I'd be fine with plastics, separated from the trash stream and sent to a big petrochemical plant to be thermally decomposed into a petrochemical feedstock. It would make a lot more sense than pretending plastic bottles can be directly turned into more bottles.
When oil stops being a thing and carbon becomes scarce for making stuff I think this will make sense to do. Until then, let's just make piles of the old plastic so they can conveniently mine it then.
Love your thinking. Rather than comingle the plastics with waste, let's keep them separate at the landfill for use when future humans figure out what to do with it.
By mixing it all together we just make it much more difficult for ourselves later.
I don't agree with you. Or rather, I agree with "just waiting" - we don't have any choice about that. I don't agree with "letting someone else deal with it".
The spent waste we've already produced needs to be stored in a way that puts it beyond the possibility of access within 200,000 years. And we need to stop producing new nuclear waste. Note that modern humans have been walking the Earth for just 200,000 years; we can't hope to be able to label it with readable danger warnings. The oldest languages we can read are only a few thousand years old. And we can't just pop it into orbit - there are many thousands of tons of it, sitting around in cooling ponds.
Well, unless we become immortal, waiting long enough means letting someone else deal with problems.
Right now, the obviously (and I do mean that) best way to deal with spent nuclear fuel is (after some cooling) to stick it in dry casks and just let it sit there. It's much cheaper than the alternatives, it's quite safe, and it doesn't preclude any other solution.
But (you might say) we're leaving the cost of dealing with it to our descendants. I respond: we leave the consequences of all our actions to our descendants. For example, if we spend resources of doing something to nuclear waste, we do not do something else with those resources that might have been better for our descendants. Economics is all about tradeoffs; you can't just look at anything in isolation.
Delaying dealing with a problem also means that those who ultimately solve it can choose the solution they prefer, rather than one we impose on them. Maybe they'll want to extract plutonium. Maybe they'll want to bury the fuel unchanged. Maybe they'll want to shoot it into space. They will know better which solution is best for them.
This question is mostly orthogonal to the question of whether more waste should be made (except if you're trying to use the waste issue as a bludgeon to force the other issue.) I get the distinct impression the waste problem is being greatly overstated for rhetorical reasons.
> stick it in dry casks and just let it sit there.
Well, yes. We have to stick it in something, and then let it sit somewhere. I'm not sure that on the surface, anywhere it can be reached by weather, anywhere close to the ocean, is a good place to let it sit.
> They will know better which solution is best for them.
Sure. So we shouldn't close off their options. That doesn't mean we don't have a problem now, that we need to solve.
[Edit] Actually, I'm not at all sure that "they will know better". It could well be that human interest in fundamental physics fades away completely in the next 5,000 years. That would leave our descendants without the tools to even understand the problem, let alone fix it, or try to exploit it.
> This question is mostly orthogonal to the question of whether more waste should be made
I don't agree. We have a problem now, of how to deal with the waste (and devastated land) we've already created; we don't have a way of dealing with it. We shouldn't make more waste until the problem is solved.
> bludgeon to force the other issue
> for rhetorical reasons
Hey, I'm taking you seriously, there's no need to suggest bad faith. Your other remarks have been pretty straight-arrow; I'm not sure why you're switching to ad-hominem now.
That model has made a comeback several years back. I have friends who get vegetables delivered in wooden crates every week and return the crate at the next pickup. At a supermarket where my parents live, you can't get meat and cheese wrapped in plastic but have to get a container (admittedly a plastic one) that you then can bring every time.
Depends on how thick the plastic is and how many times you reuse it. I’m guessing you have to reuse a Tupperware a good 100 times before you’ve saved vs Saran Wrap
Interesting you're getting downvoted for something that is absolutely true. Thin film plastics are exceedingly efficient. When you add in secondary energy effects like adding soap and water for cleaning the reused packaging, and 3rd order effects like food borne illness when you fail to do so properly, the plastic wins the energy game every time.
The discussion goes in to debates over energy use versus litter at that point.
I normally use my Tupperware about 100 times or so. And while I completely agree, I not sure if lots of thin is better or worse than one thick even if it ended up being used relatively the same compared to thickness.
Still have a milkman. Takes the empty glass bottles off the front steps and replaces them with full ones. Even had an electric "milk float" up until a few years ago.
Its like he reimagined and modernised Hello Fresh or Just Eat.
Supermarkets were buying back empty glass bottles in Italy in the 70s so people didn't send them to a landfill anymore. My parents handed bottles to a clerk at a desk, got some coins, then we started shopping.
A grocer near me (California) still operates this way for certain items. My wife and I go there for cream and milk from a nearby dairy and there's a $1 (I don't remember the exact value, it may be $2 or even $3) deposit on the bottle. Bring the (clean) bottle back and you can swap it for a new bottle or get your deposit back.
In the UK I sometimes see mention of this scheme on the backs of bottles, but it's denominated in cence (which we don't have) and is for Australia & New Zealand only.
We can recycle them at home of course (though I was surprised to learn not everywhere! It's up to the council! Wandsworth borough of London has no recycling for many flats, unless the landlord cares to provide something) - but not in a supermarket or anywhere for cash incentive.
I'm sure there's a local milkman you could sign up to, but you'd probably find it's 'just' delivery of 'normal' plastic bottles. (Perhaps with a more expensive glass option, or a premium option that happens to be in glass.)
I’m lucky - we have a milkman. It’s great and our milk comes from a local farm. The cost is about 40% more, but it magically shows up in the milk box every Monday and Thursday.
