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Plastic is just fuel that spent it's wild teenage years as something useful. We should burn our garbage and use the energy for useful things. Pumping our envi
by colechristensen 3y ago
Plastic is just fuel that spent it's wild teenage years as something useful. We should burn our garbage and use the energy for useful things.
Pumping our environment full of artificial hormones and getting everybody full of random plasticy bits is bad. Until we have so much renewable energy that we don't need fossil fuels, burning garbage displacing burning coal/oil/gas is a net positive.
- tsimionescu 3y agoProper sequestration of plastic garbage in well managed garbage dumps is much better. Turning plastic into fuel and then burning the fuel is far less energy efficient than burning extracted fuel, so it's worse in the most critical way right now: it releases more greenhouse gas. Of course, it's much better to produce less plastic in the first place.
- Ekaros 3y agoI think if we compare burying plastic to properly controller industrial incineration in combined production that is both electricity and heat is likely better option. As that means we do not need to extract and process the fuel we would use for same purpose. Now refining plastic to fuel used in other ways or small scale burning is likely just idiotic.
- tsimionescu 3y agoI very much doubt this. Burning plastic is much less energy efficient than burning oil. However, plastic contains a similar amount of carbon/kg as oil. So, sequestering a kg of plastic while extracting a kg of oil is better than doing it the other way around. Even if we look at production costs, extracting and transporting liquids from the ground is also less energy intensive than transporting and processing solid plastic waste.
- jacquesm 3y agoBurning plastic, especially recycled plastic has the risk of producing all kinds of unintended by-products, some of which can be highly toxic.
- actionfromafar 3y agoOn the flip side, a lot of plastic toxicity is burnt away in the furnace. The rest, is what filters are for. Seems a lot easier to deal with it at the co-generation plant than in a garbage heap.
- jacquesm 3y agoThe toxicity that you burn away is much less than the one that you get in return. Dioxins for instance: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666765723000972 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266676572...
- colechristensen 3y agoIf you’re burning it in a barrel behind the garage maybe. Actual waste to electricity plants do a whole lot to ensure corn emissions.
- butlike 3y agoYeah, uncontrolled chemical reactions to get rid of waste aren't the best answer, imo