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Amazon says its plastic packaging can be recycled. An investigation finds it usually isn't. | Grist (grist.org)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This is true with most plastic. Even bringing recyclable plastic to a recycling center doesn't mean it will be recycled.

Fact is, it's more expensive to recycle than to make new plastic.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

The sad fact is the best use of used plastic is probably burning it to create electricity.

It likely won't be recycled or reused and even if it is, it's likely that will only happen once (as recycled plastic is low quality).

So the option is bury it so it can outlast humanity underground or burn it to free up the carbon for hopefully regular consumption in the carbon cycle.

The only way plastic makes sense, then, is if we start using Carbon extracted from CO2 to create plastic.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

Down cycling to lower quality plastics seems like another good use, but yeah, plastic is fucked lol

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

.... the best option is not to create more co2 and other toxins, as well as aerosolize the microplastics. Burying it is 1000000% better.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (1 children)

other toxins

The vast majority of plastic is carbon, hydrogen, oxygen chains. You can burn those completely such that the only thing released is CO2 and water vapor (just need a hot enough temperature). A scrubber can easily catch anything that breaks that assumption.

If you do an incinerator and don't harvest the power, you can even turn it into just a carbon block by filling the chamber with nitrogen and pumping the temp up to 500C. That'll leave you with carbon blocks and water vapor.

not to create more co2

Plastic decomposes in weird ways that leaving it in the environment is worse than taking it out all together. The reason microplastic is everywhere isn't because we have been burning plastics, it's because we've been (improperly) burying it. I worry a lot more about a leaky landfill letting it's pollutants seep into local water systems.

Further, part of plastic degradation is into those more toxic carbon chains and methane. It's frankly better to just bite the bullet and turn it into CO2.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

1, there's no burning plastic completely. We can't even burn real fuel completely.

Incineration of plastic waste in an open field is a major source of air pollution. Most of the times, the Municipal Solid Waste containing about 12% of plastics is burnt, releasing toxic gases like Dioxins, Furans, Mercury and Polychlorinated Biphenyls into the atmosphere. Further, burning of Poly Vinyl Chloride liberates hazardous halogens and pollutes air, the impact of which is climate change. The toxic substances thus released are posing a threat to vegetation, human and animal health and environment as a whole. Polystyrene is harmful to Central Nervous System. The hazardous brominated compounds act as carcinogens and mutagens. Dioxins settle on the crops and in our waterways where they eventually enter into our food and hence the body system. These Dioxins are the lethal persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and its worst component, 2,3,7,8 tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), commonly known as agentorange is a toxic compound which causes cancer and neurological damage, disrupts reproductive thyroid and respiratory systems. Thus, burning of plastic wastes increase the risk of heart disease, aggravates respiratory ailments such as asthma and emphysema and cause rashes, nausea or headaches, and damages the nervous system. Hence, a sustainable step towards tomorrow's cleaner and healthier environment needs immediate attention of the environmentalists and scientists. This review presents the hazards of incineration; open burning of plastics and effe

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187802961630158X

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Your first point is not a complete thought; disregarding the extreme vagueness of the statement unto non-relevance (seriously, share what you're smoking).

Your second point is about open field incineration, something the other poster never advocated for.

If you're being disingenuous it's done poorly. If not, you read like a loon talking to himself and quoting about clouds when folks are discussing gaseous containment.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago

If you don't understand my first point, you'll have to explain what you don't understand for me to help you out instead of being snarky

My second point is not "about open field incineration", the first sentence of the abstract of the paper includes that phrase, but it's a whole damn paper. It's about how the plastics are not just simple bonds of carbon and oxygen and have a lot of really quite bad chemicals you don't want to throw out into the atmosphere, which op wad claiming was fine.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

The Swiss burn what cannot be easily recycled. ¯\(°_o)/¯