Why is it a good idea to collect plastic from the ocean and burn it rather than let it stay there until we have a better way to get rid of it?
Sure, the plastic is bad for sea life but the process of burning plastic is far worse, no?
Why shouldnt we just dump all plastic in the ocean until we know how to deal with it in a eco friendly way? It wouldn’t be pretty but maybe more safe for humanity and the planet in general considering climate change?
Thanks in advance!
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There are a lot of problems with it, but the main one are microplastics that make their way back to us:
Once the plastic is in the ocean, it decomposes very slowly, breaking into tiny pieces known as microplastics, which can enter the marine food chain and become incredibly damaging to sea life.
Also, if you don’t know what to do with something, do you toss it out of the window and let it be, or is it better to keep it CONTAINED somewhere so if in the future you know how to deal with it, you know where it is?
The short answer is there are more natural processes for sublimation the pollution released by burning plastic tha by it being in the ocean. In the ocean, it breaks up into tiny microplastics that are impossible to remove, and which undergo bioaccumulation like certain heavy metals such as mercury.
Burning plastic makes nasty acrid smoke, but, really most of that is collected in rainwater and whiles it’s not good for groundwater, up to a limit it’s handeld by filtering and sublimation. It also undergoes further breakdown in this more volatile state and becomes more stable less harmful products over time.
So, there are zero long term processes that handled in tact plastic in the ocean. There at least some that handle the byproducts of burning it
Well you would then have the problem that when you figure out what to do with all the plastic, it’s now in the ocean, and you have to expend a lot of energy and time collecting it. Even disregarding the impact on wildlife – which is significant – it is much easier to collect something from dry land than collect it from the ocean. So if the plan is to figure out a process to deal with plastic waste later, it would be strictly better to keep it in landfills than dump it into the ocean. Burning plastic waste in modern incinerators isn’t a perfect solution, though it can generate electricity and some of the worst pollutants can be filtered.
Fishermen harvest fish from the oceans and the fish eat the plastic, so the plastic can end up in your food.
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