Carbon sequestration

Reducing the amount of carbon released into the environment is todays standard method of ameliorating carbon-caused global warming, but what methods are available to the average joe or housewife (do we still have housewives?) for sequestering the carbon already in the environment?



The first and easiest method is NOT to recycle plastic, in fact to use as much plastic as possible and ensure it goes into landfill.

This is counter to everyday "wisdom" and may need some explanation. World production of oil has peaked, or is just about to (opinions differ), but in general the amount of oil which will be produced in future is fixed, and in practice I don't think there is anything we can do to change it.

So turn the oil into plastic rather than burn it, and then bury it where it will hopefully last for several hundred years. This isn't really storing up a problem for the future - in a few hundred years the carbon crunch will be solved, one way or another.



My next suggestion is to NOT recycle biowaste (biodegradeable waste). This is more problematic, and depends partly on the participation of the waste companies. If biowaste is recycled it gets composted and part of the carbon is released to the atmosphere immediately, the compost is then used and the rest of the carbon is released over about two or three years.

However if biowaste is put into landfill it takes about 15 years to be released - and if it is put into landfill in plastic bags, and if the landfill company doesn't break up the bags, it stays there much longer. If you have ever seen a landfill dump, the operators break up the plastic bags - this is in order to get the waste to ferment quicker, it isn't about helping the environment.

That's 12 or more extra years worth of carbon tied up where it doesn't hurt anything.

A better solution would be to seal biowaste in deep mines, and just leave it there, where in due time it will turn into coal or even oil - but this is something the average Joe/housewife has no immediate control of.



Recycling plastic and biowaste is about money - there's brass in that muck - but it's NOT about the environment. If there was no money involved, we wouldn't do it.

For energy reasons it is still good to recycle glass and metals however.


-- Peter Fairbrother

(Yes, I'm entirely serious. Yes, I'm a chemist.)
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