Just thinking in terms of compared to microplastics and toxins in recycled plastic.
No it isn’t more ‘green’
Burning it creates much more toxins etc. than a ‘normal’ recycling procedure. And of course lots of soot and CO2 and whatnot…
Plus burning it allows those toxins to disperse across the environment while more traditional recycling can keep the toxins mostly concentrated on landfill/processing sites.
Define “green”. In terms of CO2 it would obviously be horrible and incredibly stupid.
It’s done in many modern parts of the world in proper incinerators, to produce electricity. The emissions are closely managed.
Still not a great idea to burn recyclable resources. The stuff that would otherwise end up in a landfill, sure, but most plastics can be used again in some way.
When deciding to incinerate over recycle, that means the system has constrains on recycling ability or success such that incineration is preferable
So if the choices are plastic in the dump/plastic in the ocean or incineration, then there’s a real decision to be made.
These are real world systems, not classrooms
I wish we could get a mobile plasma arc gasification truck that goes around turning rubbish into glass and hydrogen with no landfill, but until that day… Don’t burn it, just do your reasonable best to avoid buying it.
this is just burning plastic for energy with extra steps. remember, every extra step reduces efficiency
Plasma arc gasification is very low emissions versus anything we currently do with it, but I would obviously prefer we just stop using plastic. Given how unlikely that is, the idea of plasma trucks going about eliminating the need for waste management infrastructure is at least fun enough to bring up conversationally.
do you even get back energy used up on making that plasma in the first place? how badly does it get fucked up by HCl? these trucks are still infrastructure, just mobile and not even real. it has a hint of hyperloop trying to eliminate new railway projects
also trucking waste to waste energy extraction plant would probably still use up less energy than trucking around entire facility. this all makes it sound like badly thought out nonsense
Freely admitted that it’s a badly thought out idea. I am a random person on the internet, idly chatting. I’m not at leisure to join you right now, if you’re needing more rigorous debate. I am speculating about technology that exists currently (wiki) but isn’t yet advanced enough for such an application.
I don’t see how they could possibly be true but I’m no scientist.
