All plastic waste could be recycled into new plastic: researchers

Re:All plastic waste could be recycled into new plastic: res... by ZeroGravitas on Monday October 21, 2019 @07:20AM (#21310948)

I don't understand the reference to methane? Is that relevant to plastic recycling or is that just throwing a reference to a random pro-landfill argument that anti-recycling people often use?

If you are then anaerobic digestion of separated food waste/organic material are far better (again both economically and environmentally) than throwing it all in a landfill and trying to capture the gas later (especially as there other valuable/harmful outputs too). And that's what every well run government in the world is doing, because they've done the sums.

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Re:All plastic waste could be recycled into new plastic: res... by mattmaroon on Monday October 21, 2019 @09:03PM (#21319341)

Plastic in a landfill releases methane, which is a very potent greenhouse gas if not burned. The studies comparing greenhouse gas emissions of recycling vs landfill/replacement (including the one you linked IIRC) rely on that for their argument that recycling is better in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

It definitely takes less energy (and thus fossil fuels and thus carbon) to landfill a plastic bottle and make a new one or plastic bottle makers would be much more adamant to recycle. We can safely rely amoral corporations to do what's cheapest.

I'm not anti-recycling and can't imagine who even would be. I'm in favor of whatever reduces greenhouse gas emissions the most. I just think that the biggest problem in modern environmentalism is that they are optimizing for something that isn't much of a problem (landfills) at the expense of something that is (greenhouse gases) without even thinking about it. It's well-meaning, they just don't even know that certain materials and recycling programs are making that trade.

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