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Calling plastics a carbon sink is dubious because you have to spend energy to get the oil out in the first place. How about calling it an oil sink?
by klysm 3y ago
Calling plastics a carbon sink is dubious because you have to spend energy to get the oil out in the first place. How about calling it an oil sink?
- scotty79 3y agoStill good. Way better than burning it.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y agoNot making it is way better
- scotty79 3y agoDepends on what you do with dug out oil instead of making plastic. If you do almost anything else it's worse than making plastic and landfilling it neatly at the end of useful life.
- klysm 3y agoThat’s leaning into a false dichotomy. Not extracting it in the first is clearly the best option
- scotty79 3y agoOf course. However if not making plastic means extracting more to burn to haul around heavier glass then it better to make and landfill plastic. We are in terrible situation and nothing is simple and even simple stuff is hard to implement and can turn out negative when we implemented. Things backfire. People are buying plug-in hybrids but then they almost never charge them so material is wasted and de facto ice cars are unnecessarily heavier.
- missedthecue 3y agoYou have to burn much more energy to get sand out of the ground (glass), bauxite out of the mine (aluminum), or trees out of the forest (paper). It doesn't take much energy to get a ton of petroleum out, compared to a ton of sand, aluminum ore, or lumber.
- klysm 3y agosure, I said nothing about that though. It’s still wrong to call it a carbon sink