Two connected stories. Firstly the BBC on plastic pollution.
The River Mersey is more polluted with microplastics than any other river in the UK, claims a study into the problem.
Greenpeace said it was worse than the "Great Pacific garbage patch", with 875 pieces found in 30 minutes.
The environmental group said its survey, which showed all UK rivers contained small particles of plastic, should be a "government wake-up call".
Secondly a piece from Canada suggesting an obvious real world solution environmental activists probably don't want because reasons.
It's time to give incineration technology another try here and elsewhere, together with up-to-date catalytic converter systems. Improved ground- and surface-water quality and (eventually) a litter-free environment will thank you for it!
Just like we have catalytic converters on every gasoline-powered car, already for decades, garbage can be incinerated with modern catalytic flue gas purification to produce nothing but innocuous gas emissions. All that can be done at much less cost by recycling the energy contained in these items that cannot be re-used, recycled, or re-manufactured. The best better solution to the disposal problem from occurring in the first place is to destroy the garbage for good, through incineration.
We probably do use more plastic than our disposal systems can cope with. In the short to medium term, beefing up those disposal systems via incineration is likely to be more effective than changing behaviour. At least it is worthy of debate but that's the killer problem - are environmental activists looking for solutions?
3 comments:
What's the downside, if any? The article says that intelligent incineration produces nothing noxious. So why not burn the lot from now on?
Spot on, Sam!
Clearly there's not much money in it, so it means that governments need to think a bit harder and actually do something.
There's a huge incineration plant by the railway in South London, which seems to work, although the last time I looked, several years ago, there was a damn great hole in the side, where a fire had destroyed the building along one elevation!
Probably a fag chucked out of a car window...
Sam - assuming we are happy with the cost then there appears to be no great practical downside but of course there is a political downside. As we know it is virtually impossible to conduct a rational public debate on environmental issues.
Scrobs - that's the problem - governments don't really want to do something because environmental activists rant at them.
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