Whatever happened to that plasma incinerator I heard about in Stuff You Should Know. It sounded so promising.
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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What great news, the trash is just gone once you burn it and nobody has to think about that statement any further. One thing real quick: we don't need clean air for anything, do we?
Can be managed cleaner than landfill emitting methane into the air and other pollutants into soil and water systems
Can be
Unfortunately, this is not the same as "is being".
Do you reckon China's management of landfill would be extremely competent and clean compared to their management of the incinerators
If you were to drop the "extremely" from the description, maybe but not necessarily. Let's see how the cancer statistics look for population centers downwind in a decade or so.
Expecting more or less than coal?
I don't know. Hard to make those predictions in the absence of good emissions data. I would expect cancer rates to be higher than in comparable areas that are not downwind of a trash burning facility though.
It is possible to burn waste and manage the pollution in at least somewhat safe manner. Finland and Sweden do it reasonably well with high temperature furnaces and filtering the exhaust gases either with mechanical filter or trough water. That also (at least as far as I know) requires that you sort out the waste and don't burn stuff like electronics, metals and some other crap which can be effectively recycled and manage whatever remains properly.
So, it's possible, but I have absolutely no idea if China does that properly.
There are live pollution maps of the world if you need an idea if China does that properly but I‘ll have to warn you that you‘ll most likely be disappointed and somewhat terrified.
I meant that I don't know if these trash incinerators are managed properly. I'm well aware that in general there's a crapload of unmanaged pollution and a ton of other problems around, but like every other country China is slowly improving their stuff so it's not impossible that new plants would be up to modern standards.
Finland and Sweden do it reasonably well with high temperature furnaces and filtering the exhaust gases ... with water
That's just a fancy bubbler (bong) 😂
Do not drink the forbidden bong water.
Some plants do, low bidders who get the government contracts don't have much of an incentive though.
Oh man, too bad most of our trash is digital now. The dumpster that is now called X would power the world for decades.
Where do you think Musk got his inspiration for his SuPErApP from?
There’s plenty of waste in the world. They won’t help
But would the energy recovered from using it as fuel be more than the energy required to ship it to China?
The ships sending us Chinese goods have to return to China anyway. That’s why everyone was sending China their plastic to be “recycled”. Might as well just incinerate it.
That’s a good question, but, would the waste then be properly disposed of? It may not be incredibly efficient right now, but less trash is less trash, right?