Every ounce of plastic buried is an ounce of plastic not burned. Every ounce of plastic not made is an ounce of plastic not burned.

There are lots of sentences that you can start with “Every ounce of plastic.” Which one of those informs the definition of a pollutant?

> Which one of those informs the definition of a pollutant?

All of them.

Looking at this in rough terms:

Burning emits gross CO2 but not net CO2. And burning doesn't take up all that landfill space. So burning is better than burial.

Making nothing at all (and washing nothing too, because washing has a cost!) is the best option, but is not always an option.

Making something else, or washing something, needs to be analyzed per situation.

>Burning emits gross CO2 but not net CO2. And burning doesn't take up all that landfill space. So burning is better than burial.

Wait, are you saying that the optimal place to store carbon is in the atmosphere?

Only if the release of that carbon stops someone else from releasing the same amount of carbon.

And 'acceptable' rather than 'optimal'.

I am so confused. If I own a shovel, some useless land, and a bunch of empty kitty litter containers, what should I do to dispose of them?

You personally don't have a qualified dumping site or a trash-fueled generator with exhaust scrubbers, so you should send your garbage off to collection.

This is the first I’ve heard of exhaust scrubbers! I thought we were talking about the literal impact of burning plastic?

How does burning plastic impact things for people that don’t own exhaust scrubbers?

> This is the first I’ve heard of exhaust scrubbers! I thought we were talking about the literal impact of burning plastic?

We were never talking about just burning plastic. We were talking about burning plastic inside a heat/power plant.

And power plants, especially trash-fueled ones, have exhaust scrubbers. I only mentioned it now for emphasis, not because I was changing anything.

The first comment you replied to specified "industrial incinerator" for a reason.

> How does burning plastic impact things for people that don’t own exhaust scrubbers?

I don't care how it affects those people, because they're burning it outside a power plant, and they're not part of this conversation. If they burn it it's worse than if they bury it, but they shouldn't be doing either one. They should be handing the trash over to people that are equipped to handle it properly.

That would be truth in a world where Solar, Wind, Nuclear, Hydro and Geothermal didn't exist.

Those cannot replace all oil and natural gas burning, so you may as well get rid of the plastic first before burning those fossil fuels. If you think about it, it's still recycling, because you are reusing the waste plastic for energy.