Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by 08-15 2505 days ago
Not true. Plastic that is collected and incinerated degrades to carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen. You can't collect used cosmetics.
1 comments

Only if it were that clean: "Finally, waste-to-energy plants have the potential to emit low levels of toxic pollutants such as dioxins, acid gases, and heavy metals." [0]

Just plastic is never "just" plastic. There will always be contamination of trash with potential for emission of pollutants.

[0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/03/shoul...

Your whataboutism still proves that not all plastics degrade to microplastics, doesn't it?

There is also a difference between the bulk of some material becoming something else and traces of some side product being emitted, not to mention potentially better technologies like molten salt oxidation or plasma gasification.