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Re:Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated by henrikschroder on Sunday July 14, 2019 @06:00PM (#20436424)
Single-use plastics are perfectly fine if:

1) You already have oil-powered power plants, and

2) You have efficient, modern trash incinerators that can recover 90%+ of the energy in plastics, and

3) You make sure that all plastic garbage actually ends up incinerated.

Because the utility you get out of making plastics out of oil, using the plastics for something, and then burning it, is higher than just straight up burning the oil.

But if you fail any of these three points, you're better off banning single-use plastics.

Re:Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated by ethagnawl on Monday July 15, 2019 @08:39AM (#20440204)
> You make sure that all plastic garbage actually ends up incinerated.

Oddly, this seems to be the most difficult part of the equation here in NYC. Containerization needs to be adopted in order to make the system more efficient and sanitary. Containerization would prevent refuse from spilling into the street, into the storm drains, etc. The current system (curbside pickup of plastic bags) falls over (literally and figuratively) in too many ways and the sanitation workers aren't interested in picking up the slack -- they ignore anything not secured in a plastic bag.

Re:Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated by greglindahl on Sunday July 14, 2019 @08:09PM (#20437122)
Can you point out anywhere that's made all of 1..3 work successfully? I'd think that most places have 0 of the 3.
Re:Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated by sthatipamala on Sunday July 14, 2019 @08:53PM (#20437286)
I believe Japan follows this system. It was very confusing when I visited because they sort their waste into combustible and non-combustible, instead of trash vs. recycle.
Re:Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated by greglindahl on Sunday July 14, 2019 @09:23PM (#20437418)
I know that many places have modern incinerators, but that's only 1 of 3. If it was in the US, I'd expect that actually sorting trash effectively would be a big problem, despite having a modern incinerator.
Re:Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated by rsync on Tuesday July 16, 2019 @12:13PM (#20451376)
"Can you point out anywhere that's made all of 1..3 work successfully? I'd think that most places have 0 of the 3."

Zurich has a very centrally located incinerator (behind the "viadukt" shopping area) and I believe that they generate electricity from the plant. They also have a very granular sorting regime ... it would appear they are covering all three of the bases.

Re:Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated by henrikschroder on Monday July 15, 2019 @05:27AM (#20439235)
Sweden incinerates 97% of all its non-recyclable trash, obviously has modern incinerators, and has some oil-powered power plants for peak load purposes.