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Wouldn't (fully) burning all single-use plastics effectively make them no more long-lived and problematic than burning crude oil at sea? I know that's a low bar, but it seems like at least you're getting two uses out of them at that point...



Landfilling plastics avoids even putting CO2 back into the environment.

Modern landfill is highly engineered and extremely stable: what goes in there stays there.

Plastic starts as oil in the ground. Replacing it as solids in the ground isn't a problem.


Among other problems, plastics release methane and c02 as they decompose in landfills, so it's not as cut and dried a solution as you imply.


Modern landfills carefully channel and burn off the methane


That was always my impression, and after that you can always build a park on top!


A lot of plastics are incinerated. I think it has to be at a high temperature. Of course this does emit carbon dioxide.


The temperature at which burning polymers completely eliminates particulates and CO is very close to the temperature that NOx starts to form.

Source: I did a bunch of research on rocket mass heaters (think rocket stove, not missile engine) when I built one.


And if you produce heat / energy from burning it, you can technically call it recycling :)

Put some filters on top of the power plant exhausts and it's clean enough to build a ski slope on top of it.


The reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amager_Bakke




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