carbon credit.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoIt would be a percentage of what was taken out though, given it takes energy to convert plastic back to oil; it would likely get mixed with other oil products instead so that the companies can cash in on government subsidies for using "green" technologies.
- elil17 4y agoWe could also just bury the plastic, like we do now. Most plastic cannot be decomposed by bacteria, so most of that carbon will be sequestered from the atmosphere.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoIn the waste hierarchy, burning plastic with energy recovery and gopf fikters comes after recycling and before well-managed landfill. This becomes less true as alternative non-fossil energy becomes more dominant though, since you're not displacing dirtier fossil fuels.
- smileysteve 4y agoWhat, no, burning it is surely better than digging up previously buried stuff to refine and burn. Only if we approach a 0 drilling world would it make sense to bury plastic instead of burn it.