[toomuchtodo]

Plasma gasification. It is fine we have decided we can only do so much to reduce the waste stream, that which remains can be fed into a system to render it inert and the syngas produced burned for energy in a responsible manner.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38994374

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722984

("This is NOT the same as incineration. Plasma gasification does not produce toxic gases vented to atmo, etc. The main byproducts are "syngas", which is mainly H2 and CO and can be reused to power the facility, and slag.")

[fullspectrumdev]

I recall seeing a small documentary about some people living in a small island community who were using destructive distillation to convert the absolute fuckload of plastic waste washing up on their beaches into fuel for generators and such.

I’ll have to go find it again, it seemed like an interesting “local” solution to a genuinely hard problem (plastic waste).

[TeMPOraL]

Burning plastics is the simplest useful way to recycle them (plastics being mostly hydrocarbons in solid form), though it's also the least interesting. It's a kind of minimum - if you don't know how to better reuse the material, then treating it as fuel provides some amount of value. Now, when proposed recycling schemes start to look economically or energetically worse than burning it or just leaving it in landfills for future use - that's a really bad mark.

[zacmps]

Syngas can also be converted to other products through gas fermentation.

[mathgradthrow]

slag here referring to vitrified whatever?

[toomuchtodo]

Yes, inert solid matter byproducts of the process (plasma breaking apart the molecular bonds).

[mathgradthrow]

I'm not sure I would confidently describe the byproducts of fully randomized high energy chemistry as inert. Whats wrong with burial?