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I have been trying to read how to fix plastic problems, there seems to be 3 outstanding solutions

  1. Re-use
  2. Recycle
  3. Decompose to Fuel

Recycling is expensive, requires lots of water and the quality degrades on each recycle. I can partially understand why companies won't recycle

However I am unable to understand why would we not decompose to fuel. I have tried reading following articles:

It seems the primary way is Anhydrous pyrolysis requires no water, limited sorting and seems to convert 80% of plastic to fuel. I am unable to understand why would everybody not do this ? seems a viable solution and a profitable business

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    $\begingroup$ Perhaps better is to use plastics as fuel directly, in high capacity, high temperature facilities, providing electricity or hot water. $\endgroup$
    – Poutnik
    Commented Aug 17, 2019 at 7:58
  • $\begingroup$ Following the previous comment, what kind of "fuel" are you looking for? Not all fuels are made equal. Wood is useful as a fuel, but so is ethanol. $\endgroup$
    – Buck Thorn ♦
    Commented Aug 17, 2019 at 10:08
  • $\begingroup$ @Poutnik using plastics as fuel directly has more pollution impact than converting and using it. $\endgroup$
    – Gaurav Shah
    Commented Aug 17, 2019 at 11:18
  • $\begingroup$ @BuckThorn Looking at petroleum fuel - diesel, petrol etc $\endgroup$
    – Gaurav Shah
    Commented Aug 17, 2019 at 11:18
  • $\begingroup$ @Gaurav Shah I would say the opposite. There is environmental impact of conversion and small local device combustion has worse parameters. $\endgroup$
    – Poutnik
    Commented Aug 17, 2019 at 11:24

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