Letter to the Editor,
Those Oceans of Plastic?
We are being lambasted for polluting the World with plastic. But in the same breath we learn that 90% of the plastic in the sea comes from 10 rivers in Asia and Africa, the 3rd World.
80% of the petroleum crude that we extract from the earth today is burnt, as LPG, petrol, diesel and JP1, to fly our planes. And where people have cars, nobody, not even Al Gore, will give up on Jumbos and 787s. So, why don’t we also burn the other 20% that goes into plastic and rubber, and let it all add to the greening of the globe? Burnt in high temperature clean combustion boilers in the centre of every city it could generate electricity. That would be very efficient localised electricity that could cut the top off peak loading prices, would not lose 10% in those overly long transmission lines that spoil the view, and doesn’t get to dam up the biology of all our river systems.
We, the developed half of the world. need plastic like never before, and it is us who have the methodology to gather up so much rubbish, and sort it for baby nappies, green waste and food scraps, that could be processed for natural biogas to energy. And, we too can corral all that plastic, all our mixed packaging, our rubber tyres, wood and paper that could be efficiently burnt close to every city.
Doesn’t more CO2 grow more trees? By the time we run out of crude and frack, we may well continue to use coal by Sasol processes to make petroleum fuels and allow us time to fully depreciate our present transport systems as we slowly reinvest in new ones. By the time we have burnt up all the coal, probably long before that, we will be generating all our base load 24/7 energy from oh so safe 4th generation nuclear, with enough surplus electricity to either charge up all those Tesla3s that have yet to be built, without spoiling their emissions with present CO2 carbon based power.
Or else, recycle enough carbon dioxide and water back into hydrocarbons to keep the worlds multi billion dollar auto industry huffing and puffing, at least for long distance heavy haulage, until technology catches up.
We could even go one step further, we are still heaping up equally un-recyclable glass, particularly wine bottles. We buy our cheapest plonk in casks, those plastic bags in boxes. Has anyone complained about the taste? If plastic is able to put cheap glass out of business, why not the expensive as well?
Why don’t we shape and colour it to every producers unique requirement, and so that we don’t see the dregs in the bottom, make it strong enough to hold up on all the fizz in champagne, and do away with those mountains of glass? That would be really saving the planet.
Ken Calvert www.coffee.20m.com
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I used to use the burn barrel down by the barn to recycle plastic into the air. It stinks to high heaven.
I’m curious about the source for the 90% figure. I’ve seen numbers showing 85% of the plastic in the ocean consists of fishing nets.
Ask any woman from Fishkills, NY about labial malformation and you’ll understand why you shouldn’t burn all plastics.
What’s wrong with Thermal DePolymerization?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
Once upon a time, environmentalists where very concerned about landfills. In fact I can remember themselves chaining themselves to the gates of landfills. It appears those efforts are no longer in vogue.
I think it is terrible that we plant any sort of garbage into the ground.
Thermal depolymerization should be a mandatory first step for all waste, except for possibly some chemical and radioactive waste.
Went to a small island off of Hong Kong a few years ago for a day trip to see a Buddhist temple there.The ferry had to plow through 2 miles of floating garbage to get to the dock. We walked along the water front and the garbage was at least 3 feet deep on top of the water and most of it was plastics and Styrofoam junk. I really think that the ban on drinking straws and plastic beads in shower soap is not going to effect the amount of plastic that is in the oceans because 98% of it is coming from China, Africa and other third world countries.
Aluminum is still the most efficient container for beverages. It has the longest product life as it blocks all light. The intrinsic energy value promotes recycling. Easily sorted via eddy current sortation, its bulk handling is also favorable.
There are typically two alloys used in each can, a 5000 series top and a 3000 series cup. These are segregated by melting points after shredding.
Actually, I suspect quite a bit of the plastic floating in the ocean really does come from the U.S. – via recycling. So, how recycling works is that it’s sorted by type then sold to China where it is actually recycled. They’ve become very insistent about the level of cross contamination of the waste they’re buying. Even a tiny bit of the wrong kind of plastic in a bundled ton and they reject the whole thing. Where does it go then? So, we may be the source of “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch” because of – yup – our recycling.
When flat screen TV’s were just starting to take hold the local municipality land fill started to take in a rash of older tube TV’s that nobody wanted. There was a line of tube TV’s on pallets 5 across and 4 high stretching for over 1/2 a mile along side a road inside the dump. One day there was a sale of these used TV’s and they were put into a lot of shipping containers and shipped off somewhere. Later a news item appeared on the news about a place in Mali Africa that was busting up old TV’s in a big dump so that the locals could recover a small bit of gold in the circuits and some other small items. They were literally carrying these old TV’s out of the shipping containers and smashing them on the ground to get at the insides. When the pile of debris was to high and picked over another local Mali doused the pile with diesel fuel and set fire to it. The black smoke pillar rose into the air and carried off over a shanty town near by. I wonder how much toxic material was released for the sake of RECYCLING. Just remember out of sight and out of mind is a great recycling tool.
How much more CO2 would be generated? Would this burning of waste not displace other energy production that would no longer be emitting CO2?
“We buy our cheapest plonk in casks, those plastic bags in boxes. Has anyone complained about the taste? ”
I’ve been drinking that stuff for years. I didn’t know it had got taste.
“plastic is able to put cheap glass out of business,”
Glass is made of silicon compounds, sand.
sand too is needed for construction works. and worldwide Construction companies are seeking sand.
peak sand Availability is exceeded.