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Thank you for your swift and comprehensive reply.

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

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.

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.

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