One is obvious. High strength radioactive waste will be around for a long, long time. It is pretty unlikely to be able to be contained in a world without us, and so it will cause radioactive hotspots that last a long, long time. That is bad enough, but kind of obvious.
The thing that struck me was that plastics are also very long lived. There are (currently) no bacteria that are able to decompose most plastics, and so they will be around a long time. Weisman dedicates a chapter to this discussion (Polymers are forever), including a discussion of the Great Pacfic Garbage Patch. A startling fact reported is that, of the 1 billion tonnes of plastic produced in the 50 years, every bit remains in the environment (except for a small amount that's been incinerated).
It's not like, paper, which largely decomposes. Except when it is deep in landfill, when it can also be very long lived. Work done by William Rathje (who, I have just learned in researching this post, die just four months ago) found readable newspapers from the 1930s in current landfills. Incidentally, Rathje termed his work "garbology".
So we are here blithely using some of the most long-lived material in the world for such transient applications as single use packaging. This is why we are seeing such an explosion of community groups trying to reduce plastic use, seeing things like Two Hands Project, Plastic Free July and many others. These messages get real resonance, indicating that people care. They are important, as they try to reduce plastic creation.
Another avenue, perhaps a secondary mechanism, is to remove plastic once it's created and collected. One avenue that tickles my fancy is a small scale plastic-oil convertor. Pointed out by my good cyber-friend Ken, the "Blest Machine" converts plastic (except for PET) back into its constituent oil. For every kilogram of plastics, about a litre of oil is produced which can be further refined to diesel etc. The units are pretty expensive, but a great first step.
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| Blest Machine - plastic to oil conversion |
The Blest website has more information, but it strikes me as a pretty cool idea for creating fuel where plastic is abundant. Thanks Ken!
I remember first reading The World Without Us and seeing plastic in a whole new light. What just another product, a bit challenging in terms of waste operations, became one of the most extraordinarily insane materials in use.
The world of waste without us...some pretty nasty radioactive hotspots and a general smear of plastic throughout the environment, including within animals as the plastics get smaller and smaller.
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| Plastics on water, source Green Team RSMAS |
When I first heard of the blest machine, I thought it was one of the huge plants making diesel from bales of plastic at a marginal viability to the energy being put in. What surprised me, is that the blest process is not that at all, the process is pretty efficient. Still not economically viable with the small devices, but a good concept.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the best thing is to not to make the plastic in the first place. Along the same line, I think it terrible to be making fuel from foods such as corn, that is what we should make the plastic from.
Viable, is wher the problem lies, dollar value in cost of production is not a true value cost, but is the main value choice by default.
I am hopeful for a future of reusing radioactive material as well.
It's funny some things have a habit of becoming viable wrapped up in the right business model. Financial viability is often not an absolute, but relative (and dependent on which blinkers you choose to retain).
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