When a microbe was found munching on a plastic bottle in a rubbish dump, it promised a recycling revolution. Now scientists are attempting to turbocharge those powers in a bid to solve our waste crisis. But will it work?
Who knows what its consequences are? How about a simpler approach, like reducing plastic use maybe instead of some pie in the sky project?
We do probably want both. Even if we end plastic production completely tomorrow, we need to work out a way to clean up all the plastic we’ve already dumped all over the world
yeah but one of them we can do right now with minimum consequences and the other is provocative with no clear path to viability and no real understanding of the consequences.
We should prob just leave any existing plastic as plastic wherever it lay instead of turning it into CO2. Burying it is a better idea than emitting it.
I agree. We want both. Its like water consumption needs which keep increasing. We want to reduce demand and increase leakage reduction rather than take more water out of the environment. We’re making a mess of this planet because our lives are based on the assumption of eternal growth.
Mfw cows are producing 300 times as much methane as there is plastic being produced in total: 😐
Check the actual numbers before getting so concerned.
YFW you don’t even check the numbers you are chastising me for not checking and are wildly incorrect 🤡:
https://www.statista.com/topics/5401/global-plastic-waste/#topicOverview
400 million metric tons of plastic per year produced
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1261318/cattle-methane-emissions-worldwide/
75 million metric tons of methan from cow farts per year
I agree. However, the most important reason to reduce plastics is because of the health effects of microplastics. Waste is probably the second priority in my mind.
The most ideal situation is if we archieve 100% recycling.
In reality no thing can disappear, both matter and energy just change form. We only need to look at nature for proof that 100% reusing matter and energy is feasible. Even our “waste” wasn’t wasted.
These microbes are yet another key in the puzzle to obtain the next breakthrough. Once we master industrial chains with full conservation of matter and energy the cost of creating things will become negligible.
Making a nuclear bomb is much easier than keeping people from using it once it’s made.
Natural science is difficult, but getting people to do the right thing is almost impossible.
Let’s be real: humanity will never do anything that even slightly inconveniences us. We need to solve our problems with “power”: microplastic-eating bacteria, blocking the sun, creating fresh water from salt water, terraforming another planet, anything but convincing the crowds to stop their shit.
I’ve been hearing about plastic eating bacteria for literal decades now. As far as I am concerned this is another Big Oil psyop to distract people from finally banning single use plastics.
Will they attempt to eat us as well since we now have plastics within our body?
This bacteria eats only one type of plastic (PET), and that’s a minority of the plastic we produce
Related, half of the plastic pollution in the oceans is fishing nets; want less plastic in the environment, stopping fishing would be a better first step (and is required for many other reasons anyway)
PET is one of the most worrying plastics because it’s soft and sheds microplastic easily.
Also, microorganisms are fairly easy to adapt to other food sources because of how rapidly they evolve. Coupled with genetic modification I don’t think it’s impossible for this to be adapted to all forms of soft plastic.
And while this is good. It is also going to cause problems when bacteria starts eating plastic we don’t want it too.
PET is also probably the most already-recycled and recyclable plastic we use. While it is objectively a good thing we now have a new way to recycle something, it’s not going to have the huge impact that the phrase “change the world” implies.
News headlines over-representing scientific advancement as a way of boosting morale sets people up for disappointment and complacency.
There are very different types of plastics in this world that each have their own formulas, dangers, benefits and recyclability. One things you can do for both the world and your health is to learn some of the high-level differences.
If you can find a way to reduce use of 3 PVC, 6 PS and 7 Other / unmarked plastics in your lives, please do so.
Tangent: only 2 and 5 should be used for food/medical if you are also heating it, especially acidic things. If you are in a situation where you can’t avoid that, low heat, less time and you will minimise or likely entirely avoid problems.
It will immediately start eating all the plastic that we are still using causing untold damage. Believe me. When I mentioned this before some techbro smuggly suggested that the scientists would just invent some sort of plastic that they couldn’t eat. Thus setting is back to where we started.
The scientists undoubtedly know this, unfortunately I, like you, am too lazy to read what they have to say about this problem. It is conceivable that the bacteria would only flourish in certain environments and plastic would become slightly similar to wood - decomposes quite slowly if you keep it reasonably dry and clean, decomposes very fast when there are water and air and dirt where enough bacteria lives present.
