Burning that is creating between 264 and 750kg of CO2 per person and year, definitely not insignificant.
I'm not saying that big corporations are not responsible for a huge chunk of the emissions, but getting away from using so much plastic is not hurting.
[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1339439/plastic-waste-ma...
I don't have numbers, but if burning plastic replaces some coal or fracked natural gas, that could be a win, all things considered.
Not to mention, to get usable energy out of the plastic, you have to invest lots of energy for recycling it first - you need infrastructure and education to collect it separately from other trash, you need additional processing to sort it by type, to clean it of many other residue, etc.
And evwn if you do all that fairly efficiently, you're still never going to collect a large percentage of the plastic people use. So any extra environmental impact from plastic in landfills will still be there and need to be resolved.
My argument is not that burning plastic is more efficient than burning whatever fuel. My argument is that extracting, transporting and burning waste plastic may be more efficient than extracting, transporting, and burning whatever fuel. Waste to energy might need a lot less transportation if the plants are near where the waste is generated and/or where it is already collected.
> Not to mention, to get usable energy out of the plastic, you have to invest lots of energy for recycling it first - you need infrastructure and education to collect it separately from other trash, you need additional processing to sort it by type, to clean it of many other residue, etc.
There's already sorting and education for recycling, so the question becomes what's the incremental input needed to get a usable waste to useful energy pipeline.
> And even if you do all that fairly efficiently, you're still never going to collect a large percentage of the plastic people use. So any extra environmental impact from plastic in landfills will still be there and need to be resolved.
Yes, but I don't know how that relates? My argument is that the emissions of burning plastic for usable energy might not be as bad as it looks because it would reduce lifecycle emissions from (direct) fossil fuels. That's not an argument for or against burning plastic, it's an argument that we need to get marginal emissions numbers for the alternatives, and if emissions is the only criteria, then it would make sense to burn plastic in cases where the marginal emissions are in favor of burning it; but even that wouldn't be universal. It might make more (or less) sense to setup trash for energy plants in isolated locations where transport of other fuel is difficult; it almost certainly makes less sense to setup trash for energy plants in places where natgas is a waste product, natgas is a clear choice there.
I would guess they are less than 1 of those 150kg/year.
> Burning that is creating between 264 and 750kg of CO2 per person and year, definitely not insignificant.
Grok says total US CO2 emissions are "approximately 13.83 metric tons per person". I agree that 750kg (0.75 ton) is significant, but I don't thing plastic bags even affect the last decimal of that number.
It's far from the most important issue, but it was the one I had a disagreement with.
It sounds like you agree that plastic bags are not a big problem.
Also, scrubbing 1 ton co2 is around $600 with current tech if I’m not mistaken.