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To: Trump20162020
Sweden’s recycling system is so sophisticated that only less than one per cent of its household waste has been sent to landfill last year.

On the surface, that seems highly efficient. But burning the garbage to generate energy seems shortsighted. Kind of like when the US added MTBE to gasoline in order to make it burn more efficiently, only to find out the MTBE was finding its way into our water supplies.

6 posted on 12/12/2016 12:49:11 PM PST by CatOwner
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To: CatOwner

Uhhhh... that’s not what MTBE was originally added for. MTBE was added as an anti-knock agent when we decided to remove lead from gasoline (which was causing big health problems) so engines wouldn’t self-destruct. Gasoline needs anti-knock agents to burn in internal combustion engines. The oxygenate nature of MTBE was just a side effect and bonus... or so it was thought.

Amusingly, when lead was banned from gasoline, MTBE was selected instead of a bismuth-based solution from (I think) DuPont. Bismuth is pretty inert and isn’t known to cause any health issues. However, the Democrats decided that they didn’t want to trust DuPont and went with MTBE instead, which turned out to have big nasty effects, like rendering water undrinkable at even minute concentrations. Whoops.


8 posted on 12/12/2016 1:10:41 PM PST by Spktyr (Overwhelmingly superior firepower and the willingness to use it is the only proven peace solution.d)
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