[djcooley]

I lived in Shenzhen from 2007-2011 and can confirm that large amounts of recyclables were shipped to China. Open-air facilities hired pickers to go through the material and pull out whatever they could before disposing of the remainder (by who knows what means).

This all happened within eyesight of my condo building.

[rapnie]

Couldn't the remaining waste be efficiently used to generate energy in a waste incinerator? They are still high-energy oil products after all, and no longer mixed in with all kinds of wet biomass.

[ppf]

Exactly what I've been saying for years. Public perception of incinerators is pretty poor though.

[lrem]

There are a couple European countries that burn all their waste. Sweden has been _importing_ waste to burn for a while. Switzerland is now retrieving various kinds of metals from the ashes. Ireland has installed an incinerator at a landmark position in the focal point of all the Dublin's shoreline.

[tedk-42]

They produce a lot of toxic gases as the plastics often contain a variety of elements which when burned formed nasty compounds

[lrem]

Filtering that out is a solved engineering problem and you still remain energy positive.

[WealthVsSurvive]

Clean coal, clean diesel, now clean incinerated plastic: I don't doubt that it's manageable or maybe even fully solved, I just don't have much faith in it being employed. The track record of such things is not great.

[thu2111]

The local incinerator here in Switzerland isn't merely burning the waste. IIRC it gets vapourised using a high energy plasma or something like that, broken down to constituent atoms. At any rate it belches smoke into the atmosphere in the middle of a city, has done for a while and nobody seems to suffer any ill effects, so I believe them that the "burning" is highly effective.

[EForEndeavour]

That sounds like plasma gasification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification). Out of curiosity, which city are you in?

> it belches smoke into the atmosphere in the middle of a city, has done for a while and nobody seems to suffer any ill effects

How long is a while, and how does that compare to the time it would take to detect meaningful increases in cancer or other illnesses in the vicinity of the incinerator?

[thu2111]

http://fernwaerme-zuerich.ch/index_en.htm

Was built in 1995, or so it claims, with other kinds of incineration being done for >100 years.

So 25 years or so. I think that's enough time for a clear effect to show up.

[stevep98]

Japan does this.

[jeltz]

They have a generally good reputation here in Sweden.