The rest was burnt to produce heating and electricity - which releases an enormous amount of CO2 gases and other pollutants.
Not just a US problem.
[0] in Swedish: https://www.ivl.se/press/nyheter/2020-02-21-lattlast-rapport...
No it does not. This is simply untrue.
Burning plastic does not release pollutants, and the CO2 released just replaces CO2 released from burning other fuel (oil, natural gas, etc).
It's a 100% win, and every country should copy them.
That is simply not true. Polyethylene (the most common plastic) is C2H4, while natural gas is a mix ranging from CH4 to C3H8. i.e. almost identical in terms of CO2.
Plastic is actually better in some ways since you don't need to spend energy a second time to extract even more oil from the ground, you can just burn what you already have.
Plus the world does not burn exclusively natural gas, not even close.
> when it's possible not to.
As should be pretty obvious the idea is you don't burn some other oil, and instead burn plastic. When we are 100% off of oil/coal/etc we can stop burning plastic, but right now, today, burning plastic is the best option.
Burning plastic is not going to magically cause extra CO2 emissions, it would simply substitute one for another, with total amount unchanged.
It's not how many CO2 molecules per molecule of thing being burned. It's about how many CO2 molecules per joule of energy released.
You'd have to look at the enthalpy (delta H) of these combustion reactions to make a meaningful comparison, correct?
I used it because I didn't immediately find data on the enthalpy of burning plastic in combination with CO2 released.
Plastic is also a hydrocarbon, so the binding energy will be quite similar to natural gas, so my method is sufficiently accurate.
Very false
What exactly is a pollutant by your estimation?
> What exactly is a pollutant by your estimation?
Something that doesn't belong there in any amount. If there's simply too much of it, but some amount is ok, that might be a problem, but that's not a pollutant. Otherwise a flood from a hurricane would be called "Water pollution", which I hope you can see is a pretty silly definition.
I have never heard this definition before! How do you in particular decide which compounds shouldn’t be in the atmosphere in any amount?
It kind of seems like such a narrow definition of “pollutant” enables the justification of burning darn near anything short of man-made nuclear isotopes that don’t otherwise exist in nature. How does this definition serve a practical purpose?
edit: To address your hurricane analogy, I am not a fan of hurricanes or their damage. I have had friends die in hurricanes.
I agree that trying to argue an arbitrary definition of “pollution” to serve one’s pre-existing ideas or pedantic need to be Dictionary Emperor is silly and likely pointless at best, though.
Let's hear your definition then.
> How do you in particular decide which compounds shouldn’t be in the atmosphere in any amount?
Why is that hard? Nitrogen, Oxygen, CO2, Water, and some noble gasses.
Other stuff might be there naturally (for example salt by the sea), but are pollutants.
Can you link me to where you’ve found that “pollutant” is defined as a nearly infinite group of compounds but explicitly excludes CO2? This is the first time I’ve heard this.
And your dictionary definition is problematic because it doesn't define "unsuitable for a specific purpose". It's basically a circular definition. I will then ask you please define "unsuitable for a specific purpose" and we are back where we started.
How many compounds are there that are not nitrogen, oxygen, CO2 and “some noble gases”? In my estimation that is uncountable but maybe you have some hard numbers?
edit: “Suitable purpose“ for me would be creating or maintaining an environment that sustains human life.
Is your “checkmate” position something like “Hah! In my dictionary, ‘suitable purpose’ only relates to underwater welding, root beer production, and synthetic diamond formation!”
I personally find moving goalposts to avoid talking about concrete things in concrete terms to be problematic, but I understand that if a person is quite jaded about the future of life on earth that it might seem that the only thing worth debating is semantics. Maybe avoiding boredom matters more than attempting to avert catastrophe.
And? There are uncountable pollutants - why is that an issue? None of those other things belong in the air, in any amount.
> would be creating or maintaining an environment that sustains human life.
So my small campfire where I burn plastic is perfectly fine then? After all the toxins released are minor and rapidly dissipate, so the environment still sustains human life. Your definition doesn't even acknowledge that you can sustain life, but everyone has asthma because of all the particulate matter in the air.
By your definition there are no pollutants. Or at best you can only talk about them in bulk once they reach levels sufficient to kill, but never about individual releases.
By my definition each individual release of something that doesn't belong in the air is pollution. I find my definition much more usable and useful.
Does your classification of CO2 have a real upper limit of ppm wherein it becomes considered a pollutant? Or is it just “all plastic supply burned + 1”
A "novel entity" i.e. anything that doesn't belong in the air. Wikipedia adds that it must in some way harm things to be a pollutant, which is a reasonable addition.
I have a couple more questions!
If you hosted an indoor buffet and you needed to keep the chafing dishes warm, would you opt to burn ethanol or (if it were cheaper) the shredded remains of takeout containers?
and
Why does burning plastic have black smoke and ethanol not?
There are lots of sentences that you can start with “Every ounce of plastic.” Which one of those informs the definition of a pollutant?
All of them.
Looking at this in rough terms:
Burning emits gross CO2 but not net CO2. And burning doesn't take up all that landfill space. So burning is better than burial.
Making nothing at all (and washing nothing too, because washing has a cost!) is the best option, but is not always an option.
Making something else, or washing something, needs to be analyzed per situation.
Wait, are you saying that the optimal place to store carbon is in the atmosphere?
And 'acceptable' rather than 'optimal'.
How does burning plastic impact things for people that don’t own exhaust scrubbers?
We were never talking about just burning plastic. We were talking about burning plastic inside a heat/power plant.
And power plants, especially trash-fueled ones, have exhaust scrubbers. I only mentioned it now for emphasis, not because I was changing anything.
The first comment you replied to specified "industrial incinerator" for a reason.
> How does burning plastic impact things for people that don’t own exhaust scrubbers?
I don't care how it affects those people, because they're burning it outside a power plant, and they're not part of this conversation. If they burn it it's worse than if they bury it, but they shouldn't be doing either one. They should be handing the trash over to people that are equipped to handle it properly.
I actually suspect incineration is not a bad method at all, just wonder were everything else would go. I assume scrubbers or something.
These types of scrubbers are in use all over, it's not a new technology.
The main thing is to remove food and other organic waste, remove metals because they are useful. Glass is harmless, but also clutters up the ash, so best to remove it as well.
If it were up to me recycling would work like this:
Metal, plastic, and paper would be recycled, single stream. The metal is easily removed, the rest is burned.
Glass and organics (and everything else) would be thrown out, with some people opting to compost, I would encourage, but not require, composting. There is really no reason to recycle glass, and trying to do so causes more harm than good since it smashes and the shards get in everything and just makes it harder to make a pure product.
If you absolutely must recycle glass, it has to be in its own bin, do not single stream it.
Edit: source -> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187802961...
A 100% win would be not producing the plastics in the first place in order to not have this problem, and then producing heat via a renewable source.
Everything below that is less of a 100% win.
> Burning plastic does not release pollutants
That is strictly false. It depends on the plastic. "Dioxins are just one of the many harmful emissions from incinerators. They are highly toxic and can cause cancer and damage to the immune system"
https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/incineration-burning-plas....