Reusing plastics is honestly one of those "do we need to" things these days. The theory is that if we reuse them, then the waste doesn't pollute the environment - but landfilled plastic waste is basically sequestered carbon, and plastic pollution is ocean-borne and mostly being directly produced by poor environmental practice - not unrecycled plastic waste or landfill escape.

Yeah I agree, I'm pretty pro, bury plastic in the ground, but I figure if we need to coke steel rather than digging up coal we can just divert a few trucks.

Yeah seriously, bury the plastic really deep away from water tables and forget about it. We clearly can’t recycle most of the stuff. Couple that with moving away from a frivolous use of plastic and I think we are golden. There are a bunch of abandoned mines miles away from substantial water tables. Fill those up.

We can’t figure out how to store a minimal quantity of radioactive waste in a purpose-built salt mine dozens of miles away from any small town. I have no faith that we can find places to store megatons of plastic waste.

Plastic doesn't radiate.

NIMBY neighbors don’t compromise.

They might if it affected their states tax revenue and was only a plastic landfill (which is to say, not a compromise but a pure self interest play).

There shouldn’t be any neighbors in the middle of nowhere.

funny question: could we mix the nuclear waste with the plastic to make (the plastic) degrade faster?

That's brilliant. I would love to learn if that could work and wouldn't just create a bunch of radioactive plastic.

Even if it did, if it ended up enriching the soil carbon-content, would it matter?

I suppose it solves littering but in the end you're still just burning plastics and turning them into CO2, which isn't great.

Reminds me of "Plasteel" from RimWorld.