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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

There’s nothing wrong with one-time-use plastics, in countries with good waste management systems.

Paper straws suck.

There are no countries with good waste management systems. Waste counts as recycled, if it was exported. What happens after that, nobody knows and nobody cares. Even in Europe, just a tiny amount of plastic gets recycled, most is shipped away, so that others should care about.

Edit: Source: "The recycling lie" https://www.daserste.de/information/reportage-dokumentation/... (german)

Mandate plasma gasification instead of plastics recycling. The result is a syngas that can be burned for energy and an inert slag you can dispose of in asphalt.

Edit: MorrisMinor suggests this further down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34293509

Honestly go look outside. Go alongside a well trafficed road in the city or the country and take a close look at the soil. The curb or tree lawn is filled with visible bits of degraded plastic, and that's not even seeing abraded tire dust that will just look like soot or dirt.

Go to pretty much any beach and sift through the sand. Again you will find an abnormal number of plastic mixed in. Even in "clean" places with not a lot of litter plastic bits are visibly everywhere.

Own any synthetic clothes? Look at your lint trap after running a dryer or shaking out your clothes. The dust and lint coming off will quickly become microplastics. The wastewater from your washer will also be filled with them

Not where I live?

I worked in a plastic factory for ten years so I feel like I would recognize this if I had ever seen it. I haven't. I will take a look though.

What's a good waste management system? Honest question.

Burying plastics in the ground; returning carbon to where it came from.

No, burning them in a waste to energy plant.

While we still use hydrocarbons for a while for power, we might as well let some of them hang out as our stuff for a bit before being burned for energy.

I get that argument, but wouldn't it be better to bury it deep so that the carbon is taken away rather than added to the ecosystem?

Sure, small-scale "energy recycling" makes sense, but if everyone did it with all our waste plastic outout then we'd pretty much just be using fossil fuels with extra steps, and the carbon will end up in the atmosphere.

It is fossil fuels with extra steps but see that when you burn garbage for power that’s displacing the equivalent amount of power that would be provided by fossil fuels (almost everywhere around the world today).

Therefore you get to leave some oil or whatever in the ground instead of going to the trouble of burying garbage.

Burning garbage instead of fossil fuels should be carbon neutral with some benefits of not filling landfills etc.

Animals live in the ground and you are talking about filling their homes with garbage? You are sick.

Plasma converter:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification

Unfortunately it's more expensive than just throwing waste into a hole in the ground.

Metal straws (and spoons, forks, knives) are amazing.

Every paper straw I have ever used has been great.

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