That baloney about China and Germany doing their diligent part is all talk and nothing more from post #5.
While no one would wanna live near these sophisticated incinerating waste to energy plants, there are other ways to dispose of this problem and be completely done with it with almost no ill-effects.
It's called gasification, which with practically no oxygen in the mix, none of the harmful low levels of toxic pollutants such as dioxins, acid gases, and heavy metals, are formed. A more attractive technology right now is pyrolysis, in which plastics are shredded and melted at lower temperatures than gasification and in the presence of even less oxygen. The heat breaks plastic polymers down into smaller hydrocarbons, which can be refined to diesel fuel and even into other petrochemical products—including new plastics.
This all coming about, because just this past January, a consortium of petrochemical and consumer-goods companies called the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, including Exxon, Dow, Total, Shell, Chevron Phillips, and Procter & Gamble, committed to spending $1.5 billion over five years on the problem. Their aim is to support alternative materials and delivery systems, beef up recycling programs, and—more controversially—promote technologies that convert plastics to fuel or energy.
In reality, it would be better to just resist using this stuff, instead of abusing the need for it. Not using the lids and straws is a good start, but I'm sure many of you have the frilly plastic bags and what do y'all use instead of PVC and styrene, komacel, HUD, sintra and all the mask wrapping and containers your inks comes in. Most of this stuff is produced overseas and we use it for convenience sake, here. If you don't wanna contribute, find a job crossing kids at a corner during school hours and drink out of a metal container.
