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0 pointstgb7y ago0 comments

So this might be a dumb question, but if I landfill paper instead of recycling it, does it degrade? If not, is that a poor man's form of carbon sequestration? A cursory glance suggests this is correct [1], though you'd need to know a lot more to say that it was more carbon efficient than recycling.

[1] http://www.allaboutbags.ca/degradeinlandfill.html

0 comments

strommen7y ago

Yes, paper degrades in a landfill.

Any carbon-based stuff you put in a landfill generally degrades to methane, which is 25-86 times worse than CO2 when it comes to global warming.

So recycle your paper :)

cheapsteak7y ago

Was the carbon not already sequestered when it was in the form of a tree?

mchannon7y ago

No, it wasn’t.

Trees (esp. those suitable for paper) either burn or fall over and rot, both of which release most of the carbon they used to store.

Fossil fuels used to be trees, and they were well sequestered. Paper would eventually become something similar when buried.

tgbOP7y ago

I assume any serious paper production company replants the tree, so you start with a tree and end with a tree and landfilled paper.

TeMPOraL7y ago

Given strommen's statement about landfilled paper turning into methane, doesn't that mean paper manufacturing is basically a carbon dioxide->methane conversion operation?

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