Burning trash?

I've gotten pretty interested in the RMH concept. I remember Paul talking about heating for an entire winter just on junk mail. This got me thinking, much plastic and other oil based stuff burns really well. The main concern with burning them is the smoke they release into the atmosphere. But if you're burning extremely efficiently at a very high temperature in a RMH, would they essentially burn "clean?"

I think there's a TON of potential thermal energy stored in hydrocarbons, I make my own campfire starters with petroleum jelly or wax and that adds a crazy amount of burn time and heat to them. Could we harness that for heating as well?

As long as we stay away from chlorinated plastics and are certain that the combustion is clean and complete, this is a low-risk activity. However, there is a considerably chunk of the general population, and (probably more importantly) official departments of Sad Making, that would be aghast that anyone would contemplate doing this. So I tend to talk about it in hypothetical terms most of the time.

Compared to what passes for recycling in most places nowadays, which usually looks like either a short trip to landfill or bulk cargo carriers going to the global South where it gets burned in piles or washed into the ocean, this seems like one of the least bad options. It also means you don't have to rinse out the last bit of yogurt, bacon juice, or Sriracha sauce.

How can you tell if it's chlorinated plastic, and what's the risk with that?

M Pearson wrote:How can you tell if it's chlorinated plastic, and what's the risk with that?

Chlorinated plastics like PVC / CVPC have incredibly useful physical properties.

However, when they are burned they release a plume of incredibly persistent, carcinogenic, fat soluble chemicals. Dioxins and furans. These are truly evil compounds.

There is no way to burn these cleanly outside of a massively hot, controlled and regulated industrial facility. And even these struggle.

Personally I would not burn plastics unless it was an extreme emergency. There are too many unknowns, and too much that can go wrong. My 2c.

Burning plastic is nasty. I remember living next to a neighbor who burned plastic in her woodstove (yeah, not a RMH) and it was awful. Made my eyes burn inside my home. I'm pretty sure it was toxic as heck. Even with a RMH, I can't help but wonder how much pollution would spill out.

Burning trash is pretty common out here. We don't cause its easier to just toss it in the gas station trash can for us. We don't make much. But Id imagine burning it in a RMH would be better then the just pile it in a pit and burn it method that kills my throat when the neighbor burns trash.
Would it damage the RMH at all to burn plastics in it?
Weird build up or something?
Is the foot print better to burn it at home and be responsible for our trash?
Or is that misguided and its better to take care of it in a land fill?
I imagine proper recycling is better but that doesn't exist here sadly.