Life Without Plastic - Day 11 (Plasco)

[siglinde99]

This company http://www.plascoenergygroup.com/ filed for creditor protection yesterday. You can read more about it here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/plasco-obtains-creditor-protection-80-jobs-terminated-1.2951751.

This raises several issues for me, leaving aside the obvious ones related to the bankruptcy:
1) Would it ever have worked? From what I have read, breaking down plastic is really hard.
2) Do we really need fuel that much? Were any environmental implications outweighed by the benefits? I have this question largely because I haven't done sufficient homework.
3) What more could we do, as a society, to minimize use of plastics and divert more from the landfill so that such an option wouldn't be necessary?
4) Ditto the above, but for all other solid waste - especially construction waste, which is now the largest single component of our landfills.
5) How much do we value innovation and investment in social goods? This was always an enterprise that would rely on government funding because that is to whom we entrust the responsibility for waste disposal. If it had been in the business of producing something for the private sector, would it have faced equal risk aversion from investors?

Comments

[henrytroup.livejournal.com]

The "plas" in Plasco is for "plasma", not particularly "plastic". Plasma gasification is a fancy kind of incineration, and potentially does work. Work means yield net energy and not polluting too much. The idea is that you preheat the garbage load so it generates combustible gases, burn those at very high temperature, and use the high temperature gases to preheat, etc. Themodynamics says hotter is more efficient ; high enough temperature decomposes most nasty compounds, but of course doesn't deal with nasty elements like mercury or lead or arsenic.

You may also be thinking of the Smith's Falls plastic pyrolysis for fuel company, which went away when asked searching questions about safety and emergency response plans. Plastic is basically oil, and recovering some of it for fuel is better than landfill, but probably worse than recycle.

"Refuse (packaging), reuse, recycle" aays my original Garbage Book.

Construction "waste" often should be reprocessing, but rarely is or can be. I had a few hundred bricks, but the hoops to get them reused were unreasonable, so they got landfilled, with regret.

[siglinde99.livejournal.com]

Funny, I had forgotten all about that Smiths Falls scam.

I wonder what more we could do on the 3 Rs though. Some obvious options include recycling and composting options in apartment buildings, and more waste sorting before the final tip into the dump. Both of those options have been in place for over a decade in Nova Scotia. What serious efforts are being made to find shoplifting-resistant solutions to packaging, that would also allow for decent inventory control?

I suspect the construction waste problem will just get worse with modern materials. It's a bit like our preference for throwaway furniture, these days.