Indeed, waste sorting might improve the situation, but all available evidence indicates there is no will to do this (caveats being parts of Europe, Japan, the Nordics, and anywhere else diverse multi stream waste management can be effectively operated), which leads me to believe gasification is the superior path (with a bypass stream for glass, brick, earth, rock, and metals, primarily to prevent process efficiency reduction during gasification but also for reuse of those materials).

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.

What has been successful in my city, Portland, is separating the food and yard waste. The food and yard wastes are composted. Composting produces methane, but there is a trial to capture the methane which is burned as natural gas.

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

You don't really lose anything in a landfill. You just lock it up for a while.

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

A wrinkle I read somewhere - organics in traditional landfills kept toxic materials like heavy metals "locked up", less risk of such stuff leeching out in the ground water.

What benefit would you get from gasification compared to just straight up burning the trash?

Reads like it's worth than just straight up incineration. At least with current technologies. (Apart from perhaps the installation on that American military ship. Maybe. But that's just because they have unusual requirements.)

I'm generally down on sorting unless you have a lot of one particular type of waste. If you are not generating a full truck worth of that type of waste every week sorting efforts mean more trucks (since the truck with compartments for each type cannot hold as much waste because of the compartments, and also it has to go empty when one compartment fills). Combine that with the need verify the sorting was done correctly and it isn't worth it. We have made trade progress on automated sorting machines that solve a lot of problems - lets instead ban things that cannot be automatically sorted.

You're repeating yourself:

> parts of Europe, Japan, the Nordics

The Nordics are a part of Europe.

DRY! :-)

    > plastic decomposition

As I understand, most plastic is type 1 and 2 (PET bottles and such), and it never decomposes (on any reasonable human timeframe).