"A fish with a polymer of "innocuous" organic atoms in the digestive tract is likely to disagree."
First of all, since the topic was landfills, I have some questions as to how the fish managed to get plastic from a landfill stuck in them. Yeah, it's possible, but somebody screwed up along the way.
Second, that's the exact opposite of what I meant by thinking just from an atom and energy perspective. It's a small amount of energy to turn those organic atoms into something less harmful, and probably a net gain from a strictly chemical perspective (i.e., plastics tend to burn). We are intrinsically speaking from a much higher tech than we currently have here. The process of extracting out mercury and cadmium and such can be reasonably assumed to either process waste to something safe before putting it out into the ecosystem, or that they will place the plastics somewhere where they aren't going to affect anything when done. I don't think our hypothetical future landfill miners are going to be allowed to just tear open the landfills and start shooting whatever they decide they don't want with cannons into the surrounding countryside.
First of all, since the topic was landfills, I have some questions as to how the fish managed to get plastic from a landfill stuck in them. Yeah, it's possible, but somebody screwed up along the way.
Second, that's the exact opposite of what I meant by thinking just from an atom and energy perspective. It's a small amount of energy to turn those organic atoms into something less harmful, and probably a net gain from a strictly chemical perspective (i.e., plastics tend to burn). We are intrinsically speaking from a much higher tech than we currently have here. The process of extracting out mercury and cadmium and such can be reasonably assumed to either process waste to something safe before putting it out into the ecosystem, or that they will place the plastics somewhere where they aren't going to affect anything when done. I don't think our hypothetical future landfill miners are going to be allowed to just tear open the landfills and start shooting whatever they decide they don't want with cannons into the surrounding countryside.