I've seen YT videos of people building these stills to break down the plastic to 'diesel.' Normally they claim that they're 'recycling' the plastic and imply

I've seen YT videos of people building these stills to break down the plastic to 'diesel.' Normally they claim that they're 'recycling' the plastic and imply its an ingenious way to help better the environment. But there's a few things worth noting here: 1. The still needs a way to generate heat to work. A primitive method done in some poorer countries (and in DIY stills) is to use wood to heat it. Guessing the way his still works here relies on fossil fuels to incinerate the plastic (maybe butane or his own fuel -- but if using his own fuel then he would have needed to bootstrap it.) 2. I realize the article mentions this but unless you read the entire article carefully you may not notice this. A lot of people are just going to assume that the designer found a way to recycle plastic without realizing how insanely toxic what they're doing is. Even in the incinerators designed for this purpose scientists have found chemicals in their ashes that never break down from combustion. 3. The author of this article makes frankly a bizarre logical leap by saying that since plastics are already burnt in incinerators doing this isn't that different. They neglect to mention that incinerators are still horrible ways to dispose of waste and that plastic specifically can be recycled into other materials without burning it into a toxic mess. Overall, the still will generate an extremely dirty fuel capable of being used by ancient engines. For the modern gentleman who gives absolutely zero fucks about the environment. A possible next step from this project would be to figure out how to run a car on nuclear waste so that your car can be a fukushima/chernobyl on wheels.