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Burning anything is never the right answer in a world of climate change. We are scrambling to find ways to capture atmospheric carbon and store it underground
by RC_ITR 3y ago
Burning anything is never the right answer in a world of climate change.
We are scrambling to find ways to capture atmospheric carbon and store it underground and burning garbage is literally the opposite of that.
- bombcar 3y agoIf handling waste and burying it costs X carbon, and burning it creates Y carbon, and Y is less than X, then burning is better than burying. You'd have to do the math, it's not manifestly obvious that it's not the case (especially once you consider all the transportation involved in sending waste around the country and across the ocean).
- RC_ITR 3y agoOn first principles, there's no reason that the cost of transporting trash to the incinerator is any less carbon intensive than transporting trash to a landfill. Maybe people prefer incinerators in their community over landfills in their community (unclear), but if that's the case, that's a policy decision and not one that seeks to minimize carbon emissions.
- bombcar 3y agoLots of recycling (has) been transported across the ocean to China. It's likely that landfill are the way to go in many cases, but people don't like them.