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by gremloni 1708 days ago
Yeah seriously, bury the plastic really deep away from water tables and forget about it. We clearly can’t recycle most of the stuff. Couple that with moving away from a frivolous use of plastic and I think we are golden. There are a bunch of abandoned mines miles away from substantial water tables. Fill those up.
1 comments

We can’t figure out how to store a minimal quantity of radioactive waste in a purpose-built salt mine dozens of miles away from any small town. I have no faith that we can find places to store megatons of plastic waste.
Plastic doesn't radiate.
NIMBY neighbors don’t compromise.
They might if it affected their states tax revenue and was only a plastic landfill (which is to say, not a compromise but a pure self interest play).
There shouldn’t be any neighbors in the middle of nowhere.
funny question: could we mix the nuclear waste with the plastic to make (the plastic) degrade faster?
That's brilliant. I would love to learn if that could work and wouldn't just create a bunch of radioactive plastic.
Even if it did, if it ended up enriching the soil carbon-content, would it matter?