Once the plastics are captured, I don't see too much benefit in incinerating it beyond freeing up landfill space. But that's really not a major issue as you can always dig a deeper and wider landfill.

In fact, a major downside of incinerating the plastic is you end up with greenhouse gasses as a byproduct.

https://www.epa.gov/lmop/basic-information-about-landfill-ga...

> Municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills are the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the United States, accounting for approximately 14.4 percent of these emissions in 2022. The methane emissions from MSW landfills in 2022 were approximately equivalent to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from more than 24.0 million gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year or the CO2 emissions from more than 13.1 million homes’ energy use for one year. At the same time, methane emissions from MSW landfills represent a lost opportunity to capture and use a significant energy resource.

TLDR Whether landfills or gasification, you are paying the piper regardless for emissions. Don't trust the human, pull forward the disposal.

I have no idea how you think plasma gasification -- requiring extreme amounts of energy -- is in any way helpful to our current environmental concerns. Unless we somehow magically start relying on 100% renewables, it seems like landfills are far-and-away the best way to go until we are able to grapple with climate change.

By the end of this year, the world will be deploying 660GW of solar annually. Within 18 months, that figure rises to 1TW/year (based on current manufacturing ramp trajectories).

On the contrary, I’m unsure how you think we don’t have the clean power for this, not even accounting for the power you can generate from the syngas that is a byproduct of the process. The process is not energy positive, but it’s also not wildly net negative due to the energy content of the matter being gasified.

> Plasma gasification uses around 800 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of power per ton of municipal solid waste (MSW).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01968...

I've been trying to advocate for slowing climate change since about 2000. I've been to enough city council meetings, and seen enough government promises simply abandoned to know that this is a deeply naive way to just "expect" the world to suddenly become rational.

Let's stop the actively bleeding artery that is actively killing us before we even start to worry some efficiency gains we could get by asking the surgeon to do two things at once.

This is the difference between an environmentalist and an "environmentalist."

We need to fix climate change now. Get to carbon neutral now. Literally nothing else matters much.

I would prefer that focus and expense be used to target reducing GHG's in the short run.

It is literally (part of) a solution to the problem you're bringing up.

> Because solar isn't balanced and we haven't fixed the duck curve.

Well, landfill management is something you could (mostly) only run whenever you have excess (solar) power on the grid. So it's an excellent consumer for intermittent generators.

That’s not realistic. You can and probably will have a complete excess of renewable energy on bright and windy days that is well beyond electrical demand, and at the same time rely on baseload power during still nights. Energy storage helps even things out, and plasma gasification is one possible way to store that energy.

    > it seems like landfills are far-and-away the best way to go until we are able to grapple with climate change.

Incineration ends up being quite profitable in isolation. Take stuff worth negative X$ per ton and turn it into a smaller pile of stuff still worth negative X$ per ton. Generating power is a useful side effect, but not the main reason.

Hardly the best solution, but I argue the least worst solution. Landfilling is just too much risk considering leaching from lining failures (putting water tables and aquifers at risk from permanent contamination) and the lifetime of methane destruction that must be accounted for.

Capturing methane from compost should be easier than whole landfill. It also keeps the organics instead of losing them.

We can 'mine' landfills in the future, if that becomes economically viable.

> parts of Europe, Japan, the Nordics

The Nordics are a part of Europe.

DRY! :-)

    > plastic decomposition

The submission suggests that landfills ain't dug, but just piled high. Digging a hole costs more time, money and effort than not digging a hole.

I've yet to see a truly viable solution in this space that can economically compete; it would be nice to see it happen.