Oh because coal closed down last week. Better than shipping it abroad though isnt it? Might as well make the most of it before we are knee deep in trash.
simanthropy on
Issue aside, can I just say this is really legit journalism. Making me aware of an issue that no one in the mainstream is aware of, with independently-obtained facts and figures to go with it, with an aim of starting a conversation about this policy. This is what I want to see more of in the world!
gasser on
So according to the article the issue is the amount of plastic in modern waste. Perhaps continuing moves to stop single use plastics is a good way to go.
tiny-robot on
Context would be useful. Is the UK an outlier in burning waste like this – or is it common practice across similar countries?
deanlr90 on
The move to make everything recyclable needs to be hastened. Unfortunately, legatation needs tightening as it seems obvious it won’t happen otherwise.
lookatmeman on
Cool lets shut them down, pay more energy costs and export all our rubbish to the 3rd world where most of it will be burnt or chucked into the ocean anyway.
demoodllaeraew on
Modern municipal incinerators with heat recovery are cleaner with less emissions than burning a 30kgs of chipboard.
The waste ash and slag can be used in road building. This is better than plastic in the ocean.
Of course the now 40 year old hierarchy applies reduce, reuse, repair and recycle should always be applied.
I wonder how well researched the BBC article actually is.
CaptainGrezza on
TBF doing this means we’re giving our homes the good smoky smell that we all like. Is it better that we put it into a landfill where it’s gonna stay for millions of years or burning it up, getting a nice smoky smell and letting that smoke go to the sky where it turns into stars?
Meatpopsicle69x on
This isn’t really much of a substantial discovery. Of course burning mixtures of mostly plastic emits CO2, plastic being made of mostly carbon. It doesn’t seem to include any reduction for materials extracted though like metals recovered from IBA or aggregates used for construction which should reduce the effective output.
For a wider view, check out the e-waste dumps in Ghana for what happens when you try to mandate recycling of waste that aren’t sufficiently dense in valuable materials.
Using more landfill which also create leachate and GHG emission problems isn’t much of a solution either. Incineration/pyrolysis are probably the only economical ways to recover something out of waste without just dumping it for eternity or shipping it to places where labour is cheap enough. I’d rather see a push for better plants than risk waste being exported so it can further contaminate everything.
ash_ninetyone on
The alternative to incinerators is landfill, unfortunately.
From the article, most of the greenhouse gases here come from burning plastics that get thrown into waste more than food.
My local council stopped recycling plastics. All of it. We do cardboard. We do glass. But plastic recycling is a mess. Getting a standard approach would help here. Government to take all types of plastic, instead of this inconsistent mess of rules we have right now.
Reducing single-use plastics and unnecessary plastics in packaging would help, but for freshness, there’s some packaging. I’d prefer the box to be more airtight. If the stuff in the contents of the box are individually wrapped, the outside doesn’t need to be wrapped in plastic. But unfortunately if we also switched to more card and paper packaging, naysayers would bemoan deforestation for paper production. Outside of trying to scale up bioplastics a lot more ofc.
We’re stuck with a lesser of two evils approach at the moment.
robcap on
Personally I find this dangerously misleading.
What happens to the waste if we *don’t* burn it? It gets buried in landfill, *it decomposes* and it produces carbon emissions anyway. You actually have to trap landfill in a sealed chamber, because it produces methane, which is **worse**, and has to be trapped and burned.
The waste is already produced. The use it was manufactured for is over, it’s producing no further value. Why not recover electricity from it?
nukem266 on
The new plastic take out infinity TT10 they introduced was to bypass the new legislations regarding polystyrene takeout boxes.
They just burn the new stuff with all the other soft plastics. Which makes it pointless, if it can’t be recycled correctly it should be banned.
AlpsSad1364 on
The problem with demonising every form of power generation is that it makes it seem that using power itself is evil.
The question here isn’t really whether burning rubbish is polluting, it’s how polluting are the alternatives? Waste has to be dealt with somehow.
“Recycled” plastic is usually shipped to third world countries (by bunker fuel burning container ships) where it’s often either burnt or dumped at sea. That is far less preferable to just burning it at home. And the idea that we can deal with our plastic waste by just burying it in a hole in the ground is ludicrous… that is the caveman answer.
Clearly we need to tackle the root cause which is the production of plastic in the first place… If it didn’t exist we wouldn’t have to deal with it. Plenty of alternatives to oil based plastics now exist governments just need to force their use.
verdantcow on
Wow, government doesn’t like anyone with a log burner and claim we are the ones causing pollution burning seasoned wood and coal and this is what they do behind closed doors.
14 Comments
Oh because coal closed down last week. Better than shipping it abroad though isnt it? Might as well make the most of it before we are knee deep in trash.
Issue aside, can I just say this is really legit journalism. Making me aware of an issue that no one in the mainstream is aware of, with independently-obtained facts and figures to go with it, with an aim of starting a conversation about this policy. This is what I want to see more of in the world!
So according to the article the issue is the amount of plastic in modern waste. Perhaps continuing moves to stop single use plastics is a good way to go.
Context would be useful. Is the UK an outlier in burning waste like this – or is it common practice across similar countries?
The move to make everything recyclable needs to be hastened. Unfortunately, legatation needs tightening as it seems obvious it won’t happen otherwise.
Cool lets shut them down, pay more energy costs and export all our rubbish to the 3rd world where most of it will be burnt or chucked into the ocean anyway.
Modern municipal incinerators with heat recovery are cleaner with less emissions than burning a 30kgs of chipboard.
The waste ash and slag can be used in road building. This is better than plastic in the ocean.
Of course the now 40 year old hierarchy applies reduce, reuse, repair and recycle should always be applied.
I wonder how well researched the BBC article actually is.
TBF doing this means we’re giving our homes the good smoky smell that we all like. Is it better that we put it into a landfill where it’s gonna stay for millions of years or burning it up, getting a nice smoky smell and letting that smoke go to the sky where it turns into stars?
This isn’t really much of a substantial discovery. Of course burning mixtures of mostly plastic emits CO2, plastic being made of mostly carbon. It doesn’t seem to include any reduction for materials extracted though like metals recovered from IBA or aggregates used for construction which should reduce the effective output.
For a wider view, check out the e-waste dumps in Ghana for what happens when you try to mandate recycling of waste that aren’t sufficiently dense in valuable materials.
Using more landfill which also create leachate and GHG emission problems isn’t much of a solution either. Incineration/pyrolysis are probably the only economical ways to recover something out of waste without just dumping it for eternity or shipping it to places where labour is cheap enough. I’d rather see a push for better plants than risk waste being exported so it can further contaminate everything.
The alternative to incinerators is landfill, unfortunately.
From the article, most of the greenhouse gases here come from burning plastics that get thrown into waste more than food.
My local council stopped recycling plastics. All of it. We do cardboard. We do glass. But plastic recycling is a mess. Getting a standard approach would help here. Government to take all types of plastic, instead of this inconsistent mess of rules we have right now.
Reducing single-use plastics and unnecessary plastics in packaging would help, but for freshness, there’s some packaging. I’d prefer the box to be more airtight. If the stuff in the contents of the box are individually wrapped, the outside doesn’t need to be wrapped in plastic. But unfortunately if we also switched to more card and paper packaging, naysayers would bemoan deforestation for paper production. Outside of trying to scale up bioplastics a lot more ofc.
We’re stuck with a lesser of two evils approach at the moment.
Personally I find this dangerously misleading.
What happens to the waste if we *don’t* burn it? It gets buried in landfill, *it decomposes* and it produces carbon emissions anyway. You actually have to trap landfill in a sealed chamber, because it produces methane, which is **worse**, and has to be trapped and burned.
The waste is already produced. The use it was manufactured for is over, it’s producing no further value. Why not recover electricity from it?
The new plastic take out infinity TT10 they introduced was to bypass the new legislations regarding polystyrene takeout boxes.
They just burn the new stuff with all the other soft plastics. Which makes it pointless, if it can’t be recycled correctly it should be banned.
The problem with demonising every form of power generation is that it makes it seem that using power itself is evil.
The question here isn’t really whether burning rubbish is polluting, it’s how polluting are the alternatives? Waste has to be dealt with somehow.
“Recycled” plastic is usually shipped to third world countries (by bunker fuel burning container ships) where it’s often either burnt or dumped at sea. That is far less preferable to just burning it at home. And the idea that we can deal with our plastic waste by just burying it in a hole in the ground is ludicrous… that is the caveman answer.
Clearly we need to tackle the root cause which is the production of plastic in the first place… If it didn’t exist we wouldn’t have to deal with it. Plenty of alternatives to oil based plastics now exist governments just need to force their use.
Wow, government doesn’t like anyone with a log burner and claim we are the ones causing pollution burning seasoned wood and coal and this is what they do behind closed doors.