I was visiting family in the countryside recently and was a bit shocked to see that the elderly neighbour was still using an 'incinerator' to dispose of their waste. Basically a 44 gallon drum in the backyard that was used to burn rubbish. Even though this was commonplace 40 or 50 years ago it's a rare site now - and probably illegal.
After thinking about it for a while, I considered that it wasn't a huge amount of waste each week (think a few plastic bread bags, a couple of milk bottles, a tetrapak, etc) and that maybe it wasn't as bad (relatively) as it appeared. The neighbour barely drives anywhere which got me thinking - in terms of carbon dioxide output, how much plastic would the neighbour have to burn to have the same impact as a typical vehicle owner driving a typical distance each year? Obviously I'm not considering the nasty particles coming out of the incinerator - just the co2 output. Would it be hundreds of kilograms?