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Comment by vzaliva | Hacker News Reader

At least all this plastic is now stored in one place and did not end up in rivers and landfills yet. There is a still a hope for happy ending of this story.

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Yet. They might still pass it on to some company in East Asia which would just dump it into the river there. It used to be the model for a lot of "recycling" in the West...

Recycling in the west means paying the lowest bid to "take it"

And they'd take it to Asia and dump it in the ocean on the way.

I wonder what their plan is once the site fills up? Have a warm-recycling bonfire? Embezzle as much as possible and declare bankruptcy?

Garbage is deeply misunderstood. If you make a pile of garbage and put enough garbage in it, it will heat up to crazy temperatures and start to decompose, including plastic, which is a hydrocarbon.

“Recycling” on the other hand is a code word for shipping stuff on a slow boat to China, and is actually much worse for the environment.

China stopped taking our recycling in 2017. Plastic recycling usually just means the incinerator now.

I don't think plastic alone would heat up (unless you have some very weird plastics). Organics probably would. But for common household garbage, there's not much harm in just burying it somewhere, provided it's not leaking or otherwise getting out - plant some trees on top of it and you have a nice park. Toxic garbage is more challenging but regular plastic doesn't seem to be this huge problem if you don't dump it into the river or such.

It wasn't even a slow boat, it was part of how the international shipping system worked: we got cheap plastic goods FROM China, we shipped back plastic "to be recycled" TO China. The idea is that it was better than shipping back empty containers. They don't take recyclables any more.

Why is plastic in landfills a problem? It started off as oil in the ground.

Because most of the oil reserves weren't contaminating water tables?

Does plastic do that? My understanding is that away from sunlight and heat it basically never breaks down.

Plastic (depending) will become brittle and break into smaller and smaller pieces if buried. The problem of microplastics is kind of a breaking story. It doesn't look like a good thing for us.

How would you feel about a landfill right next to your home?

Why does it have to be next to anyone's home? US still has vast amounts of pretty much empty space. You could drive for hours and see mostly empty space.

There's plenty of space in north america that isn't beside residencial areas.

Even a desert has an ecosystem. I think you'll find your "space", unless it was previously cleared by human beings, is supporting life. Imagine tearing something complex and wonderful up to bury plastic.

I mean the local landfill for me is an hour's drive away. It's well managed, stabilised soil. When it's full it'll be covered over and become a municipal oval like many of the others around my city which now are central points of suburbs.

Plastic in the US does not end up rivers, you are thinking of places like India.

There's nothing wrong with plastic in a landfill.

I have personally seen, on a California beach, a carcass of some marine animal, I can't remember but maybe an elephant seal, that had been choked by a plastic grocery bag.

I have seen subsequently, and considered briefly running after, many plastic bags in the streets blowing towards the storm runoff system.

And plastic in a landfill tends to degrade over a very long period of time, into substances that seem to have a tendency towards contaminating water tables and ecosystems.

I used to volunteer weekends cleaning remote beaches in California, and virtually all the plastic trash was from asia and/or asian ships (from the text and printing). US people using plastic is a very small problem in comparison.

I wish. There's a park on the east shore of the Potomac as it's widening below DC. A Boy Scout troop could literally pick up a ton of plastic in half a mile of shoreline (just go at low tide). Occasional metal (like a water heater, I think it was), but mostly plastic. I don't know whether it comes from stuff that washes into tributaries, or from boaters.

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