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Comment by nashashmi | Hacker News Reader

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nashashmi·

A simpler way is to just burn it for fuel. And use it to replace the oil to energy production currently in place.

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Denmark has done this successfully. They now import garbage from the EU b/c they ran out of their own to burn.

What’s the remains of burning plastics? Are there any toxic remnants?

Dioxins, mostly from chlorinated plastics.

Or maybe we could liquify and pump it back down to where the oil was.

I suppose you're potentially using a lot of energy to do this, but its better than just releasing the pollution imho.

Or we could at least drastically reduce use of plastics. We should start off with disposable plastic stuff.

That doesn’t solve the current plastics.

More energy consumption means more CO2 unless there is too much power generated from emissonless tech which won’t be the case for a while.

So might as well burn it.

Won't there be toxic remains?

Not if you're running a flame hot enough to guarantee complete combustion; this is the difference between a proper waste incinerator and a burn barrel.

Plastics are hydrocarbons; nothing special going on there.

We can burn plastic as fuel in a proper incinerator, the fuel can power the incinerator, and we can achieve a damn-near perpetual machine with the amount of plastics we have.

(I'm being facetious, of course)

Chlorinated plastics produce dioxins when burned.

there are many additives in plastics so often they're not only hydrocarbons. BPA, PCB, flame retardants, colors and UV protection, etc

Oh, that makes sense. Thanks.

Or break it down to gasses or oil and make new plastic with that.

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