Volcano island spewing forth rocks with platic embedded in them

[thewayne]

The Brazilian island, Trindade, has produced a new kind of rock - a ""plastiglomerates" because they are made of a mixture of sedimentary granules and other debris held together by plastic. Through studying the plastic, they've identified that a lot of it comes from fishing nets that wash up on beaches.

https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/brazilian-researchers-find-terrifying-plastic-rocks-remote-island-2023-03-15/

Comments

[frith]

Fishing nets, baked in the sun, not melted from volcanic action (which is what "spewed" sounded like). Carbon sequestration. Perhaps we should be happy that at least some fossil fuel is getting reburied.

Some person asked of a national science show, 'could we dispose of plastic by dumping it all into an active volcano'. They didn't think too hard about it. After all, we already do that, it's called incineration and the burning plastic waste is used to generate energy. It's not exactly a good idea.

[thewayne]

No, dumping them into a volcano isn't that great an idea. ;-)  Not unlike loading spent nuclear waste into a rocket and shooting it into the sun: while the sun won't really notice, rockets aren't 100% reliable!