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Comment by cdolan | Hacker News Reader

There is a powerful (sub?)culture in the business world based upon proclaiming your company is sustainable. LEED is actually part of the problem in a way.

The metrics are based on unimportant factors like “diversion” (meaning it was dumped in a foreign country as “recycling” rather than safely burned or land filled), and the measurements are almost All estimates.

It will be a long road to change a culture that demands “recycling” simply because a politician or CEO committed to “Zero Waste by 20X0”, and the recycling rate must always go up year over year.

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What does safely burned in the context of plastic packaging mean?

Waste to energy programs, where exhaust is contained and not released into the atmosphere, is a viable means of disposal for many materials. Particularly viable for those which are oil based, like plastic, which are highly pollutive if not contained (see our oceans), take a massive amount of time to naturally decompose, and have relatively high potential energy (because they are petroleum based).

Edit: I notice you said plastic packaging. Which made me thing of the massive amount of plastics in retailed packaging. My answer there would be that reducing is always better than recycling - start shipping with less material and/or more paper based products that naturally decompose in a few days/weeks.

Thank you for your swift and comprehensive reply.

I wasn’t aware plastics could be burned and the exhaust contained / treated / whatever.

Burning plastic is perhaps not ideal. But I'd guess it's better than pretending to recycle it while actually dumping it somewhere.

Not really. You dump lots of nasty material into the air, and then are left with lots of nasty byproduct that needs to be dumped somewhere.

The way to deal with plastic, especially packaging is to have a regulatory framework that makes it more expensive than putting it in a cardboard box.

Plastics are, in essence, solidified crude oil. Many plastic products are very difficult to recycle, but they make perfectly satisfactory fuel. A modern waste-to-energy incinerator is no dirtier than a gas-fired power station. The Klemetsrud CHP facility in Norway provides a good model for the role of waste-to-energy incineration in a sustainable waste management system.

http://www.trackmyelectricity.com/plants/klemetsrud-chp/

Great link thank you for sharing. It’s amazing how terrible a reputation waste to energy has.

Paper does not biodegrade once it is in landfill no longer exposed to air or the elements. Not even newsprint. There is a whole discipline of archeology consisting of digging in landfills and they often find perfectly preserved newspapers that are 50 years old or more.

Sorry landfill decomposition wasn’t my point but I didn’t clarify.

My point was that paper can decompose more easily if/when it’s improperly disposed of/littered. It’s not ideal, but at least it will be gone in shorter time than plastic, and it won’t destroy wildlife, etc.

The other benefit of more paper based products is they retain greater value than plastics (both economic and practical - your McDonalds napkin was formerly a newspaper, which is former office paper, etc) and therefore market forces will typically support a clean stream recycling program for mixed paper, office paper, and corrugated cardboard.

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