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Here in Zurich we separate PET from other plastic and recycle the PET and incinerate everything else along with household waste to generate electricity and heating. The CO2 is captured (using some amine system) and piped to greenhouses and/or sold to bottlers. I'm not sure how they dispose of the ash.

It's probably not economically profitable but does make things better overall.



Tangential question: is it ok to recycle any PET, or just bottles? Where I'm from, the recycling spots at stores emphasize they're taking bottles only, but PET is used in a lot of other packaging as well. To me it's a no brainer any PET should go to the recycling, but they seem strict about having bottles only.


Forgot to mention... I spent some time working in Dublin and they do something similar. I met an engineer at a party that designs these systems as her job. She's American but lives in Europe where there's demand for this. For some reason Americans are anti-incinerators.


Pretty sure I saw one of these in Luzern? Quite an impressive structure in itself, and seems like a better solution than sticking it all in the ground to pollute the water table.


If you go far enough into the countryside here it come full circle; I had a neighbor try to burn scrap LVP flooring


Copenhagen has something similar.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amager_Bakke




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