I'm all for eliminating single use plastics where sensible to do so, and arguably the possible biological effects of plastic should make us consider reducing overall plastic usage, sustainable or otherwise.
Which can be trapped/filtered to avoid pollution.
> if plastics ever become sufficiently valuable - or recycling sufficiently viable.
If that was remotely probable, you'd have banks offering plastic-storage related ETFs already.
We need good incentives with a system that self-corrects; we need to stop playing whack-a-mole with easily-known-ahead-of-time problems and implement good systems.
Yes, it's better than burning it outright in open fire pits (as it's done in an awful lot of "third world" countries to concentrate metals out of the waste), but it's way worse than a dump yard. And most of the places that have a lot of plastics waste don't have the resources to install decent scrubbers, much less perfect scrubbers.
[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/recycling-global-stat...
Yes and no. If the energy is recycled (for heating buildings and/or water) you'll reduce carbon emissions from coal/gas/oil. Waste incineration (instead of landfills) is a thing in various European countries and the heat can (and will) be used to heat buildings or the steam drives turbines to generate electricity.
Then we have all this discussion of plastic in our food and water.
Genuine question: why are we even having this discussion?
In the third decade of the 21st century, common sense ain’t so common
Companies would do cost-cutting on product wrapping way before the emissions become a problem.
A turtle occasionally eating a plastic bag for breakfast is a bad thing, but the turtles wouldn't be happy if they knew they're about to die off because we're distracting ourselves with bans on single-use bags and plastic straws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries
Plastic pollution is affecting the "novel entities (chemical pollution)" boundary
Whether we recycle, landfill or incinerate, I'm not sure what difference that makes to plastic pollution. To deal with plastic pollution, we need to reduce overall plastic usage and improve collection and waste management.
If you're still using the plastic, then it's not currently degrading in the ocean.
I'm curious why the ocean appears to be the terminal destination for plastics. After I throw it in the rubbish bin, which mechanism transports it to the pacific?
A lot of it starts in the ocean; fishing gear and stuff falling off ships are big sources. https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/where-does-marine-debris-come/...
Of the stuff that starts on land, it's often carried there by wind and river: https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/where-does-marine-debris-come/...
I've said for decades, that each bit of plastic made, is less plastic used as fuel. Create the plastic, then after, bury it deep in a plastic landfill. It came from deep in the Earth, back it can go.
Meanwhile, people have wild schemes to put CO2 deep in the Earth, and that's OK? When not used plastic?
Ocean microplastic is overwhelmingly caused by countries that actually just throw their plastic in rivers. The US contributes a very small percentage of all environmental microplastic (like somewhere under 2%, maybe much under that).
Specific to washing machines, I wonder if there is an option for a micro plastic filter?
Moving and handling waste plastic less is a form of improving waste management.
From the wiki article: "The trade in plastic waste has been identified as "a main culprit" of marine litter."
That's just because the clown world we developed only cares about money, as long as the numbers fit in the excel tables we'll do all kind of dumb shit like sending trash to Africa to have it burned in open dumps
There is a very easy solution which seemingly isn't even conceived, recycle it locally... really mind blowing I know...
Only 2% of plastic waste is traded between countries. Further, most of that is traded within the same region, so the amount of waste that's shipped across "long distances" is probably under 1%.
Burning the plastic in a properly fitted plant largely "cleans" the toxic additives by burning them too.
Plastic in nature will eventually turn into CO2, just slower and with a lot of bad side-effects.
"Recycling" the plastic has been shown to instead be sold to whatever-place-du-jour which ignores laws. Often it's burned in open pits, creating both immediate CO2 release, as well as new toxins created in the imperfect burning, and leaching of the old toxins, as well as large chunks of unburnt plastic floating in the wind.
And burning plastic is a waste, but a lesser waste, because it's turned into some electricity.
Upholding recycling structures for plastic also creates a false sense of "this is fine". Instead, it should be treated as low-level-dangerous refuse which should be burnt and only used for applications where this trade-off is acceptable.
The mainstream scientists, European governments, China etc all think that recycling plastic is better than burning or landfill for reasons they've documented in depth in multiple Lifecycle Analysis papers and meta reviews of LCAs.
But, there is a very loud minority, funded by the same network of think-tanks representing fossil fuel interests that fund climate change deniers who say this is all nonsense and really everything you've been told by the "consensus" actually either does nothing, or actively makes things worse, so you might as well keep using and burning fossil fuels.