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A comment on 'Moment of reckoning': US cities burn recyclables after China bans imports. Parent comment

Re:'Moment of reckoning': US cities burn recyclables after C... by CydeWeys on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @09:58AM (#19263593)
If the plastic is burned in a really high quality incinerator, with a great scrubber stack, it at least isn't putting out lots of pollutants, and can generate power to boot. This might be a better fate than having them end up in a landfill, though of course they are releasing CO2 when you burn them (though I don't know if that's significant at all compared to global CO2 released in manufacturing and transport).
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Re:'Moment of reckoning': US cities burn recyclables after C... by AstralStorm on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @10:06AM (#19263643)
About the same CO2 impact as manufacturing them.

The problem is burning it clean. To do that you have to run a very hot furnace, near gasification temperatures.

Otherwise, you will be releasing cracked chlorine, sulphate, partial urethane chains and other hydrocarbons into air. They're invisible but noxious and sometimes stinky.

Electroscrubbers have limitations and high energy cost too.

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Re:'Moment of reckoning': US cities burn recyclables after C... by wang_li on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @02:50PM (#19266362)
>This might be a better fate than having them end up in a landfill...

If you're not recycling them, why is burning them better than putting them into a landfill? Is it the fact that plastics don't biodegrade and will last in the ground for thousands of years? Isn't that good? Aren't we trying to find carbon sequestration techniques?

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