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How is turning it into fuel pellets not recycling? It's giving it a second life, rather than going into a landfill.
by biofox 1y ago
How is turning it into fuel pellets not recycling? It's giving it a second life, rather than going into a landfill.
- XorNot 1y agoSending it to landfill would produce a lot less CO2.
- actionfromafar 1y agoIf we are going to phase out fossils, we might just as well as phase out plastics last. (By burning it.) It the meantime, figure out how to make plastic less toxic and also how to use less of it.
- scotty79 1y agoMaybe in a few generations there'll be a ban on burning any fossil fuels other than plastic.
- mike-the-mikado 1y agoThat assumes that it does not decay in the landfill. Even if that is true today, I don't think we can rule out the evolution of bacteria etc. (possibly bio-engineered) to feed on plastics.
- sparsely 1y agoThe energy produced from burning it would come from somewhere else, which on average won't be 0 CO2 either.
- arresin 1y agoIt may be
- aloha2436 1y agoIt's barely one step removed from just being burned in an incinerator, it's maybe recycling in a very strict sense but it's definitely misleading to say that.
- throw310822 1y agoWell, plastic came from the underground (as oil) and to the underground should return, as much as possible. You could argue that when plastic waste is not burned, a corresponding amount of fossil fuels are extracted from the underground to make up the difference, but I think the existence of renewable energy sources makes the replacement ratio (waste plastic to new fossil fuels) much less than 1 to 1.