Incineration vs Landfill Debate
Comments debate the environmental merits of burning waste for energy versus burying it in landfills, focusing on pollution, toxins, sustainability, and resource recovery.
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No, it's an excellent use. Burning it produces all kinds of toxins from impurities and carbon. Landfill is comparatively small, and concentrates plastics for potentially later extraction, if plastics ever become sufficiently valuable - or recycling sufficiently viable.
the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse.How so?
Why is burning it better than putting it in a landfill?
Burying garbage in a big hole in the ground is not a sustainable solution.
So you can waste energy as long as the result is something that will end up in a landfill the week after?
Why are landfills like this still a thing? Why not burn everything and only dump what's left?
Well at least the results don't end up in landfill.
Yeah, it's not like waste is going to end up in landfills or oceans anyway.
Should work well in landfills since there's heat buildup
You are coming at it from the wrong angle. The disposal of inert materials in a landfill is trivial. The problem is that we are disposing of otherwise useful materials, in a landfill. If I'm putting paper in a big pile of paper, and not using it for anything, I'm wasting resources, I could use that big pile of paper for something else.Landfills can also be a problem, as they can have negative effects on things like local water quality. If we are using landfill space when we don't need to use