#you either have to pay hundreds of euros for a session or wait up to 14 months for an appointment

[bat-revival]

sigh.

[kissjane]

Reposted from Ao3!

“I let you mooch off of my Wi-Fi and this is how you repay me?”

Lucas blinked.

In front of his apartment door stood a tall, lean guy with storm in his eyes.

“Sorry? Who are you?”

“I live next door, asshole, you don’t even know whose Wi-Fi you’ve been using?”, the stranger bit, as he pushed past Lucas and stepped inside Lucas’ flat.

Lucas stared at the man’s back. Broad shoulders. Sunkissed brown hair that spiked in all directions. And – Lucas whipped his eyes back up. He absolutely did not just appraise his very angry neighbour’s very nice ass.

“Uhm, sorry, but I don’t really know what –”

Mr. Nice Ass turned around, fuming.

“You don’t know about downloading all that shitty porn using my Wi-Fi? I got a fucking bill that’s about my monthly wages, you wanker!”

For a heart-stopping second, Lucas was afraid this guy somehow knew exactly what porn he’d been watching recently. The blood drained from his face.

“Yeah, that’s right, you asshole. You know, I knew somebody was on my Wi-Fi for months, but I didn’t really mind all that much, it was only a couple of gigabytes and it didn’t bother me. But this?”

He waved a bill in Lucas’ face.

“This is fucking insane! So I looked into it and you’ve downloaded half the fucking internet’s worth of porn! Maybe get a fucking girlfriend so you don’t have to jerk off to a hundred versions of ‘Barely legal with big tits’ and ‘Horny MILF’! You are going to pay this fucking bill, I swear!”

Huh? Lucas definitely had not downloaded anything in those categories.

“Look, uhm, you have the wrong guy. That was not me.”

His neighbour scoffed.

“Yeah, right. As if I’d believe a word out of your mouth.”

Lucas stepped closer, but the fury in the guy’s eyes made him retreat hastily, his hands up in a plea.

“Seriously, though, I mean it, I didn’t download those things you’re talking about...”

“Just admit it, fuck. You better have some hundred euro bills to spare.” He threw the invoice at Lucas, who swallowed at the amount.

Okay. He’d have to come clean.

“I swear. If it was me downloading porn on your Wi-Fi, it definitely wouldn’t have been anything involving tits or MILFs.”

The other halted, confused.

“Listen. My porn is situated more in the ‘Big dick’ category. I can show you, if you don’t believe me.”

Read on Ao3

or

Lucas figured his neighbour, like most straight men, would do anything rather than come anywhere near gay porn, so it was a complete surprise when after a moment of stunned silence his neighbour said in a somewhat calmer voice, “Okay. Show me.”

Shit. Lucas looked at the guy with open mouth.

“You want me to show you my porn history?”

The man shrugged.

“Either it is tits and MILF’s, in which case I already know exactly, or it’s not, in the unlikely case you didn’t just make up that to get out of paying for your jerking sessions. My money’s on the first option.”

Wow. Lucas knew his cheeks were burning red.

“I don’t… I can’t just show that to you! That’s private!”

“See? You are just making it up. I’ll be expecting my payment by next weekend.”

He stormed past Lucas. Lucas’ eyes fell on the invoice again. Fuck, whoever had managed to rack up this much on Mr. Neighbour’s bill must have seen every fucking big tit out there. Lucas really didn’t have that kind of money handy. Fuck. He had no choice.

“Stop!”

He sighed.

“Okay. I’ll show you.” He went to open his laptop, trying one more time. “Are you sure you want to look at this?”

“I won’t make you play the actual videos, don’t worry.”

Certain the blush on his cheeks was now rivalling a tomato, Lucas opened up his internet history, turning away resignedly.

Mr. Neighbour hummed.

“I see. Seems you are indeed not the kind of guy who watches 'Spring break bimbo'.”

Lucas whimpered, his hands in front of his face.

“Sorry. I really thought… you know.”

Lucas still didn’t face his neighbour, utterly mortified now.

“It’s fine… just… go away… Pretend you never were here, please!”

He heard the man pick up his invoice, and move towards the door. Just as he thought it was safe to show his face, close his laptop, curse himself for his lack of willpower and his lack of a boyfriend to take care of this stuff, and bemoan the fact that he could never ever look his neighbour in the eyes again – which was a shame in and of itself, really, because those eyes had been rather beautiful – he felt a hand on his shoulder. He shrieked.

“Oh my god! What did you do that for? You don’t have to creep up on me like that!”

“Fuck, sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!”

They both stood frozen for a second, until Lucas became achingly aware of the hand on his shoulder.

“What do you want now?”, he asked, almost whispering.

“I just wanted to apologize again. I shouldn’t have made you show that.”

“It’s fine, really,” Lucas babbled. God, he just really wished this ordeal could be over already before he just died of embarrassment. “If you could just forget all about the past ten minutes, though, that would be great…”

“Hey. Would it help if I told you I have actually seen some of those videos?”

Wait.

“What?”

Mr. Neighbour grinned.

“I just thought… you seem so embarrassed; I’d thought maybe I could just let you know you do have good taste in porn apparently.”

Lucas groaned.

“God, please… This is just too awkward, you know.”

“I mean it, though. Don’t be uncomfortable. I’m not straight, so you don’t have to be ashamed about what you’re watching on my account.”

Lucas looked up.

“Uhm. Okay. Well, I’m still rather mortified, though. I mean, I never thought I’d be sharing my private internet history with some guy whose name I don’t even know… God. Fuck. This is just all way too much of a mess. How do I keep ending up in this kind of situation?”

“Oh, I’m Eliott. Please, just don’t be embarrassed! I should be the one who feels bad, I made you show me instead of just believing you. Hey, you know what? You can come over to my place and I’ll show you mine!”

Lucas managed a small smile.

“No need, thank you…”

“Seriously though! Stop feeling so bad. God, I feel terrible! How can I make it up to you?”

Lucas turned away and hugged himself.

“You don’t have to! Just… go away, I guess.”

“But I want to, please! At least tell me your name.” Eliott gently turned him around and looked at him with an expression that was completely different from the one he wore when he came in. Lucas now felt a whole other sort of awkwardness. Fuck, Eliott was hot.

“Lucas,” he begrudgingly murmured.

A smile appeared on Eliott’s face.

“Lucas. Nice to meet you. I did see you once or twice before, in the hallway.”

“You did?” Lucas certainly never saw Eliott.

“I did. And I thought you were cute, by the way. Which is why I didn’t mind so much when I thought you were using my Wi-Fi…”

“Whoa.” Lucas held up his hands. There was way too much information in that sentence for his befuddled brain to unpack right now.

Eliott seemed to understand.

“Okay. We can get back to that later. I wanna make up for making you feel bad, Lucas. Just let me get you dinner or something.” He looked at Lucas with such a pleading look in his sparkly eyes, that Lucas barely remembered why he’d refused in the first place.

And just like that, Lucas knew that Eliott was a whirlwind, a chaotic force of nature, against whom he’d never stand a chance. It was better to give in now.

~

I had taken the better part of an hour and a giant order of take-out Thai food before Lucas managed to behave somewhat normally after the whole debacle, but once his shame had died down sufficiently, he and Eliott had hit it off like fireworks. They’d talked non-stop, and at some point had opened some wine and started watching a movie Eliott had been adamant about, some foreign indie flick he swore was the best movie ever made and he now knew why fate had led him to Lucas, seriously, Lucas, it was my job in this life to introduce you to it, I swear. Lucas had lost track of the convoluted plot after twenty minutes – I can’t watch the movie and read the subtitles at the same time, Eliott, my brain is not equipped for this kind of multitasking – but he enjoyed Eliott’s ongoing commentary.

After a while though, he got tired, and he leaned back against the couch pillows, and closed his eyes, content to listen to Eliott talking about the photography, the scenography, and other things Lucas knew nothing about. He had a pleasant voice, Eliott, Lucas thought. He felt himself drifting off to sleep, and vaguely he thought he wouldn’t mind falling asleep to Eliott’s soft whispers every night.

Suddenly, a hand touched his face, and his eyes flew open. Eliott looked at him, his eyes soft and bright, smiling widely.

“Am I too boring for you?”

Lucas felt another blush creeping.

“Uh, no! It’s just… you know… the movie was complicated and… uhm. Yeah, sorry,” he finished lamely.

“The movie not interesting enough for you, huh? Not enough big dicks?”, Eliott teased.

“Oh my god!” Lucas slapped Eliott on the head with a pillow. “You are supposed to forget that ever happened!”

“Oh, no!” Eliott laughed out loud, and Lucas noticed with fascination how his eyes sparkled and his grin could light up the entirety of Paris. “I plan on telling our grandkids about that with great frequency.”

“Our… grandkids?”

Great, Lucas, way to lose all capability of speech.

Eliott nudged his arm.

“Yeah.” He kept staring at Lucas, but said nothing more. The silence stretched on. It wasn’t uncomfortable, Lucas thought, but the tension between them became more palpable the longer it went on.

“Lucas?”

“Yeah?”

“If you don’t want to talk about those videos you have downloaded…”

Lucas smacked him with the pillow again.

“How about we make one ourselves?”

Fuck.

Lucas almost wanted to ask Eliott to repeat himself, certain he misunderstood, but the smoldering look in his grey eyes was consistent with what Lucas thought he heard.

He gasped.

Eliott’s pupils went dark as they focused on Lucas’ mouth.

Then, Lucas laughed, loud and free. Okay, maybe they could tell this story to their grandchildren in fifty years, he thought.

“Are you sure you’re up for it, though? Remember we are talking big dick here…”

One second, Eliott gaped. Then he leaned over, caging Lucas between his strong arms and the couch, blanketing Lucas with his body, and with his lips a hair’s breadth away from Lucas’, he mumbled: “Don’t take my word for it. Discover for yourself.”

[miraculousmumma]

Designs on You - Chapter Twelve - You’ve Got To Be Orchid-ing Me

Characters:  Adrien Agreste/Chat Noir, Marinette Dupain-Cheng/Ladybug,  Alya Césaire, Nino Lahiffe, all of the class really, Tom Dupain, Sabine Cheng, Nadja Chamack, Gabriel Agreste, Nathalie Sancoer

Pairings: Adrien/Marinette, Chat Noir/Marinette

Warnings: A little angst, a little fluff, a little swearing, a little kissing, an orchid

Word Count: 25,825 (17 chapters)

Summary:  When Chat Noir comes across Marinette sitting alone in the park sketching late at night, he offers to see her home safely. What starts as a simple conversation between them quickly develops into something more that leaves both sides of their personas confused about their feelings.

Masterlist

‘What’s that?’  Her mom asked as she walked into the patisserie.

‘A stupidly expensive orchid.’  She put it down on the counter.  ‘Rose says it can sell for almost two hundred thousand euros.’

‘It can…’  Sabine blinked a couple of times.  ‘I think you need to start at the beginning.’

‘Someone sent me them.’  She shifted awkwardly.  ‘Anonymously.’  She was thankful she had had the forethought to tuck the card in her bag.

‘And they’re worth how much?’

‘A lot.  The name of the species is on the tab, Rose says it’s a rare species or something.’

‘Adrien?’  Sabine raised a questioning eyebrow as she took the tab and read it.

‘Apparently not.’  She shrugged.

‘So you have a secret admirer who is either rich, or an orchid thief?’

Marinette laughed.  ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘Really no idea who it could be?’

‘Not one.’  She shook her head.

Sabine held her arm out for her to step into, and she hugged her tight.  ‘Well, you either have friends in some really high places, or really low ones.’  Marinette laughed, and that was what Sabine had been hoping for, getting her to smile.  ‘That’s better.  I’ll be up to make dinner soon.’

‘Okay.’  Marinette kissed her cheek and picked up the plant again, heading towards the back.

‘Oh, Mari?  If it’s that rock star you designed the glasses and album cover for, he’s much too old for you.’  She winked.

‘Maman!’ She laughed.

‘Just checking.’  Sabine held up her hands in surrender, leaving Marinette to head up to her room, shaking her head.

Adrien didn’t think a basketball session have ever dragged so badly, let alone the ride home.  He showered then ate dinner, telling Natalie he was going to take dessert with him to do homework then turn in for the night, which he knew would guarantee him peace and quiet.  Carefully he put the special dessert into a bag where it shouldn’t get damaged, he had requested it be partially deconstructed so he could finish it off fresh, put a few more things in the bag, then put it by the window along with the bag of material.

‘I don’t imagine for a second that you’re actually going to do homework and go to bed.’  Plagg said as he watched him getting everything together.

‘I promised Mari I’d see her tonight.’  He checked he had everything, which wasn’t a lot, but he didn’t want for forget anything.  ‘And if I don’t hurry, dessert will melt.’

‘You’re really pulling out all the stops to impress this girl.’  Plagg smirked, highly amused that his chosen seriously had a type when it came to girls.

‘I promised her dessert, that’s all.’  Adrien frowned at him, checking the bag one last time.

‘You also sent her a rare and expensive orchid, and bought her a bag of fabric.’  He pointed out.  ‘You’re going a little overboard.’

‘What do you know?  You already told me you don’t understand human interactions.’  Adrien frowned at him.

‘I don’t, but I do know this is over the top.’  He crossed his arms stubbornly.

‘Plagg,’ Adrien gave him a serious look.

‘What?’

‘Claws out.’  He said with a small smile.

Plagg rolled his eyes as he was pulled towards the Miraculous.  There were some things he would never understand, and humans were one of them.

‘Knock knock, purrr-incess.’

Marinette had been looking up at the hatch since she heard him moving around up there, and although she was curious, it was obvious he was doing something he didn’t want her to know about, so she sat on her chaise with her sketchbook in her hand and waited.

‘I’m here, Chat.’  She put down her book and got to her feet, glad she had decided to dress up a bit, knowing he was coming.  It was just a pale blue skater skirt she had made, coupled with a white blouse, and white over the knee socks, but it was different to what she normally wore.  She had even taken her hair down, hoping that there wouldn’t be another akuma today.

Chat dropped down onto her bed holding a large paper bag, and smiled at her, before his mouth dropped open as he took her in.  ‘Whoa.’  He murmured.

‘I got my flowers.’  She said as he came down the ladder, dropping the bag at the bottom, his expression somewhere between surprised and awed.  ‘Thank you, they’re beautiful.’

‘You’re beautiful.’  He murmured as he reached her, bowing his head to kiss her softly.

She smiled at him as he pulled away, taking her hand as he beamed down at her.  ‘You didn’t really pay hundreds of thousands of euros for a pot plant though, right?’

‘Don’t you know better than to ask the price of a gift, princess?’  He booped her nose carefully.

‘When said gift sends the entire school into a maelstrom of excited rumour, no, I don’t.’

‘I know a few people.’  He shrugged.

She narrowed her eyes teasingly at him.  ‘It’s not stolen, right?  International gangster florists aren’t going to come after me?’

‘No international gangster florists, I promise.’  He laughed.  ‘But I have a couple of other things for you.’  He pulled her towards the bag.

‘No, Chat, no more gifts!’  She laughed.

‘Just this one.’  He lifted the bag and held it out to her.  ‘So you can finish what you started.’

She frowned and took the bag, looking inside.  ‘Oh my God, you didn’t?’

He helped her carefully take the material out of the bag.  There was enough grey and yellow material here to make the rest of the suit, more than enough.  ‘You so wanted to see it real, and the waistcoat existing made you so happy.  You need to finish.  It needs to be real.’

‘Oh, Chat.’  She put the material on her desk and threw her arms around him.  ‘You are far too precious, kitty.  Thank you.’

‘Anything to see you smile.’  He enveloped her in his arms and held her close, burying his nose against her neck.  ‘Oh, one more thing!’  He backed away and pulled her towards the stairs.

‘You said just that one!’  She argued as he pulled her along.

‘This isn’t a gift, just something I promised.’  He leapt up through the hatch, holding down his hand to help her up, and he stepped back, showing her what he had been doing.  A picnic blanket was spread out, with a backpack beside it and a few enclosed candles burned brightly in the twilight.

‘Chat…’  She shook her head as he pulled her towards the blanket to sit down.

‘I said I’d bring dessert, and it might have melted a little, but I tried to get here as fast as I could.’  He lifted the box out of the bag, followed by two plates, a miniature bottle of dark rum, two spoons, and a box of matches.

‘Do I want to know?’

‘Just watch.’  He smiled to himself as he opened the box to reveal two perfect miniature baked Alaskas.  ‘Sit back, princess.’  He said as he opened the rum, dousing each generously before picking up the matches.

‘This won’t burn the place down, right?’  She checked, making sure she was well away as he lit a match.

‘It shouldn’t, but that’s why I thought we’d do this outside.  Plus, it’s more showy in the dark.’  He glanced up at her before down at the desserts, lowering the match first to one then the other.  It wasn’t really dark out here with all the lights of the city, but the effect was still a stunning one, the two desserts flaming, and he sat back proudly.  ‘Voila!  Bombe Alaska!’

She laughed at his enthusiasm.  ‘Very impressive, minou.’

‘It’ll burn out in a moment, then you have to eat it before the ice cream melts any more than it already has.  I came as quickly as I could after taking them from the freezer.’

‘I’m sure they’re perfect.’

They watched as the flames died down and then he offered her a spoon.  They ate together in silence for a short while until Chat shuffled closer to her.

‘So, other than nice surprises, how was your day?’

‘Nice surprises?’  She gave him a sideways glance.  ‘You mean like dessert and the material?’

‘I mean the flowers.’  He nudged her for her teasing tone.

‘The flowers are lovely but they drew a lot of attention.’

‘You said something about a maelstrom?’  He frowned, trying to remember.

‘Uh huh.  Everyone is throwing around theories about who could have sent them to me, even people I don’t know are trying to figure it out.  If I’m honest it’s a little embarrassing having that many people talk about me.’

‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’

She shrugged.  ‘I’ll deal with it, but the principal did make a point that I should tell you no more deliveries to the school please.  It’s a distraction.’

‘Your principal sounds boring.’  He said flippantly.

‘That’s his job.’  She told him unnecessarily.  ‘Then Adrien kissed my cheek and Chloe flipped out.  It was a weird day.’  She was concentrating on her dessert and didn’t notice Chat go completely still with his spoon in his mouth.

He had kissed her as Adrien?  When?  He thought back for a minute and realised exactly when it happened.  ‘Do I, uh, do I need to come down and warn model boy off?  You know, with you being my girl and all?’

‘Am I your girl?’  She tilted her head so she could see him, putting down her plate and spoon,

‘I like to think you could be, maybe, if you want?’  He stumbled over the words.

‘What about all that talk of putting me at risk?  I thought it was too dangerous for people to know?’  She asked, leaning towards him temptingly.

‘It is.’  He put down his own dessert and raised his hand, cupping her cheek.

‘So how are we going to keep it a secret if you’re going to threaten one of the most famous citizens in Paris?’

‘I’ll tell him your boyfriend hired me to scare him off.’

‘I really don’t think Adrien sees me like that.’  She closed her eyes as his breath caressed her lips.

‘Then he’s a fool.’  He whispered as his lips brushed hers, the faintest of touches but it had him pulling her closer, his arm around her waist drawing her nearer until she straddled his lap, one hand cradling her head, the other on her back.  The kiss was slow and teasing, gentle drawn out touches that had Marinette’s hands clenching in Chat’s hair, and a rumbling purr started in his chest.

The kiss ended but they didn’t part far, their heavy breath falling upon one another, their noses brushing and cheeks flushed.

‘Wait.’  Something he said suddenly struck Marinette.  ‘Did you say boyfriend?’

‘If you, if you want?  We could.  What do you think?’

‘You mean really make it official?’  She asked, meaning simply between the two of them, not anything more, but Chat took it the wrong way.

‘Between us.  We can’t tell any one else about it, although I still might make the exception to threaten off my rival.’  He smiled slightly.

‘That would be a bad idea.’  She pulled a face at him.  ‘And you’re the one who has already drawn a lot of attention to this, not me.’

‘Are you saying I can’t send you things?’

‘I’m saying try be a little more low key.’

‘I don’t want to be low key, not if someone else thinks you’re available.’  He fought back a smile, knowing he was talking about himself anyway, but Marinette didn’t know that.

‘I’m pretty sure everyone knows I’m not, thanks to you.  You may as well have scent marked me.’

‘I am a cat.’  He shrugged.

‘Funny.’  She ruffled his hair.  ‘I think Alya will be the hardest one to keep from prying.  I love her but she can be pretty full on.’

‘Alya of the Ladyblog fame, right?’  He unnecessarily checked.

‘Uh huh.  Imagine how excited she’ll be if she finds out who C is.’

‘You have to keep it from her.’  He leant in and kissed her neck, making her sigh and close her eyes.

‘I have to keep it from everyone, but so do you.’  He leant back and frowned at her.  ‘You’re the one who’s drawing attention to me, to us.  The notes, the gifts.  The girls in my class thrive on stuff like that.  It’s different enough that they’re already speculating who you are.’

‘I’ll tone it down.’  He promised.

‘Thanks.’  She leant in to kiss him, just a fraction from his lips, when they were interrupted.

‘Marinette?’

‘That’s Maman.’  She whispered, kissing him quickly and getting to her feet.  ‘I’m up here, Maman, just a second.’  She pressed her finger to her lips with a glance at him before lowering herself down the hatch.  Her mom’s head was just inside her room, standing on the stairs in the living room.

‘There’s someone here to see you.’  Her mom looked serious, and that made Marinette worry.

‘Who is it?’

Sabine sighed.  ‘Word of your orchid has got out.  Nadja wants an interview.’

‘I just got off the phone with…uh…with the person who sent it.  It was a joke, it’s not real.’  Marinette said rapidly.

‘Maybe you could tell Nadja that.’

‘Maman…’  Marinette whined.

‘Just five minutes.  She’s a friend.’

‘She’s a reporter.’  Marinette pouted but followed her anyway.

Nadja Chamack stood in the living area, her cameraman behind her, smiling pleasantly as Marinette followed her mom down the stairs.

‘Good afternoon, Marinette.’

‘Hello, Madame Chamack.’  Marinette greeted her.  ‘I think you’ve been given some bad information.’

‘About the orchids?  I don’t think so.’  She smiled encouragingly.

‘I just got off the phone with my friend, he said they just look like them, that it was a joke.’

‘Well, your friend is a liar.’  She held out her phone to show Marinette a picture of the very orchids she had.  ‘This confirms that a purchase was made yesterday and couriered to Paris.  The orchidist won’t say if they have the name of the buyer, they claim it was anonymous, but it was definitely delivered to you.’

Marinette pinched the bridge of her nose and screwed up her eyes  ‘He told me it was a joke.’  She opened her eyes and found the camera now on her, a microphone between them.

‘Can you confirm that you are in a relationship with your classmate, Adrien Agreste?’

‘No!  I’m not!’  Marinette blushed heavily.  ‘We’re just friends!’

‘There’s no one else in Paris in your age bracket who could afford such a lavish gift.  What can you tell us about this mystery man?’

‘That he’s going to get a smack in the face when I next see him.’  Marinette muttered, her mom coming to stand beside her, wrapping her arm around her.

‘I’m sorry, Nadja, I can’t let you keep asking Marinette these questions.  If she doesn’t want to talk about this, then I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’  Sabine said firmly to her friend.

Nadja raised her hand and the camera was lowered.  ‘I’m not trying to make Marinette feel discomfort, but this is quite the story.’

‘And if and when Marinette is ready to talk about it, I’ll have her call you.’  Sabine was smiling, but her voice was no nonsense, and Marinette knew better than to mess with that.  Thankfully, so did Nadja.

She sighed.  ‘Alright, Sabine, I’ll leave it, but the people want to know, and I won’t be the only one asking.’

‘Thank you.’  Sabine gave Marinette a squeeze.  ‘Go back to your room.’

‘Thank you, Maman.’  Marinette made a hasty exit, racing up the stairs and slamming the hatch before heading back up to the balcony.

‘Everything…’  Chat started, but she grabbed his arm and pressed her finger to his lips.

‘Shhh!’  She pulled his arm until he sat down then went to the railing, watching until the TVi news van drove away, and she sighed in relief, her shoulders slumping heavily.  Finally she turned, and the look on her face made Chat wish he could go to her, but he wasn’t sure if he should as she had made him sit.  Instead he held his arms out, inviting her into them.

She sighed again and pushed away from the railing, sinking to sit beside him, his arm curving around her so her head rested on her shoulder.  ‘Nadja Chamack was here.  She knows about the orchid.’

‘What did you tell her?’  He kissed her hair, hoping it would comfort her.

‘I tried to tell her it was a joke, that it wasn’t the actual orchid, just similar, but she’d already been onto whoever you bought it from.  They didn’t tell her the buyer but confirmed it had been delivered to me.’

‘Dammit.  I’m sorry, princess.’

‘I guess it’s okay, I can’t do anything about it.’

‘Don’t get sad, I don’t want you akumatized.’  He squeezed her, but it made her laugh.

‘I promise I’ll try not to.’

‘Good, but what I want to know is who the hell sold you out?’  He asked, horrified that someone would do that to her.

‘It could be anyone, the entire school knew by the end of the day.’

‘I should come down there and tell them that’s not acceptable.’

Marinette leant away from him.  ‘That won’t help, that will make things worse, it won’t take much for them to put two and two together that you’re C.’

‘They can’t treat you like this!’

‘But they will!’  She argued, pushing to her feet.  ‘And you’re going to have to be so careful if you keep coming here, someone is going to see you and then everyone will know!’

‘So what’s the answer?’  He stood too, hoping that no one was yet watching her home.

‘I don’t know!’  She threw her arms out frustratedly.  ‘Maybe we should keep a low profile until things calm down, until they give up.’

‘You want me to stop coming here?’  He asked, not understanding.  ‘You want to give up on us so easily?’

‘That’s not what I said.’

‘It pretty much is.  Keeping a low profile means not being seen, and this is the only place we can actually be together.  If we go anywhere else we could be spotted.’

‘And if you come here you could be spotted!’  She said pointedly.  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to see you, but if they’re watching me, this is the first place they’ll look.’

‘All I hear is you giving up.’  He folded his arms stubbornly.

‘That’s because you’re not listening!  You’re too interested in getting your own way to hear what I’m saying!’

‘What I want is us!’

‘Chat…’  She groaned, not knowing how to get him to understand.

‘No, princess, it’s fine, if you’d rather I left, I’ll go.’

She closed her eyes and dropped her head.  ‘That’s not what I…’  She looked up and he was gone.  ‘You are fucking kidding me.’  She turned a circle, looking for any sign of him.  ‘Really?’  She yelled, before storming to her hatch, dropping down and locking it firmly behind her.

[party-hard-or-die]

Plastics mines? Europe struggles as pollution piles up

OSLO (Reuters) – Europe has sent just over half the plastic waste it used to ship to China to other parts of Asia since Beijing’s environmental crackdown closed the world’s biggest recycling market in January. The knotty problem is what to do with the rest.

FILE PHOTO: Plastic and glass waste lies on the ground during the Tamborrada on the Day of San Sebastian, in which people dressed as Napoleonic-era soldiers and cooks perform in a twenty-four-hour drum and wine barrel playing session, interspersed with eating and drinking, in the Basque coastal town of San Sebastian, Spain, January 20, 2018. REUTERS/Vincent West/File Photo

Some of the surplus is piled up in places from building sites to ports, officials say, waiting for new markets to open up. Recycling closer to home is held back by the fact that the plastic is often dirty and unsorted, the same reasons China turned it away.

Countries led by Malaysia and Vietnam and India imported far more of Europe’s plastic waste in early 2018 than before, European Union data show, but unless they or others take more, the only options will be to either bury or burn it.

In an overcrowded continent where landfills are much more restricted than elsewhere, burning is the obvious option to help generate electricity or heat from hundreds of thousands of tonnes of surplus waste.

But more radical ideas, such as putting oil derived plastic back underground to “mine” back when recycling becomes more sophisticated, are being aired as Europe tries to work out what to do.

European waste policies “need to become much more nuanced, because some landfill might actually be quite good,” professor Ian Boyd, chief scientific adviser for the British government’s department of environment, food and rural affairs, told Reuters.

“I’m putting out a challenge to the current system,” he said, referring to the fact that waste policies in Europe either ban or limit landfill but do little to restrict what has been dubbed “skyfill” – the release of pollutants into the air.

WASTE-TO-POWER

Europe has favored the construction of power plants that burn waste for electricity or heat because land is scarce and landfills produce toxins and greenhouse gases such as methane as organic waste – from food to nappies – rots.

Waste-to-power plants produce greenhouse gas emissions too, but in most of Europe they are exempt from carbon taxes that stand at about 14 euros a tonne in an industrial market.

Boyd said buried plastic could become a valuable resource only if the penalties for emitting greenhouse gases, both in making plastics and burning them, were far higher than today.

Globally, plastics accounted for 390 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2012, ranging from production to incineration and equivalent to the emissions by a nation such as Turkey, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a think-tank that specialises in recycling.

The plastics industry takes issue with such assessments, saying they ignore the vast contribution of plastic in reducing other emissions by for example preserving food and reducing the weight of transport.

The Confederation of European Waste-to-Energy Plants (CEWEP), a group of some 400 plants using 90 million tonnes of municipal waste to provide heat and electricity for millions of people, said burying and then mining back plastic was a fantasy.

“Digging waste into landfills and then waiting until a magic technology pops up in the future is not a responsible option,” CEWEP managing director Ellen Stengler said, adding that the idea was a minority view she heard “here and there” in Europe.

Just cleaning plastic waste before burial would be hugely expensive, plastic would degrade underground and there would be risks such as fire, she said.

The latest major U.N. assessment of climate change, in 2014, also floated the idea that cities might sort and bury waste such as metals, paper and plastics to create “a material reservoir that can be mined” sometime in future.

(Graphic: EU plastics waste exports – tmsnrt.rs/2I9C4Zh)

NEW MARKETS

Plastic pollution is surging and could, according to UN Environment, exceed the weight of fish in the oceans by 2050.

China, which used to process half the world’s exports of plastic waste, has insisted on higher standards of cleanliness and sorting to prevent waste that cannot be recycled being burned, which, in its case, often means in open pits.

For Europe, the restrictions have so far acted as an effective ban, according to official data reviewed by Reuters which showed exports to China crashing by 96 percent in the first two months of the year.

Nations led by Malaysia, Vietnam, Turkey, India and Indonesia took on around 60 percent of the waste, but the surplus means Europe’s market for low-grade waste has collapsed.

A tonne of plastic waste for export, with up to 20 percent impurities such as paper labels, could be sold for between 25 and 40 pounds a tonne in April 2017, according to British recycling group letsrecycle.com.

Last month, by contrast, you had to pay between 40 and 60 pounds to get someone to take it away.

Despite this, Patawari Borad of the Bureau of International Recycling in Brussels said recycling within Europe had not increased dramatically. “One can only guess that this unsorted material is going for either energy or incineration.”

Waste-to-energy body CEWEP said it saw no sign extra plastic was being burned. Incinerators would notice a higher share of plastics, Stengler said, because, tonne for tonne, they produce a lot of energy.

Proponents of the idea of burying plastic include Keith Freegard, a director of Axion Polymers in England, one of Europe’s leading recyclers of waste from cars and electronics.

“All those tonnes of carbon-rich waste material that were going into the landfill are now being released into the sky. Why are we allowing this free access to ‘skyfill’?” said Freegard, who is vice chair of the British Plastic Federation’s Recycling Group.

“We should separate and store plastic in a well-controlled landfill as a future mine,” he told Reuters.

To produce a megawatt hour of electricity, he said a waste-to-energy plant would need to burn 345 kg of plastic, emitting 880 kg of carbon dioxide. By contrast, a gas-fired power plant would generate the same amount of energy by burning 132 kg of natural gas, emitting just 360 kg of carbon dioxide.

Stengler and nations that favor waste-to-energy plants say such accounting is misleading and that waste-to-energy helps replace fossil fuels, a key goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement to limit heat waves, floods, droughts and rising seas.

Swedish government estimates, for instance, show that three tonnes of municipal waste contain as much energy as a tonne of oil.

World production of plastics has increased about twentyfold since the 1960s and is expected to double again over the next 20 years, according to the European Commission.

Erik Solheim, head of U.N. Environment in Nairobi, said the global focus for plastic policies should be to cut use, especially products such as microplastics used in some cosmetics or drinking straws that he said were unnecessary.

“The best of all is to avoid the plastics we don’t need,” he said. Burying waste and mining it sounds “a difficult option”.

Of 27.1 million tonnes of plastic waste collected in Europe in 2016, 41.6 percent went to energy generation, 31.1 percent to recycling including in China, and 27.3 percent to landfills, according to Plastics Europe. It was the first time that recycling rates exceeded landfills, it said.

By contrast in the more spacious United States, 75 percent of 33 million tonnes of collected plastics was landfilled in 2014, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Fifteen percent was burnt and 9.5 percent recycled, it said.

And worldwide, a report by U.N. scientists in 2014 estimated that only about 20 percent of municipal solid waste is recycled, about 13.5 percent used to generate energy and the rest dumped.

Reporting by Alister Doyle; editing by Philippa Fletcher

The post Plastics mines? Europe struggles as pollution piles up appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2KS0IvS via Breaking News

[dragnews]

Plastics mines? Europe struggles as pollution piles up

OSLO (Reuters) – Europe has sent just over half the plastic waste it used to ship to China to other parts of Asia since Beijing’s environmental crackdown closed the world’s biggest recycling market in January. The knotty problem is what to do with the rest.

FILE PHOTO: Plastic and glass waste lies on the ground during the Tamborrada on the Day of San Sebastian, in which people dressed as Napoleonic-era soldiers and cooks perform in a twenty-four-hour drum and wine barrel playing session, interspersed with eating and drinking, in the Basque coastal town of San Sebastian, Spain, January 20, 2018. REUTERS/Vincent West/File Photo

Some of the surplus is piled up in places from building sites to ports, officials say, waiting for new markets to open up. Recycling closer to home is held back by the fact that the plastic is often dirty and unsorted, the same reasons China turned it away.

Countries led by Malaysia and Vietnam and India imported far more of Europe’s plastic waste in early 2018 than before, European Union data show, but unless they or others take more, the only options will be to either bury or burn it.

In an overcrowded continent where landfills are much more restricted than elsewhere, burning is the obvious option to help generate electricity or heat from hundreds of thousands of tonnes of surplus waste.

But more radical ideas, such as putting oil derived plastic back underground to “mine” back when recycling becomes more sophisticated, are being aired as Europe tries to work out what to do.

European waste policies “need to become much more nuanced, because some landfill might actually be quite good,” professor Ian Boyd, chief scientific adviser for the British government’s department of environment, food and rural affairs, told Reuters.

“I’m putting out a challenge to the current system,” he said, referring to the fact that waste policies in Europe either ban or limit landfill but do little to restrict what has been dubbed “skyfill” – the release of pollutants into the air.

WASTE-TO-POWER

Europe has favored the construction of power plants that burn waste for electricity or heat because land is scarce and landfills produce toxins and greenhouse gases such as methane as organic waste – from food to nappies – rots.

Waste-to-power plants produce greenhouse gas emissions too, but in most of Europe they are exempt from carbon taxes that stand at about 14 euros a tonne in an industrial market.

Boyd said buried plastic could become a valuable resource only if the penalties for emitting greenhouse gases, both in making plastics and burning them, were far higher than today.

Globally, plastics accounted for 390 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2012, ranging from production to incineration and equivalent to the emissions by a nation such as Turkey, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a think-tank that specialises in recycling.

The plastics industry takes issue with such assessments, saying they ignore the vast contribution of plastic in reducing other emissions by for example preserving food and reducing the weight of transport.

The Confederation of European Waste-to-Energy Plants (CEWEP), a group of some 400 plants using 90 million tonnes of municipal waste to provide heat and electricity for millions of people, said burying and then mining back plastic was a fantasy.

“Digging waste into landfills and then waiting until a magic technology pops up in the future is not a responsible option,” CEWEP managing director Ellen Stengler said, adding that the idea was a minority view she heard “here and there” in Europe.

Just cleaning plastic waste before burial would be hugely expensive, plastic would degrade underground and there would be risks such as fire, she said.

The latest major U.N. assessment of climate change, in 2014, also floated the idea that cities might sort and bury waste such as metals, paper and plastics to create “a material reservoir that can be mined” sometime in future.

(Graphic: EU plastics waste exports – tmsnrt.rs/2I9C4Zh)

NEW MARKETS

Plastic pollution is surging and could, according to UN Environment, exceed the weight of fish in the oceans by 2050.

China, which used to process half the world’s exports of plastic waste, has insisted on higher standards of cleanliness and sorting to prevent waste that cannot be recycled being burned, which, in its case, often means in open pits.

For Europe, the restrictions have so far acted as an effective ban, according to official data reviewed by Reuters which showed exports to China crashing by 96 percent in the first two months of the year.

Nations led by Malaysia, Vietnam, Turkey, India and Indonesia took on around 60 percent of the waste, but the surplus means Europe’s market for low-grade waste has collapsed.

A tonne of plastic waste for export, with up to 20 percent impurities such as paper labels, could be sold for between 25 and 40 pounds a tonne in April 2017, according to British recycling group letsrecycle.com.

Last month, by contrast, you had to pay between 40 and 60 pounds to get someone to take it away.

Despite this, Patawari Borad of the Bureau of International Recycling in Brussels said recycling within Europe had not increased dramatically. “One can only guess that this unsorted material is going for either energy or incineration.”

Waste-to-energy body CEWEP said it saw no sign extra plastic was being burned. Incinerators would notice a higher share of plastics, Stengler said, because, tonne for tonne, they produce a lot of energy.

Proponents of the idea of burying plastic include Keith Freegard, a director of Axion Polymers in England, one of Europe’s leading recyclers of waste from cars and electronics.

“All those tonnes of carbon-rich waste material that were going into the landfill are now being released into the sky. Why are we allowing this free access to ‘skyfill’?” said Freegard, who is vice chair of the British Plastic Federation’s Recycling Group.

“We should separate and store plastic in a well-controlled landfill as a future mine,” he told Reuters.

To produce a megawatt hour of electricity, he said a waste-to-energy plant would need to burn 345 kg of plastic, emitting 880 kg of carbon dioxide. By contrast, a gas-fired power plant would generate the same amount of energy by burning 132 kg of natural gas, emitting just 360 kg of carbon dioxide.

Stengler and nations that favor waste-to-energy plants say such accounting is misleading and that waste-to-energy helps replace fossil fuels, a key goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement to limit heat waves, floods, droughts and rising seas.

Swedish government estimates, for instance, show that three tonnes of municipal waste contain as much energy as a tonne of oil.

World production of plastics has increased about twentyfold since the 1960s and is expected to double again over the next 20 years, according to the European Commission.

Erik Solheim, head of U.N. Environment in Nairobi, said the global focus for plastic policies should be to cut use, especially products such as microplastics used in some cosmetics or drinking straws that he said were unnecessary.

“The best of all is to avoid the plastics we don’t need,” he said. Burying waste and mining it sounds “a difficult option”.

Of 27.1 million tonnes of plastic waste collected in Europe in 2016, 41.6 percent went to energy generation, 31.1 percent to recycling including in China, and 27.3 percent to landfills, according to Plastics Europe. It was the first time that recycling rates exceeded landfills, it said.

By contrast in the more spacious United States, 75 percent of 33 million tonnes of collected plastics was landfilled in 2014, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Fifteen percent was burnt and 9.5 percent recycled, it said.

And worldwide, a report by U.N. scientists in 2014 estimated that only about 20 percent of municipal solid waste is recycled, about 13.5 percent used to generate energy and the rest dumped.

Reporting by Alister Doyle; editing by Philippa Fletcher

The post Plastics mines? Europe struggles as pollution piles up appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2KS0IvS via Today News

[dani-qrt]

Plastics mines? Europe struggles as pollution piles up

OSLO (Reuters) – Europe has sent just over half the plastic waste it used to ship to China to other parts of Asia since Beijing’s environmental crackdown closed the world’s biggest recycling market in January. The knotty problem is what to do with the rest.

FILE PHOTO: Plastic and glass waste lies on the ground during the Tamborrada on the Day of San Sebastian, in which people dressed as Napoleonic-era soldiers and cooks perform in a twenty-four-hour drum and wine barrel playing session, interspersed with eating and drinking, in the Basque coastal town of San Sebastian, Spain, January 20, 2018. REUTERS/Vincent West/File Photo

Some of the surplus is piled up in places from building sites to ports, officials say, waiting for new markets to open up. Recycling closer to home is held back by the fact that the plastic is often dirty and unsorted, the same reasons China turned it away.

Countries led by Malaysia and Vietnam and India imported far more of Europe’s plastic waste in early 2018 than before, European Union data show, but unless they or others take more, the only options will be to either bury or burn it.

In an overcrowded continent where landfills are much more restricted than elsewhere, burning is the obvious option to help generate electricity or heat from hundreds of thousands of tonnes of surplus waste.

But more radical ideas, such as putting oil derived plastic back underground to “mine” back when recycling becomes more sophisticated, are being aired as Europe tries to work out what to do.

European waste policies “need to become much more nuanced, because some landfill might actually be quite good,” professor Ian Boyd, chief scientific adviser for the British government’s department of environment, food and rural affairs, told Reuters.

“I’m putting out a challenge to the current system,” he said, referring to the fact that waste policies in Europe either ban or limit landfill but do little to restrict what has been dubbed “skyfill” – the release of pollutants into the air.

WASTE-TO-POWER

Europe has favored the construction of power plants that burn waste for electricity or heat because land is scarce and landfills produce toxins and greenhouse gases such as methane as organic waste – from food to nappies – rots.

Waste-to-power plants produce greenhouse gas emissions too, but in most of Europe they are exempt from carbon taxes that stand at about 14 euros a tonne in an industrial market.

Boyd said buried plastic could become a valuable resource only if the penalties for emitting greenhouse gases, both in making plastics and burning them, were far higher than today.

Globally, plastics accounted for 390 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2012, ranging from production to incineration and equivalent to the emissions by a nation such as Turkey, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a think-tank that specialises in recycling.

The plastics industry takes issue with such assessments, saying they ignore the vast contribution of plastic in reducing other emissions by for example preserving food and reducing the weight of transport.

The Confederation of European Waste-to-Energy Plants (CEWEP), a group of some 400 plants using 90 million tonnes of municipal waste to provide heat and electricity for millions of people, said burying and then mining back plastic was a fantasy.

“Digging waste into landfills and then waiting until a magic technology pops up in the future is not a responsible option,” CEWEP managing director Ellen Stengler said, adding that the idea was a minority view she heard “here and there” in Europe.

Just cleaning plastic waste before burial would be hugely expensive, plastic would degrade underground and there would be risks such as fire, she said.

The latest major U.N. assessment of climate change, in 2014, also floated the idea that cities might sort and bury waste such as metals, paper and plastics to create “a material reservoir that can be mined” sometime in future.

(Graphic: EU plastics waste exports – tmsnrt.rs/2I9C4Zh)

NEW MARKETS

Plastic pollution is surging and could, according to UN Environment, exceed the weight of fish in the oceans by 2050.

China, which used to process half the world’s exports of plastic waste, has insisted on higher standards of cleanliness and sorting to prevent waste that cannot be recycled being burned, which, in its case, often means in open pits.

For Europe, the restrictions have so far acted as an effective ban, according to official data reviewed by Reuters which showed exports to China crashing by 96 percent in the first two months of the year.

Nations led by Malaysia, Vietnam, Turkey, India and Indonesia took on around 60 percent of the waste, but the surplus means Europe’s market for low-grade waste has collapsed.

A tonne of plastic waste for export, with up to 20 percent impurities such as paper labels, could be sold for between 25 and 40 pounds a tonne in April 2017, according to British recycling group letsrecycle.com.

Last month, by contrast, you had to pay between 40 and 60 pounds to get someone to take it away.

Despite this, Patawari Borad of the Bureau of International Recycling in Brussels said recycling within Europe had not increased dramatically. “One can only guess that this unsorted material is going for either energy or incineration.”

Waste-to-energy body CEWEP said it saw no sign extra plastic was being burned. Incinerators would notice a higher share of plastics, Stengler said, because, tonne for tonne, they produce a lot of energy.

Proponents of the idea of burying plastic include Keith Freegard, a director of Axion Polymers in England, one of Europe’s leading recyclers of waste from cars and electronics.

“All those tonnes of carbon-rich waste material that were going into the landfill are now being released into the sky. Why are we allowing this free access to ‘skyfill’?” said Freegard, who is vice chair of the British Plastic Federation’s Recycling Group.

“We should separate and store plastic in a well-controlled landfill as a future mine,” he told Reuters.

To produce a megawatt hour of electricity, he said a waste-to-energy plant would need to burn 345 kg of plastic, emitting 880 kg of carbon dioxide. By contrast, a gas-fired power plant would generate the same amount of energy by burning 132 kg of natural gas, emitting just 360 kg of carbon dioxide.

Stengler and nations that favor waste-to-energy plants say such accounting is misleading and that waste-to-energy helps replace fossil fuels, a key goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement to limit heat waves, floods, droughts and rising seas.

Swedish government estimates, for instance, show that three tonnes of municipal waste contain as much energy as a tonne of oil.

World production of plastics has increased about twentyfold since the 1960s and is expected to double again over the next 20 years, according to the European Commission.

Erik Solheim, head of U.N. Environment in Nairobi, said the global focus for plastic policies should be to cut use, especially products such as microplastics used in some cosmetics or drinking straws that he said were unnecessary.

“The best of all is to avoid the plastics we don’t need,” he said. Burying waste and mining it sounds “a difficult option”.

Of 27.1 million tonnes of plastic waste collected in Europe in 2016, 41.6 percent went to energy generation, 31.1 percent to recycling including in China, and 27.3 percent to landfills, according to Plastics Europe. It was the first time that recycling rates exceeded landfills, it said.

By contrast in the more spacious United States, 75 percent of 33 million tonnes of collected plastics was landfilled in 2014, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Fifteen percent was burnt and 9.5 percent recycled, it said.

And worldwide, a report by U.N. scientists in 2014 estimated that only about 20 percent of municipal solid waste is recycled, about 13.5 percent used to generate energy and the rest dumped.

Reporting by Alister Doyle; editing by Philippa Fletcher

The post Plastics mines? Europe struggles as pollution piles up appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2KS0IvS via Online News

[newestbalance]

Plastics mines? Europe struggles as pollution piles up

OSLO (Reuters) – Europe has sent just over half the plastic waste it used to ship to China to other parts of Asia since Beijing’s environmental crackdown closed the world’s biggest recycling market in January. The knotty problem is what to do with the rest.

FILE PHOTO: Plastic and glass waste lies on the ground during the Tamborrada on the Day of San Sebastian, in which people dressed as Napoleonic-era soldiers and cooks perform in a twenty-four-hour drum and wine barrel playing session, interspersed with eating and drinking, in the Basque coastal town of San Sebastian, Spain, January 20, 2018. REUTERS/Vincent West/File Photo

Some of the surplus is piled up in places from building sites to ports, officials say, waiting for new markets to open up. Recycling closer to home is held back by the fact that the plastic is often dirty and unsorted, the same reasons China turned it away.

Countries led by Malaysia and Vietnam and India imported far more of Europe’s plastic waste in early 2018 than before, European Union data show, but unless they or others take more, the only options will be to either bury or burn it.

In an overcrowded continent where landfills are much more restricted than elsewhere, burning is the obvious option to help generate electricity or heat from hundreds of thousands of tonnes of surplus waste.

But more radical ideas, such as putting oil derived plastic back underground to “mine” back when recycling becomes more sophisticated, are being aired as Europe tries to work out what to do.

European waste policies “need to become much more nuanced, because some landfill might actually be quite good,” professor Ian Boyd, chief scientific adviser for the British government’s department of environment, food and rural affairs, told Reuters.

“I’m putting out a challenge to the current system,” he said, referring to the fact that waste policies in Europe either ban or limit landfill but do little to restrict what has been dubbed “skyfill” – the release of pollutants into the air.

WASTE-TO-POWER

Europe has favored the construction of power plants that burn waste for electricity or heat because land is scarce and landfills produce toxins and greenhouse gases such as methane as organic waste – from food to nappies – rots.

Waste-to-power plants produce greenhouse gas emissions too, but in most of Europe they are exempt from carbon taxes that stand at about 14 euros a tonne in an industrial market.

Boyd said buried plastic could become a valuable resource only if the penalties for emitting greenhouse gases, both in making plastics and burning them, were far higher than today.

Globally, plastics accounted for 390 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2012, ranging from production to incineration and equivalent to the emissions by a nation such as Turkey, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a think-tank that specialises in recycling.

The plastics industry takes issue with such assessments, saying they ignore the vast contribution of plastic in reducing other emissions by for example preserving food and reducing the weight of transport.

The Confederation of European Waste-to-Energy Plants (CEWEP), a group of some 400 plants using 90 million tonnes of municipal waste to provide heat and electricity for millions of people, said burying and then mining back plastic was a fantasy.

“Digging waste into landfills and then waiting until a magic technology pops up in the future is not a responsible option,” CEWEP managing director Ellen Stengler said, adding that the idea was a minority view she heard “here and there” in Europe.

Just cleaning plastic waste before burial would be hugely expensive, plastic would degrade underground and there would be risks such as fire, she said.

The latest major U.N. assessment of climate change, in 2014, also floated the idea that cities might sort and bury waste such as metals, paper and plastics to create “a material reservoir that can be mined” sometime in future.

(Graphic: EU plastics waste exports – tmsnrt.rs/2I9C4Zh)

NEW MARKETS

Plastic pollution is surging and could, according to UN Environment, exceed the weight of fish in the oceans by 2050.

China, which used to process half the world’s exports of plastic waste, has insisted on higher standards of cleanliness and sorting to prevent waste that cannot be recycled being burned, which, in its case, often means in open pits.

For Europe, the restrictions have so far acted as an effective ban, according to official data reviewed by Reuters which showed exports to China crashing by 96 percent in the first two months of the year.

Nations led by Malaysia, Vietnam, Turkey, India and Indonesia took on around 60 percent of the waste, but the surplus means Europe’s market for low-grade waste has collapsed.

A tonne of plastic waste for export, with up to 20 percent impurities such as paper labels, could be sold for between 25 and 40 pounds a tonne in April 2017, according to British recycling group letsrecycle.com.

Last month, by contrast, you had to pay between 40 and 60 pounds to get someone to take it away.

Despite this, Patawari Borad of the Bureau of International Recycling in Brussels said recycling within Europe had not increased dramatically. “One can only guess that this unsorted material is going for either energy or incineration.”

Waste-to-energy body CEWEP said it saw no sign extra plastic was being burned. Incinerators would notice a higher share of plastics, Stengler said, because, tonne for tonne, they produce a lot of energy.

Proponents of the idea of burying plastic include Keith Freegard, a director of Axion Polymers in England, one of Europe’s leading recyclers of waste from cars and electronics.

“All those tonnes of carbon-rich waste material that were going into the landfill are now being released into the sky. Why are we allowing this free access to ‘skyfill’?” said Freegard, who is vice chair of the British Plastic Federation’s Recycling Group.

“We should separate and store plastic in a well-controlled landfill as a future mine,” he told Reuters.

To produce a megawatt hour of electricity, he said a waste-to-energy plant would need to burn 345 kg of plastic, emitting 880 kg of carbon dioxide. By contrast, a gas-fired power plant would generate the same amount of energy by burning 132 kg of natural gas, emitting just 360 kg of carbon dioxide.

Stengler and nations that favor waste-to-energy plants say such accounting is misleading and that waste-to-energy helps replace fossil fuels, a key goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement to limit heat waves, floods, droughts and rising seas.

Swedish government estimates, for instance, show that three tonnes of municipal waste contain as much energy as a tonne of oil.

World production of plastics has increased about twentyfold since the 1960s and is expected to double again over the next 20 years, according to the European Commission.

Erik Solheim, head of U.N. Environment in Nairobi, said the global focus for plastic policies should be to cut use, especially products such as microplastics used in some cosmetics or drinking straws that he said were unnecessary.

“The best of all is to avoid the plastics we don’t need,” he said. Burying waste and mining it sounds “a difficult option”.

Of 27.1 million tonnes of plastic waste collected in Europe in 2016, 41.6 percent went to energy generation, 31.1 percent to recycling including in China, and 27.3 percent to landfills, according to Plastics Europe. It was the first time that recycling rates exceeded landfills, it said.

By contrast in the more spacious United States, 75 percent of 33 million tonnes of collected plastics was landfilled in 2014, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Fifteen percent was burnt and 9.5 percent recycled, it said.

And worldwide, a report by U.N. scientists in 2014 estimated that only about 20 percent of municipal solid waste is recycled, about 13.5 percent used to generate energy and the rest dumped.

Reporting by Alister Doyle; editing by Philippa Fletcher

The post Plastics mines? Europe struggles as pollution piles up appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2KS0IvS via Everyday News