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Landfill is not the enemy! Holey schmoley. The environmentalists have become obsessed with "keeping stuff out of landfill". "Keeping stuff out of landfill" ha

Landfill is not the enemy! Holey schmoley. The environmentalists have become obsessed with "keeping stuff out of landfill". "Keeping stuff out of landfill" has become the primary goal of many environmental movements. There is nothing wrong with stuff going into landfill. In fact in many cases, putting things in landfill is the ideal outcome. Obsessively trying to keep stuff out of landfill leads to unintended consequences that are much worse for the environment than putting it in landfill. Consider waste plastics. People go crazy with the idea that waste plastic ends up in landfill, so they become obsessed with "recycling". But it's simply impossible to recycle the vast ocean of plastic waste. So what they are doing now is putting plastic waste into PLASTIC ROADS, and calling this "recycling". And then cars and trucks grind microplastics out of the plastic roads and into the water, air, land, food, animals and people. The plastic would have been much more safe in a landfill, where its toxic effects are constrained ot the area of the landfill. But hey "at least the plastics aren't in landfill, right?". Every time you hear about the plastic waste issue it always comes with someone fretting about "keeping it out of landfill", like landfill is our most precious land that must not contaminated with waste plastic. It's just wrong. Put waste plastic in landfill, stop pretending we can "recycle" an ocean of waste plastic into stuff. The entire environmental movement is focused on mopping when it should be turning off the tap.

lovemenot 4y ago
What is your concern about recycling epoxy from turbine blades if any? If not, I suggest your rant was merely tangential to the word "landfill".
- twisteriffic 4y ago
  If that rant wasn't written by chatgpt I'll eat my hat.
  - ggm 4y ago
    I very much doubt it was written by a GPT.
  - gumby 4y ago
    Bon apétit, twisteriffic!
- cobaltoxide 4y ago
  There could be unintended consequences. It sounds like the recycling involves caustic chemicals. Does the recycling operation produce toxic waste or use a tremendous amount of energy? Someone needs to do a lifecycle assessment to know the full impact. Sometimes recycling is worth it, sometimes not.
h0l0cube 4y ago
> So what they are doing now is putting plastic waste into PLASTIC ROADS, and calling this "recycling". As a pro-conservation minded person I'm in sympathy with this viewpoint, a concentrated landfill could be less damage than an expanse of plastic in roads. But the article is suggesting an economical circular reuse: > The newly discovered chemical process shows that epoxy-based turbine blades, whether in operation or sitting in landfill, can be turned into a source of raw material to potentially build new turbine blades
jacquesm 4y ago
The solution is to produce less of it. Any other solution unless there is a way to decompose something back into useful molecules is just a stay of execution.
- andrewstuart 4y ago
  Plastic tax. Tax the amount of plastic used in any transaction. It would be amazing how much less plastic would be delivered if it cost something. Plastic accounting - force companies to report on the plastic they buy or sell.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    A (deceased) friend of mine had an even better idea: resource extraction tax. Never mind VAT but instead tax for the use of virgin resources and leave the rest untaxed. The recyclers would put the miners out of business.
  - connicpu 4y ago
    I fear this could also have plenty of unintended consequences. Depending on the tax, maybe more things will start being shipped in Teflon coated cardboard.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    None of that stuff really matters directly though. What matters is actual impact on the environment. Things like pollution, habitat destruction, etc. That's what should be taxed/discouraged. If someone can extract resources with no environmental cost, I would definitely NOT want to penalize them.
- mrshadowgoose 4y ago
  > unless there is a way to decompose something back into useful molecules There is, and it's called "plasma gasification". The main reason it hasn't become popular is because it's not profitable. But it is a legitimate technique that can enable actual recycling of plastic. Couple plasma gasification with green energy, and we can use all the plastic we want, as long as we're willing to pay the cost of properly recycling it.
mqus 4y ago
> So what they are doing now is putting plastic waste into PLASTIC ROADS, and calling this "recycling". That's why it's not really called "recycling" but downcycling. It does not re-enter the "cycle". It just goes in a different (and arguably worse) landfill. The argument for recycling is also not usually that landfills grow, but that stuff on landfills is not used for new things and the materials that are now missing have to be covered by oil, mining, etc, all the stuff "environmentalists" worry about.
- kevviiinn 4y ago
  Just wait until we start mining landfills for raw materials
  - euroderf 4y ago
    Decades ago I figured it might be worthwhile to buy up mining rights to landfills. Cos yes, they are concentrated processed materials, albeit kinda mixed up. But then every state legislature would be trying to stick you with a bill for cleanup.
- genman 4y ago
  It doesn't matter how it is precisely called. It still creates a huge concern in the same of being environmentally good. Roads are the worst place as they are constantly open to the elements and mechanical wear and are washed over and over by rain water. Using it for housing is a different and possible a better scenario given that environmental risks are taken into account at the end of the life when the material is disposed (or recycled or up/down cycled) after demolition.
alfor 4y ago
The destiny of stuff in landfill is to be burned/recycled when the earth crust get melted back in millions of years. The more I look the more the environmental movement is a complete scam. In almost all mesure we are still tiny on the surface of the earth. Make some exceptions for fluorinated compound leaking into water, high grade nuclear waste, ocean overfishing, habitat destruction/diversity reduction.
- danans 4y ago
  > Make some exceptions for fluorinated compound leaking into water, high grade nuclear waste, ocean overfishing, habitat destruction/diversity reduction. What's your reason for excluding the biggest one of all: greenhouse gases released by human activities. It sounds like you are just artfully denying global warming by that omission, without saying it outright.
  - alfor 4y ago
    CO2 is not that big of a problem on a reasonable timescale. It’s largely overblown. The CO2 increase is greening the earth (make plant grow more in harsh dry conditions) slightly increase temperature, increase humidity and plant growth also. I am not worried a bit about global warming anymore, it’s another media/research/government feedback loop were more attention bring more money that bring more attention. Now, there is an increase in CO2, it’s man made, it will increase the temperature, but that doesn’t mean it’s the biggest problem that we have. We have to be carefull, sort the problems by their importance, timescale, cost to fix, etc. (Bjorn Lomberg) Another thing that make it non problematic is the massive increase in solar efficiency and reduction in cost. Just based on cost solar will rapidly replace coal in almost all places (Look into Tony Seba work) The increase in technological knowledge also mean that in 50-100 years we will be so far away that CO2 will not be an issue anyway. I used to think it was a big deal, but the more I dig, the more I find it won't ever be a problem for humanity. I am still a big fan of Solal PV, EV, (renewable are still good)
    - imtringued 4y ago
      I hope you are aware that severe contortions are required to limit warming to 1.5°C and that significantly more warming is still on the table. But ah yes, plants love CO2 so humans must love the heat.
0xDEF 4y ago
Another inconvenient truth is that immediate global climate concerns need to take priority over the localized toxic mining, manufacturing, and waste problems that might be associated with renewables and electric vehicles. We really don't have time to care whether broken solar panels end up in landfills or whether lithium mining ruins some picturesque landscapes in Australia.
- ggm 4y ago
  Spodumene mines in Australia already exist at scale. So, the landscape in question has already been opened up for mining, and the question was asked (and answered) in time past. This isn't really as big a deal as some people like to say here (Oz) where greenfield but plausible coal strip mines are a valid high risk question, and are being aggressively opposed and with good reason. TL;DR its like the PETA campaign against Kangaroo meat/leather: misplaced activism. The lithium mining environmental concern isn't the problem.
  - angry_octet 4y ago
    I thought it was the processing, rather than the mining, which came with toxic downsides? But in any case, the Chinese have been undercutting everyone for two decades. Lower costs and massive capital investments. Compared to massive crop failure, mass starvation, wide scale species extinction, and resulting resource conflict, the toxic byproducts and landfill of wind/solar are inconsequential. Even the risk of nuclear (increased radiation from failures, proliferation) is bearable if we can decarbonise faster.
    - ggm 4y ago
      Spodumene is roasted and treated with acid to make the lithium salts needed. It does use water, and heat (energy) and you have waste water settlement ponds. Atacama lake deposits are different, and have a different treatment path which I think has a higher risk to a fragile ecology in salt-pan type evaporation and depletion of a high-altitude water table. I'm kind of hedging: I want to believe our (AU) spodumene waste cycle issues are both different and smaller (we can use PV to do the heating, and its recyclable water) but I think thats unknown. A geologist/ecologist could say.
sockaddr 4y ago
Completely agree. Near my house is an outdoor playground with a spongy floor made of recycled tires and god knows what else that STINKS during the day. There’s no way they know the origin of all of the materials they’ve made into this playground sausage that kids are touching and breathing all day. Anyone have tips on where to put my energy into fighting things like this? I guess I can start locally but anything else?
- andrewstuart 4y ago
  "US playgrounds: fears grow over health risks from rubber particles" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/25/lawmakers-concerned-chemicals-rubber-playgrounds-push-safety-rules https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/25/lawmakers-co... "Profiling and potential cancer risk assessment on children exposed to PAHs in playground dust/soil: a comparative study on poured rubber surfaced and classical soil playgrounds in Seoul " https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31134396/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31134396/ "substances of concern that were recently detected in recycled tire rubber samples.3 The nine chemicals are benzo(a)pyrene, hexavalent chromium, zinc, 4-methyl--pentanone, benzothiazole, lead, dibutyl phthalate, diethylhexyl phthalate, and 4-tert-octylphenol. UC staff identified acute, subchronic, and chronic TRVs, where available, for the oral, inhalation, and dermal routes" https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/Final-Report-on-Technical-Support-Activities-for-a-Screening-Level-Risk-Assessment-of-Playground-Surfaces.pdf?VersionId=MyHH6XdEqwCuuFUkSr4a4sPnfJMjGVT3 https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/Final-Report-on-Technical-S... There's a vast array of stuff on google if you search for playground cancer.
  - euroderf 4y ago
    As long as rich kids aren't getting exposed, nothing will change.
  - sockaddr 4y ago
    Thank you, pretty shocking to be honest
gumby 4y ago
That's right. People forget that dumping plastic tat into landfills is literally carbon sequestration.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- euroderf 4y ago
  Also, a stockpile of inputs to future clean reprocessing methods.
- regularfry 4y ago
  It is, but the carbon actually in the plastic is a small portion of the total carbon used in the production process. Chucking it in landfill in a situation where you could otherwise substitute for new plastic means that the cost of chucking it in landfill is the total carbon cost of the new thing.
  - gumby 4y ago
    Recycling plastic is almost never worth it. You have to plan for it while designing the original artifact manage the chain of custody, and finally find an application that can actually use the reprocessed plastic.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Nursie 4y ago
> Put waste plastic in landfill, stop pretending we can "recycle" an ocean of waste plastic into stuff. > The entire environmental movement is focused on mopping when it should be turning off the tap. I'm not sure how much of your general screed I agree with ... but this is very much on point. We know that plastics are hard to recycle, expensive to recycle, and what is recycled is hard and expensive to actually use. We need to look for alternatives to plastic use in the first place. And this needs to be legislated. There's no need whatsoever for that pack of five tomatoes to be put in a plastic tray and then wrapped in more plastic.
- euroderf 4y ago
  > We know that plastics are hard to recycle, expensive to recycle, and what is recycled is hard and expensive to actually use. This will change at some point. The inexorable march of technology.
  - Nursie 4y ago
    Great, and when it does we'll use that. But we're not there yet, and in the mean time we're generating tons of In the mean time we have companies getting in trouble because they claimed to recycle plastic but instead they were just stuffing it in warehouses - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/23/environmental-watchdog-charges-redcycle-operators-over-secret-soft-plastics-stockpiles https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/23/envir...
forgetfreeman 4y ago
Uh no. While keeping stuff out of a landfill may not be the optimal short term goal you appear to be neglecting the fact that we live on a planet with finite non-renewable resources. This means that keeping things out of a landfill will, at some point down the line, become an existential matter.
- imtringued 4y ago
  You can make plastics out of organic matter. They are a rounding error in terms of fossil fuel consumption.
  - forgetfreeman 4y ago
    Right, and I'm clearly speaking in broader terms than merely plastics.
crote 4y ago
Why not just burn it? Most plastics can be incinerated pretty quickly, releasing quite a bit of energy. The only downside is the release of CO2, but that should be reasonably easy to capture. And you'd avoid creating massive toxic landfills. Just putting stuff in a big pile and hoping nothing bad happens to it isn't really a solution.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Landfill (and nuclear power) are the two things you can champion to be a climate change denier and support fossil fuels while not saying the stuff that makes you sound like a total loon out loud. Oh I'm not attacking renewables and recycling, I'm just championing those sadly overlooked technologies the dumb green hippies have ignored! Don't listen to them, they're all stupid and communist. They can't do maths and science and are probably female. They can't handle the manly truth about climate change like me. Except they've not been ignored. Landfill is at the bottom of the waste hierarchy because it's not as good as the other options. Nuclear isn't going to make up the majority of energy production because it's not as good as solar and wind. There are lots of scientific papers that go into this in mind numbing depth. I know the fossil-funded "news" and "politics" organisations you follow told you this was all a hoax and a conspiracy, but turns out, they were lying to you. At some point you're going to have to deal with that and face reality rather than spiral further into conspiracy land.
sliken 4y ago
I read a position piece on plastics. Claimed that the best solution was to burn all plastics, to generate electricity, which would be fed into the grid. Claimed that optimally burned (right temp, pressure, and O2) that the resulting smoke could be treated to be minimally impact the environment and burning prevented all of the harmful chemicals (numerous biologically chemicals like bpa, bpc, etc) from getting into the soil and water table. It sounded promising, and does sound better then ending up in the ground or oceans. No idea if the science supports this though.

lovemenot 4y ago

What is your concern about recycling epoxy from turbine blades if any? If not, I suggest your rant was merely tangential to the word "landfill".

twisteriffic 4y ago
If that rant wasn't written by chatgpt I'll eat my hat.
- ggm 4y ago
  I very much doubt it was written by a GPT.
- gumby 4y ago
  Bon apétit, twisteriffic!
cobaltoxide 4y ago
There could be unintended consequences. It sounds like the recycling involves caustic chemicals. Does the recycling operation produce toxic waste or use a tremendous amount of energy? Someone needs to do a lifecycle assessment to know the full impact. Sometimes recycling is worth it, sometimes not.

h0l0cube 4y ago

> So what they are doing now is putting plastic waste into PLASTIC ROADS, and calling this "recycling". As a pro-conservation minded person I'm in sympathy with this viewpoint, a concentrated landfill could be less damage than an expanse of plastic in roads. But the article is suggesting an economical circular reuse: > The newly discovered chemical process shows that epoxy-based turbine blades, whether in operation or sitting in landfill, can be turned into a source of raw material to potentially build new turbine blades

jacquesm 4y ago

The solution is to produce less of it. Any other solution unless there is a way to decompose something back into useful molecules is just a stay of execution.

andrewstuart 4y ago
Plastic tax. Tax the amount of plastic used in any transaction. It would be amazing how much less plastic would be delivered if it cost something. Plastic accounting - force companies to report on the plastic they buy or sell.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  A (deceased) friend of mine had an even better idea: resource extraction tax. Never mind VAT but instead tax for the use of virgin resources and leave the rest untaxed. The recyclers would put the miners out of business.
- connicpu 4y ago
  I fear this could also have plenty of unintended consequences. Depending on the tax, maybe more things will start being shipped in Teflon coated cardboard.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  None of that stuff really matters directly though. What matters is actual impact on the environment. Things like pollution, habitat destruction, etc. That's what should be taxed/discouraged. If someone can extract resources with no environmental cost, I would definitely NOT want to penalize them.
mrshadowgoose 4y ago
> unless there is a way to decompose something back into useful molecules There is, and it's called "plasma gasification". The main reason it hasn't become popular is because it's not profitable. But it is a legitimate technique that can enable actual recycling of plastic. Couple plasma gasification with green energy, and we can use all the plastic we want, as long as we're willing to pay the cost of properly recycling it.

mqus 4y ago

> So what they are doing now is putting plastic waste into PLASTIC ROADS, and calling this "recycling". That's why it's not really called "recycling" but downcycling. It does not re-enter the "cycle". It just goes in a different (and arguably worse) landfill. The argument for recycling is also not usually that landfills grow, but that stuff on landfills is not used for new things and the materials that are now missing have to be covered by oil, mining, etc, all the stuff "environmentalists" worry about.

kevviiinn 4y ago
Just wait until we start mining landfills for raw materials
- euroderf 4y ago
  Decades ago I figured it might be worthwhile to buy up mining rights to landfills. Cos yes, they are concentrated processed materials, albeit kinda mixed up. But then every state legislature would be trying to stick you with a bill for cleanup.
genman 4y ago
It doesn't matter how it is precisely called. It still creates a huge concern in the same of being environmentally good. Roads are the worst place as they are constantly open to the elements and mechanical wear and are washed over and over by rain water. Using it for housing is a different and possible a better scenario given that environmental risks are taken into account at the end of the life when the material is disposed (or recycled or up/down cycled) after demolition.

alfor 4y ago

The destiny of stuff in landfill is to be burned/recycled when the earth crust get melted back in millions of years. The more I look the more the environmental movement is a complete scam. In almost all mesure we are still tiny on the surface of the earth. Make some exceptions for fluorinated compound leaking into water, high grade nuclear waste, ocean overfishing, habitat destruction/diversity reduction.

danans 4y ago
> Make some exceptions for fluorinated compound leaking into water, high grade nuclear waste, ocean overfishing, habitat destruction/diversity reduction. What's your reason for excluding the biggest one of all: greenhouse gases released by human activities. It sounds like you are just artfully denying global warming by that omission, without saying it outright.
- alfor 4y ago
  CO2 is not that big of a problem on a reasonable timescale. It’s largely overblown. The CO2 increase is greening the earth (make plant grow more in harsh dry conditions) slightly increase temperature, increase humidity and plant growth also. I am not worried a bit about global warming anymore, it’s another media/research/government feedback loop were more attention bring more money that bring more attention. Now, there is an increase in CO2, it’s man made, it will increase the temperature, but that doesn’t mean it’s the biggest problem that we have. We have to be carefull, sort the problems by their importance, timescale, cost to fix, etc. (Bjorn Lomberg) Another thing that make it non problematic is the massive increase in solar efficiency and reduction in cost. Just based on cost solar will rapidly replace coal in almost all places (Look into Tony Seba work) The increase in technological knowledge also mean that in 50-100 years we will be so far away that CO2 will not be an issue anyway. I used to think it was a big deal, but the more I dig, the more I find it won't ever be a problem for humanity. I am still a big fan of Solal PV, EV, (renewable are still good)
  - imtringued 4y ago
    I hope you are aware that severe contortions are required to limit warming to 1.5°C and that significantly more warming is still on the table. But ah yes, plants love CO2 so humans must love the heat.

0xDEF 4y ago

Another inconvenient truth is that immediate global climate concerns need to take priority over the localized toxic mining, manufacturing, and waste problems that might be associated with renewables and electric vehicles. We really don't have time to care whether broken solar panels end up in landfills or whether lithium mining ruins some picturesque landscapes in Australia.

ggm 4y ago
Spodumene mines in Australia already exist at scale. So, the landscape in question has already been opened up for mining, and the question was asked (and answered) in time past. This isn't really as big a deal as some people like to say here (Oz) where greenfield but plausible coal strip mines are a valid high risk question, and are being aggressively opposed and with good reason. TL;DR its like the PETA campaign against Kangaroo meat/leather: misplaced activism. The lithium mining environmental concern isn't the problem.
- angry_octet 4y ago
  I thought it was the processing, rather than the mining, which came with toxic downsides? But in any case, the Chinese have been undercutting everyone for two decades. Lower costs and massive capital investments. Compared to massive crop failure, mass starvation, wide scale species extinction, and resulting resource conflict, the toxic byproducts and landfill of wind/solar are inconsequential. Even the risk of nuclear (increased radiation from failures, proliferation) is bearable if we can decarbonise faster.
  - ggm 4y ago
    Spodumene is roasted and treated with acid to make the lithium salts needed. It does use water, and heat (energy) and you have waste water settlement ponds. Atacama lake deposits are different, and have a different treatment path which I think has a higher risk to a fragile ecology in salt-pan type evaporation and depletion of a high-altitude water table. I'm kind of hedging: I want to believe our (AU) spodumene waste cycle issues are both different and smaller (we can use PV to do the heating, and its recyclable water) but I think thats unknown. A geologist/ecologist could say.

sockaddr 4y ago

Completely agree. Near my house is an outdoor playground with a spongy floor made of recycled tires and god knows what else that STINKS during the day. There’s no way they know the origin of all of the materials they’ve made into this playground sausage that kids are touching and breathing all day. Anyone have tips on where to put my energy into fighting things like this? I guess I can start locally but anything else?

andrewstuart 4y ago
"US playgrounds: fears grow over health risks from rubber particles" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/25/lawmakers-concerned-chemicals-rubber-playgrounds-push-safety-rules https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/25/lawmakers-co... "Profiling and potential cancer risk assessment on children exposed to PAHs in playground dust/soil: a comparative study on poured rubber surfaced and classical soil playgrounds in Seoul " https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31134396/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31134396/ "substances of concern that were recently detected in recycled tire rubber samples.3 The nine chemicals are benzo(a)pyrene, hexavalent chromium, zinc, 4-methyl--pentanone, benzothiazole, lead, dibutyl phthalate, diethylhexyl phthalate, and 4-tert-octylphenol. UC staff identified acute, subchronic, and chronic TRVs, where available, for the oral, inhalation, and dermal routes" https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/Final-Report-on-Technical-Support-Activities-for-a-Screening-Level-Risk-Assessment-of-Playground-Surfaces.pdf?VersionId=MyHH6XdEqwCuuFUkSr4a4sPnfJMjGVT3 https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/Final-Report-on-Technical-S... There's a vast array of stuff on google if you search for playground cancer.
- euroderf 4y ago
  As long as rich kids aren't getting exposed, nothing will change.
- sockaddr 4y ago
  Thank you, pretty shocking to be honest

gumby 4y ago

That's right. People forget that dumping plastic tat into landfills is literally carbon sequestration.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
euroderf 4y ago
Also, a stockpile of inputs to future clean reprocessing methods.
regularfry 4y ago
It is, but the carbon actually in the plastic is a small portion of the total carbon used in the production process. Chucking it in landfill in a situation where you could otherwise substitute for new plastic means that the cost of chucking it in landfill is the total carbon cost of the new thing.
- gumby 4y ago
  Recycling plastic is almost never worth it. You have to plan for it while designing the original artifact manage the chain of custody, and finally find an application that can actually use the reprocessed plastic.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Nursie 4y ago

> Put waste plastic in landfill, stop pretending we can "recycle" an ocean of waste plastic into stuff. > The entire environmental movement is focused on mopping when it should be turning off the tap. I'm not sure how much of your general screed I agree with ... but this is very much on point. We know that plastics are hard to recycle, expensive to recycle, and what is recycled is hard and expensive to actually use. We need to look for alternatives to plastic use in the first place. And this needs to be legislated. There's no need whatsoever for that pack of five tomatoes to be put in a plastic tray and then wrapped in more plastic.

euroderf 4y ago
> We know that plastics are hard to recycle, expensive to recycle, and what is recycled is hard and expensive to actually use. This will change at some point. The inexorable march of technology.
- Nursie 4y ago
  Great, and when it does we'll use that. But we're not there yet, and in the mean time we're generating tons of In the mean time we have companies getting in trouble because they claimed to recycle plastic but instead they were just stuffing it in warehouses - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/23/environmental-watchdog-charges-redcycle-operators-over-secret-soft-plastics-stockpiles https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/23/envir...

forgetfreeman 4y ago

Uh no. While keeping stuff out of a landfill may not be the optimal short term goal you appear to be neglecting the fact that we live on a planet with finite non-renewable resources. This means that keeping things out of a landfill will, at some point down the line, become an existential matter.

imtringued 4y ago
You can make plastics out of organic matter. They are a rounding error in terms of fossil fuel consumption.
- forgetfreeman 4y ago
  Right, and I'm clearly speaking in broader terms than merely plastics.

crote 4y ago

Why not just burn it? Most plastics can be incinerated pretty quickly, releasing quite a bit of energy. The only downside is the release of CO2, but that should be reasonably easy to capture. And you'd avoid creating massive toxic landfills. Just putting stuff in a big pile and hoping nothing bad happens to it isn't really a solution.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Landfill (and nuclear power) are the two things you can champion to be a climate change denier and support fossil fuels while not saying the stuff that makes you sound like a total loon out loud. Oh I'm not attacking renewables and recycling, I'm just championing those sadly overlooked technologies the dumb green hippies have ignored! Don't listen to them, they're all stupid and communist. They can't do maths and science and are probably female. They can't handle the manly truth about climate change like me. Except they've not been ignored. Landfill is at the bottom of the waste hierarchy because it's not as good as the other options. Nuclear isn't going to make up the majority of energy production because it's not as good as solar and wind. There are lots of scientific papers that go into this in mind numbing depth. I know the fossil-funded "news" and "politics" organisations you follow told you this was all a hoax and a conspiracy, but turns out, they were lying to you. At some point you're going to have to deal with that and face reality rather than spiral further into conspiracy land.

sliken 4y ago

I read a position piece on plastics. Claimed that the best solution was to burn all plastics, to generate electricity, which would be fed into the grid. Claimed that optimally burned (right temp, pressure, and O2) that the resulting smoke could be treated to be minimally impact the environment and burning prevented all of the harmful chemicals (numerous biologically chemicals like bpa, bpc, etc) from getting into the soil and water table. It sounded promising, and does sound better then ending up in the ground or oceans. No idea if the science supports this though.