I was curious as to how effective scrubbing was, turns out Packed Tower Wet Scrubbers can filter out 99%+ of VOCs from incinerated plastic. You still get carbon emissions however.
Yes, it's better than burning it outright in open fire pits (as it's done in an awful lot of "third world" countries to concentrate metals out of the waste), but it's way worse than a dump yard. And most of the places that have a lot of plastics waste don't have the resources to install decent scrubbers, much less perfect scrubbers.
[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/recycling-global-stat...
Yes and no. If the energy is recycled (for heating buildings and/or water) you'll reduce carbon emissions from coal/gas/oil. Waste incineration (instead of landfills) is a thing in various European countries and the heat can (and will) be used to heat buildings or the steam drives turbines to generate electricity.