[Supermancho]

> you can just trade one type for another types

You cannot replace most oil-based fuel with incinerators. So I'll disagree there.

The utility of oil-based fuels is the energy density in combustion. Burning plastic doesn't come close to the same exchange.

[ars]

> The utility of oil-based fuels is the energy density in combustion. Burning plastic doesn't come close to the same exchange.

The energy density of plastic (by weight, not volume) is virtually identical to that of oil.

Yes, the machine used to burn oil vs plastic looks different, but coal plants can burn plastic without much modification - and they would be much much cleaner than coal when they do so.

[Supermancho]

> The energy density of plastic (by weight, not volume) is virtually identical to that of oil.

Oil-based unleaded fuel is not oil. You probably could run trains on plastic. That's if you didn't mind hot plastic raining down around the tracks as the coal dust and soot did when we used it for trains.

[zarzavat]

We don’t burn oil though. We burn natural gas, in highly-efficient turbines. Burning oil and coal is obsolete technology that we are trying to phase out.