agree’
Thermal depolymerization was an interesting idea that didn’t work out for various reasons. I’m not sure that one of the reported reasons was the electricity costs. but judging by the designs I recall—electricity would have played a big role in costs.anyhow it was a idea that got batted around 5-6 years ago and yielded a demo plant in philadelphia and a turkey evisceration plant somewhere out in the midwest.
Seems to me they caught a couple of bad breaks.
My County has been conducting an experimental landfill “mining” process that has actually been profitable. The County has been running a “waste to energy” trash burning plant for decades (never made money) and then trucking the ashes to a county owned landfill. Recently they began “Mining” the old landfill ash pits for metals and they’ve been making profits even considering the initial costs in startup equipment. Two positives from this are landfill longevity and lowering tipping fees to garbage companies which means a lower garbage bill to the end consumer.