Would burning plastics be better solution than shredding them, due to the created microplastics?
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No. That would be even worse as most plastics when burned off gas some nasty shit. For example polycarbonate (one of the most used plastics) when burned releases chlorine. Chlorine gas was used heavily by the Germans in world war 1 as a weapon. Another is ABS or any styrene based plastic will release hydrogen cyanide.
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no, that is actually FAR worse
many plastics will burn into dioxins, which are Extremely toxic in the atmosphere.
There are companies working on reducing plastic waste back to the original oils they were made from, producing diesel that is cheaper than you can buy at the petrol pump (gas station for North Americans). At the moment these are small scale ventures, but of course the Oil Companies are fighting back against the trend. This is by far the best solution.
Yes, if done properly. Some countries – like Sweden – have hefty fees on putting stuff in landfill. Burning waste – such as non-recycleable plastic – is instead used to produce heat for district heating and electricity for electric stuff.
The idea is to make some use of the plastic. The smoke gets thoroughly cleaned in smoke filters, and the ash is deposited to not damage the environment.
If you just put a match to it, not really; you’ll create toxic pollutants and such. [Pyrolitic gasification ](https://phys.org/news/2013-12-plastic-cleanly-natural-gas.html) and [Plasma Arc Gasification ](https://netl.doe.gov/research/Coal/energy-systems/gasification/gasifipedia/westinghouse) can do it safely without toxic byproducts.
You wouldn’t want to do it as a simple open-air burn, as burning plastic can release a lot of nasty stuff.
That said, you *can* do it very cleanly and depending on the costs and alternatives it may be a better solution. To do it cleanly you need to do a few extra things:
First, you need to make sure the plastic is *completely* combusted. Much of the nasty stuff burning plastic gives off is due to incompletely burned plastic compounds. Furans, dioxins, etc. are all primarily or completely composed of carbon and hydrogen and will burn down to CO2 and H2O under the right conditions. Generally you want to keep the exhaust really hot and inject hot, fresh (i.e., oxygen rich) air directly into it to keep the combustion going to completion. You can also add a catalyst that increases how fast the combustion happens, too, which is what the catalytic converter in a car does (and also why it only works well when it’s hot and why cars have air injectors in their exhaust systems).
Next, you have to deal with some nasty residual stuff even if combustion is entirely completed. Things like PVC, PTFE, some plasticizers, etc. contain halogens (chlorine, fluorine) and other elemental things that have to be remediated. This is usually done by filtering the exhaust with something that captures and traps those sorts of compounds (and sometimes also with stuff that catches any stuff still unburned after the previously-mentioned step).
Then you have to be careful with any remaining solid waste. Dispose of it in a landfill where it will not leach into the surrounding water, etc. just like other gross waste is. Though the remaining ash is generally only a tiny fraction of the original mass, so you need only dispose of a tiny amount of material, making safe disposal much easier.
Best would be to compress and bury. Basically at the moment the fossil carbon they are made from is chemically bound. Burying would help lock that carbon away as it was before we pumped the oil out.
Yes. Burning is one of the cleanest ways to get rid of waste plastic. You also get useful energy such as heat and electricity from it.
This process is widely used in parts of Europe. However, huge amounts of misinformation about it exists so some countries don’t use ir much.
Burning plastics at the wrong temperature or without proper flue gas processing can produce chemicals like dioxins and cyanide. For this reason, the furnaces need proper design such as fluidised.bed combustors and proper gas processing to remove dioxin and cyanide (such as plasma pyrolysis).
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