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Comment by hkt | Hacker News Reader

Honestly at this point I think the way to go may be to stop using plastics where they're not absolutely required, and to subsequently burn what goes into landfill while producing electricity and reclaiming heat. Better that than this.

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Burn it? With all the talk of carbon capture? Recall that plastic literally consists of a mass of hydrocarbons. Why not bury it?

I think the legitimate answer was groundwater contamination, but that should be solved for other things we bury. I'm on board for non-biodegradable plastic trash sequestration

I'd argue that if we are burning plastics we get to dodge microplastics, and we get a second use of hydrocarbons. Burn enough plastic, maybe we can displace some gas. Optimistic, I realise.

One problem is that plastic generally contains all manner of additives which create a health hazard when burned. Incinerators supposedly filter out the dangerous pollutants, but it seems likely that quite a lot gets into the air. For some of these chemicals we know that tiny concentrations, much smaller than previously thought, are enough to be dangerous. The safest approach IMO is ground sequestration. And of course much better regulation of plastic additives.

How do you define 'not absolutely required'?

Easy cases might be single use plastics outside of a medical environment and anything where there isn't a substitute with adequate properties (I'd ignore economics here and let the market solve)

Ultimately a tricky thing to define though, no argument.

> let the market solve

That's how we got here in the first place.

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