What does safely burned in the context of plastic packaging mean?
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.
I wasn’t aware plastics could be burned and the exhaust contained / treated / whatever.
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.
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.