Sweden sends less than 1% of trash to landfills. The rest goes to making fuel, and energy, and reused, not resycled.

I am sorry, but you cannot make sweeping statements like "plastic is killing animals".

That suggests lacking understanding one of the most ubiquitous class of materials used for all manner of purposes from genuinely serious to wastefully trivial.

And no, I have no connection with the petro-chemical, plastics or boat-building industries.

'

It's only a few, certain plastic [i]types[/i] and [i]forms[/i] out of a very large range manufactured with all sort of different properties for different classes of use, that are "killing animals".

The prime villains are polythene bags eaten by some animals (e.g. turtles in the sea, mistaking them for jellyfish), "micro-beads" used as fillers and mild abrasives in toiletries, and plastic [i]shapes[/i] that can entrap animals (e.g. can-binding rings, lost/discarded fishing equipment).

None are toxic, but kill by internal obstruction or trapping. Micro-beads are small enough to be swallowed by, but big enough to obstruct the alimentary canals of, the tiny ostracods and similar plankton-eating sea-animals whose swarms are food for larger fish.

'

Some plastics are salvageable, but by no means all; and those that are, degrade over only a few cycles. Some become re-useable only as fuels, if burnt in specially-constructed furnaces to minimise pollution and use the heat properly.

+++

Some, mainly the thermo-setting plastic, cannot be salvaged or effectively burnt. Perhaps the largest by volume is fibre-glass and now too, carbon-fibre composites. Both are of fibrous material encapsulated in synthetic-resin.

Fibre-glass is extensive in architectural, vehicle and marine uses. For example think not only of serious uses in commercial and naval vessels, but also all those boats from humble dinghies to pretentious "gin palaces" in huge marinas, with many barely used from one year's end to the next. It is common in sports equipment and industrial safety-helmets. It is the normal material for the printed-circuit boards in electronic equipment, no doubt including whatever you are reading this on.

Outdoors, it breaks down very, very slowly, over decades, into tiny shards of resin and glass fibres. Buried or on the sea-bed it probably lasts indefinitely, and though I DO NOT advocate such dumping, at least sunken vessels are soon colonised by plants and animals. The resin is flammable unless containing a combustion-inhibitor; but unless burnt at a temperature that fuses the glass, the ash is a very unpleasant mass of tiny glass needles.

Carbon-fibre is much less dense than glass-fibre, so becoming a major material for vehicle and aircraft parts, sports equipment and yes - wind-turbine blades. It may be too new to know its long-term degradation.

'

It's worth considering two things barely mentioned, if we want to play our part in "saving the planet" (though if we want to discuss a very serious technical topic seriously, we don't use baby-talk). These are:-

- Our lives are permeated throughout by plastics of all sorts but [i]even before [/i]we see the plastic bag, medical instrument, toy or mere gee-gaw,

- By the products of principally five, natural minerals: coal, petroleum, and the ores of iron, copper and aluminium. (Plus many others of course.)

We could be said to be still living in the Iron Age because without iron and steel, we cannot make or move anything else in any practical sense. We would have no electricity, clean water, decent homes, sanitation etc. either. We cannot escape these, nor that [i]all[/i] the pat "solutions" offered by the more strident, less-analytical "climate protestors" still rely heavily on at least some of those five minerals.

Basically we are a run-away population wanting more and more of less and less; and despite overall reductions in consumption right left and centre, very profligate. Those, and resulting waste, form some of our biggest headaches; but many of the alternatives offered are not as virtuous as they seem.

We need to solve these very serious problems - but even to play our tiny part as private individuals, we all need to THINK well beyond immediate use and result; and UNDERSTAND at least to a lay level, basic science and engineering principles.

For example, the differences between fuel, energy and power; the fundamental nature of all energy types, by which the whole universe operates; the engineering meaning of "efficiency".

Otherwise it's to Hell in a Handcart (hand-made to last, from home-grown timber).

'

Still, once the world's petroleum and coal deposits are exhausted or if everyone obeys the wishes of that very naïve Swedish lass to "leave it in the ground", it will be no longer possible to make plastics or new iron! Then what.... ? Don't ask Greta. She won't know.