Will there ever be a point, say with Peak Oil, where plastic detritus becomes valuable?

[XemaSab]

Or will cheap liquefied coal prevent the harvest of plastics in the ocean? :shrug:

[Warpy]

1. Oh, absolutely

Check out thermal depolymerization. Plastic is its favorite raw material.

It's got astonishing efficiency and produces light sweet crude oil and water with contaminants that can later be processed to retrieve metals and other solutes.

The oil wells of the future might eventually be all the overfilled, leaking, stinking landfills around the country. There's oil in that there garbage!

[silverweb]

10. Do you know the status of TDP now?

I haven't been able to find any really recent news on how this technology is doing at this point.

The pilot project in Missouri was apparently going great guns for a while. Then it was having problems and was shut down a couple of times, and also has been operating at a loss.

I have had great hope for this technology, and it's disappointing to see that it's not moving ahead and expanding as rapidly as I had hoped. We certainly have enough plastic waste to feed into the process!

[Cirque du So-What]

2. I've wondered this also

Seems to me that once the price of crude oil reaches a tipping point, it would become economically feasible to 'mine' landfills for plastics that can be reused.

[hunter]

3. There's another great job for undocumented workers...

"Landfill Miner"

:yoiks:

[NNadir]

6. Don't forget "prisoners."

[NickB79]

7. When the economy collapses, the middle class will fill the void

The US middle class will be forced to work whatever jobs they can find to survive and support their families, much like the undocumented workers of today. Undocumented workers will be living in refugee camps along the border, having fled the chaos in Mexico as their government falls apart following the collapse of their oil industry.

[diane in sf]

4. It would be really great if all the tiny plastic bits could be mined from the oceans.

The Pacific Gyre is a huge, sea-life killing mess and the plastic breaks up into tiny chunks, so it would be really hard to economically dredge it out without harming the animals.

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. I think we will be harvesting the ocean and landfills for plastics one day. At least, I hope so as

they need a good cleaning.

[diane in sf]

8. Also every crappy little village in the third world is now covered in plastic bags.

[NNadir]

11. I saw this in India.

I was amazed at the number of places where plastic seemed to be a part of the soil.

[tom_paine]

9. 100-150 years from now, maybe.

Or am I being wildly optimistic.

I mean, I WAS the guy who, in 1998, said it would be 30 years before I saw the first blows struck against democracy. Turned out to be TWO years.

So I understand why people would think that way.