111–120 of 294 posts
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Nuclear fuel must first be mined, correct? That's not renewable and could offset the benefits somewhat. That said I imagine it may be better as a base load than dirty coal.
We’re not running out of fissionable material any time soon
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Landfills are not a miracle technology. They exist already and are technologically sound. It’d be way more of a miracle if we somehow managed to greatly reduce waste.
People love to "what if" landfills. Best to not bother arguing with them. We have tons of problems with emissions, plastics pollution, industrial dumping. However landfills ain't one of them, but people won't give up. I've learned to not bother discussing anything with them if they don't know a few basics of how modern landfills are run (at least in western nations).
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Sure. That's almost all due to food waste, though. FWIW. https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/sustainable-...
Yes, for that reason Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) is pushing hard to divert food waste out of the garbage and get it composted instead: it's supposed to go in with yard waste, not the regular trash. Not sure how successful this is as it counts on people putting things in the correct bin.
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Sure. That's almost all due to food waste, though. FWIW. https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/sustainable-...
Yes, for that reason Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) is pushing hard to divert food waste out of the garbage and get it composted instead: it's supposed to go in with yard waste, not the regular trash. Not sure how successful this is as it counts on people putting things in the correct bin.
I've been hearing this for 20 years. I assume nothing will happen while this "news" will be used by fossil fuel companies to virtue signal "technological progress" in the plastic problem.
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Sure. That's almost all due to food waste, though. FWIW. https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/sustainable-...
Yes, for that reason Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) is pushing hard to divert food waste out of the garbage and get it composted instead: it's supposed to go in with yard waste, not the regular trash. Not sure how successful this is as it counts on people putting things in the correct bin.
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Sure. That's almost all due to food waste, though. FWIW. https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/sustainable-...
Yes, for that reason Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) is pushing hard to divert food waste out of the garbage and get it composted instead: it's supposed to go in with yard waste, not the regular trash. Not sure how successful this is as it counts on people putting things in the correct bin.
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Yeah, landfills are not major environmental problems, AFAIK, but they offend the neat freak within all of us. And, as you say, they're pretty good carbon deposits, which is supposed to be The Most Important Thing.
Or those of us who don't like microplatics in our fish, water, and bodies
A very large fraction of those are from plastic waste in Asian countries that gets dumped into waterways instead of being landfilled.
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> Yeah, landfills are not major environmental problems ... yet?
Is there enough raw material on earth for landfills to become major environmental problems? (genuinely curious)
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> They're dirtier than natural gas power plants, however That is not true. > and the pollution that they do create can be particularly nasty That is also not true. Plastic is made of the exact same atoms as natural gas, plus oxygen. Plastic burns very very clean, with no waste except for water and CO2. PVC has chlorine, but is rare in trash, and the small amount of chlorine is easily filtered out of the exhaust. > We…
Plastic that goes into the trash is not pure plastic, it is trash and it has a lot of other junk in it. i.e. heavy metals and other stuff. That's one of the biggest reasons we have trouble recycling it. Are there even any WTE plants that burn only plastic?
> Are there even any WTE plants that burn only plastic?
Tons of them. There are more of those than classic recycling. They just stay under the radar so people don't get upset (since like many people in this thread, they think it's dirty when it is not).