Ask HN: Is anyone pursuing longshot tech for recycling / remediating landfills?
I have had a lifelong interest in cleaning up trash—-something that’s probably rooted in deep-seated aesthetics and maybe a bit of OCD.
My first career was in standard finance/tech and left me with enough flexibility to try to do something I’m really passionate about.
I have rigorously followed the academic literature and commercial development of recycling tech. It has been a disheartening journey. Recycling doesn’t work as well as people think. Promising solutions like plasma gasification had lots of engineering and economic challenges. A recent push in Europe for landfill mining went nowhere.
What is really needed is a single stream solution where almost any material can go in the front end, and out the back end comes useful elemental products or inert products.
Is anyone working on long-shot technology that would do this? If so, I would like to network. I’m not interested in something to make incremental changes around the edges. I’m interested in the type of tech that would be revolutionary.
My first career was in standard finance/tech and left me with enough flexibility to try to do something I’m really passionate about.
I have rigorously followed the academic literature and commercial development of recycling tech. It has been a disheartening journey. Recycling doesn’t work as well as people think. Promising solutions like plasma gasification had lots of engineering and economic challenges. A recent push in Europe for landfill mining went nowhere.
What is really needed is a single stream solution where almost any material can go in the front end, and out the back end comes useful elemental products or inert products.
Is anyone working on long-shot technology that would do this? If so, I would like to network. I’m not interested in something to make incremental changes around the edges. I’m interested in the type of tech that would be revolutionary.