The afterlife of plastics

In 2003 I read an article titled "Anything Into Oil" from Discover magazine. That article described a process through which effectively all trash (other than heavy metals) was going to be recycled into usable oil of various molecular weights.

That's it, I thought, no more trash. We're done. We've got that whole trash problem licked. All the landfills can be dug back up and run through the Anything-Into-Oil-er machine to make profit. Step two had finally been solved.

Two years later...update... two more years later...another update...

Flash to seven years later than that and I'm still sending my trash to Mount Rumpke.

Along comes "The Afterlife of Plastic" from Al Jazeera in which we get to read about a new plant opened up to turn plastic into oil. Some of the details are simplified a bit...

Plastic is usually made by heating crude oil, cooling it and adding preservatives so it is able to hold its shape. It can then be molded into light, flexible forms for use as shopping bags, takeout containers or plastic toys.

I'm all in favor of the recycling of plastic and keeping microscopic bits out of the oceans and everything, but I've been hearing promised solutions to the intractable problems with plastics for a decade now.

Don't toy with my emotions here, folks.

Thanks, by the way, to Brian Wright for passing this link along.