It’s true that lava is hot enough to burn up some of our trash. When Kilauea erupted on the Big island of Hawaii in 2018, the lava flows were hotter than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 Celsius). That’s hotter than the surface of the planet Venus, and hot enough to melt many rocks. It’s also as hot as waste incinerators, which usually burn garbage at 1,800 to 2,200 F (1,000-1,200 C).
But not all lavas are the same temperature. The eruptions in Hawaii produce a type of lava called basalt. Basalt is much hotter and more fluid than the lavas that erupt at other volcanoes, like the thicker dacite lava that erupts at Mount St. Helens in Washington state. For example, the 2004-2008 eruption at Mount St. Helens produced a lava dome with surface temperatures less than about 1,300 F (704 C).
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Beyond temperature, there are other good reasons not to burn our trash in volcanoes. First, although lava at 2,000 degrees F can melt many materials in our trash – including food scraps, paper, plastics, glass and some metals – it’s not hot enough to melt many other common materials, including steel, nickel and iron.
Read more: The Conversation
