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BelovedOmegaMan t1_j08mifr wrote

Reply to comment by KindChange3300 in How much gas/oil, roughly, is actually left for us to use? How long until we get to the last drop and need to start rationing? by football2106

Not just that, but most plastics can be returned back to crude oil by the pyrolosis process-it's just that it's expensive to do so. There's billions of gallons of oil out there in landfills, etc. in the form of long-chain hydrocarbons called plastic. If a nation wanted to, say, nationalize turning plastics back into oil, it could absolutely be done-it's just that there's no reason to do so on a large scale. Yet.

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Jamie1897 t1_j08rnlp wrote

The reason we don't do it is because it doesn't currently make economic sense. The unsubsidized price is related to its energy intensity, so it likely doesn't make energy sense to do it. It does, however, make lots of sense to incinerate municipal solid waste in waste-to-energy plants and recover the energy as electricity and steam for space-heating and cooling.

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BelovedOmegaMan t1_j08ueaa wrote

>The reason we don't do it is because it doesn't currently make economic sense.

Yes, that's what I said, thank you.

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