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Comment by mortenjorck | Hacker News Reader

> Do localities with plasma gasifiers end up purchasing waste from elsewhere to maintain waste input stocks?

This… sounds like a very good problem to have?

Until the plastic runs out. I was confused by the comment as well but I started thinking about the disposable movement - cheaper to just make and throw away plastic utensils than for McDonald's to have flatware, and remains cheap if there's buyers for the plastic.

A good solution with unfortunately perverse incentives. Probably the solution is government bans on unnecessarily wasteful uses of plastics. The market is provably incapable of tackling environmental issues without regulatory encouragement.

In Australia plastic utensils and bags have been banned for so long you'd almost forget they existed. Was a pretty big shock traveling to other countries and seeing how far behind they are on this stuff. There wasn't even a difficult transition period, it just probably costs an extra cent to use wood over plastic.

I think you’re overstating this somewhat - I took eggs home in a plastic bag from my local butcher this morning and ate with plastic forks and knives at a picnic on the weekend. Yes, in Australia.

I guess depends on the state. I haven't even seen a plastic fork in Australia for a long time. Stores were banned from selling them many years ago. I guess if you went out of your way to direct import them from overseas.

Ever wonder if wood is really a renewable resource? Once you see a 4th generation forest, you start to realize we might be running pretty short.

This seems to bounce back and forth, for awhile it was save the trees, now it's cut down trees to save the world apparently?

The wood they are using comes from tree farming, not deforestation. It's pretty low density fast growing wood that's about as renewable as it gets. Worlds better than plastic at the least.

The wood used for disposable utensils comes from farmed, very fast growing trees like bamboo and balsa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ochroma

As I was saying, https://stopthesethings.com/2021/12/18/billions-of-wind-turb...

Ah yes, brought to you by "Stop These Things: The Truth About the Great Wind Power Fraud":

The great wind and solar scam was founded on lies, built on myth and runs on subsidies. But with Donald J Trump in the White House the scale of the fraud is finally being revealed.

I didn't read fully because I felt like I was reading something unhinged, but this does not seem to be about farmed wood at all.

Wood ends up in a landfill anyway or they have proper way to separate it from the rest of the trash?

What's the problem with wood ending up in landfill? It's not going to leach toxins and it's locking away carbon underground.

Plastics are not the only waste you can gasify. Organics, cardboard, wood, paper, medical waste, household rubbish, etc. The only materials you don’t want in the waste stream are metals, glass, rock, and brick.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/plasma-gasi...

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