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Comment by ramraj07 | Hacker News Reader

Because single use plastics are transformatively essentially for the entire modern way of life? Until we acknowledge that reality any solution will only sound hypocritical and be ineffective in the end.

The only real solution I see for plastic waste is just to incinerate it and try to build carbon capture plants to undo that fire.

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There is no need to burn when you can pyrolyze.

I see steam pyrolysis followed by land filling to be the recycling method of last resort. It can recover at least few hundred gallons of oil for every ton of plastic.

This method was recently endorsed by Sir Attenborough: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2021/03/25/sir-dav...

>The only real solution I see for plastic waste is just to incinerate it and try to build carbon capture plants to undo that fire.

I am cool with incinerating and carbon capturing if the Petro-chemical manufacturers pay for it directly or indirectly. The Coca-Cola, Nestle, Procter & Gambles, Unilever etc. need to own up to their sustainability talk.

The externalization of the health and environmental plastic costs needs to stop.

I wouldn't trust any of those organisations to actually do it cleanly if my life depended on it.

> The only real solution I see for plastic waste is just to incinerate it and try to build carbon capture plants to undo that fire.

IF you can capture it in the first place. Litter is a huge problem, and it wouldn't be if the stuff just rotted naturally. Well, it'd still be a problem, but less of an ecological disaster.

What's to acknowledge? Paper bags work just as well, much of the products absolutely don't need that much plastic packaging, and people lived fine with reused glass bottles/jars (at least some countries still recycle that).

For those interested Ted-Ed did a neat video on the topic of grocery bags.

https://youtu.be/3_fjEc4aQVk

Anything that’s in liquid form is going to come in a plastic lined container at the minimum. Almost all meat products are wrapped in plastic and styrofoam. A good amount of produce as well. Are we going to forego all these conveniences?

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