Backyard burning of plastic ... is bad.
About 2 years ago my family and I moved from a rural area to a suburban cul-de-sac. Out on the rural road, we lived next to an old guy who burned all his trash every Sunday. He kept milk jugs on a clothesline, lined up to go in the stove, and he thought he was reducing his taxes by not needing a trash pickup (he didn't have a mailbox either - same logic - when there was something important for him they just stuffed it in our box).
Burn plastic in a managed incinerator and it's relatively problem free. It has high fuel value and in some cases if it's mixed waste, incineration and energy generation may be the best way to recapture valuable energy from it. But burn it in an uncontrolled manner in a campfire, why would you do that?
So we move to the somewhat swanky suburban area, and damned if one of my new neighbors, in a fancy stucco house with about 1000 figurines out front, isn't burning trash, supposedly incognito, in his backyard. What the hell? The acrid smoke drifts up from behind the place and goes right into my kid's bedroom window. I feel like going over there and strangling him; that's what he's doing to me.
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Jeez- I thought only ignorant old men and women did this here in Japan. Perhaps you could compile a list of why plastic burning is bad by releasing toxins into the air that both the burner and your children are breathing... I have an organic garden on a beautiful remote mountainside and the field owners above me burn plastics from time to time. I'm preparing that list now so that I can try to convince them to take it home and have it burnt in an incinerator. Hope it works out for you!
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