Posted on 10/09/2019 4:45:07 PM PDT by grundle
Recycling plastic uses up a lot of resources, and after all the hauling around, sorting, and processing of bottles and containers, it often ends up getting thrown away or burned.
MIT business researcher Andrew McAfee says we'd be better off putting our plastic waste into well-managed landfills.
He argues we should spend our "mental budget for thinking about the Earth on more high-impact changes," like carbon taxes on major polluters and nuclear energy.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I’ve been suggesting this might be true for a long time. Glad to see someone has perhaps done the study.
All that recycled plastic makes great landscaping timber, and other composite building material. Though more expensive, the material outlasts wood. One of the better uses of recycled material.
I’m married to a true believer of recycling and sorting trash that is most likely hauled off in separate trucks to the same landfill.
Tell me if I’m wrong but I believe about 10 years ago someone developed a process to chip up hazardous materials and then burn them at extremely high temperatures that would break down any harmful chemicals. I also believe that electricity could be generated with the waste heat.
I disagree. Landfills are not free either, and take up land, and usually cannot be built on top of, and face NIMBY objections at every turn. The whole business of landfills requires just as much trucking around as recyclables.
Instead we need materials science to put more R&D into expanding the ways recycled plastics can be turned into useful products - creating new markets for the supply of once used plastics.
That’s interesting. Thx for posting.
I’ve been saying this for years. I get stared at as though I’m the Man From Mars. We should dispose of things properly, so turtles and fish don’t die from eating plastic from a six pak, but that’s what No Littering already means.
Recycling in multiple containers can become OCD level behavior very easily.
But, I still recycle. Go figure.
He might be right about the plastic but he’s an idiot as to what we should refocus our thoughts on.
Carbon dioxide is not a threat, it’s a distraction from real pollution such as 2.5mm particles that have been linked to diabetes.
And nuclear power can be made safe and more green than most sources.
In Japan, they turned landfills into ski slopes. Of course, that was 50 years ago.
Oh Brother.
Yo could put 100 years of the all the US trash in a landfill 250 square miles in size and 400 feet deep. Thats a tiny area in a country of 3.8 MILLION square miles.
My wife cracks me up, a southern girl who is the epitome of anti-environmentalist whacko.
We were in the grocery store one time and the checker asked if we wanted paper or plastic. So she asked the checker which one would destroy the Earth faster, because that’s the one she wants.
Another Yahoo news story.
This stuff gets old
“He argues we should spend our “mental budget for thinking about the Earth on more high-impact changes,” like carbon taxes on major polluters and nuclear energy”
Don’t miss that part. This guy is not a good guy.
Some municipalities are coming clean with the truth of it, they aren’t recycling the plastics we have been working hard to sort for them.
At the inception, they had big stars in their eyes. Oh this was all going to pay for itself. Well, it failed miserably with regard to that.
Now I think they remain silent just to keep the enviro-whackjobs off their backs.
Good luck when they all find out what’s really going on.
There will be weeping and wailing across the land.
Nuclear power already IS safe.
As far as I know, no one has ever died as a result of a nuclear accident in this country.
LOL!
Neither the author or previous posters mentioned an obvious means of reducing the plastic waste problem, namely, use less of it, especially throwaway plastics.
IMHO; single use small plastic containers ought to be banned world wide. I know, who and how would that ever get enforced? It wouldn’t. That’s why we are stuck with plastic trash chocking the world’s environments.
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