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we're burning our plastic bottles

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2019.12.03

You know how you're so good about sorting plastic bottles from non-recyclable trash? It doesn't matter, they're being incinerated anyway. Or so says this article in the Atlantic from March.

I think we just have to stop buying plastic bottles altogether. The same article says that glass bottles are proving too hard to recycle in a price-effective way, so they're being dumped in landfill (frequently in an unrecoverable form - smashed). But bits of glass in a landfill are environmentally inert, whereas burning plastic is certainly not, according to MIT:

When plastic is burned, it releases dangerous chemicals such as hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, dioxins, furans and heavy metals, as well as particulates. These emissions are known to cause respiratory ailments and stress human immune systems, and they’re potentially carcinogenic.

rand()m quote

Marriage is like a game of chess, except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.

—Jerry Seinfeld