Step 1. Invent microplastics.
Step 2. Have people ingest microplastics into their bodies.
Step 3. Evolve plastic-eating mushrooms.
Step 4. ???
Step 5. The Last of Us IRL
Those two dudes in the fenced off city led pretty great lives in The Last of Us. Everyone else suffered terribly though.
I’ve seen this every year for a decade still not a thing
Plastic is also such an unspecific term. In regards to biodegradability there is no reason why PE, PP, PVC, PLA, PS and all the others should behave similiarly. Aside from some form of polymerization they are entirely different chemicals.
It would actually be scary to me if an organism evolves to rapidly eat all plastic. Imagine plastic rust… ugh, its just a terrifying idea. You think mantianing a car is difficult now, wait until you have to check the integrity of any “plastic” component
Wood didn’t rot in the carboniferous era. It used to build up in dense layers that became our modern coal veins.
At some point microorganisms evolved to exploit that vast resource. Now coal can no longer generate naturally and we have to keep wood structures dry or painted lest they be reclaimed by the Eafth.
I don’t know if there’s any reason it couldn’t happen to plastics. We’ve created the niche already, how long until something exploits it?
Well there is a simple remedy, and it is the same like for rust. Keep it dry. All microbial live needs water just as much as larger liveforms. If it is dry it can’t spoil, even if there is microorganisms on it. They might be alive, but they’ll be in stasis without sufficent accessible water. accessibility is also important here. E.g. salty water or water with high amounts of sugar are not useful to most microorganisms.
and sensationalist journalism of preliminary research is faster than light
The trick is that the mushroom would still rather eat literally anything else. So you’d have to gather a pile of only that specific plastic to break down, and now you have the initial problems of why we don’t recycle in the first place: 💰
As with everything that sounds too good to be true… what’s the catch?
I see this every couple years (I think it’s the same). The fungus can only degrade very few plastic types, like Styrofoam.
So are we disappointed it’s not the perfect solution, so we don’t bother?
Sounds like we’re on the right track and someone can find a way to make money with this, or decide to dedicate their resources to it for society’s benefit.
We don’t bother because those few kinds of plastics aren’t the ones that are causing most of the polution
If something costs millions and only works in a limited space, at specific conditions, and recycles 0.2% of all plastics, why would anyone want to invest in it?
We already have the perfect solution. Stop producing plastic. But we sure as hell are not bothering with that either.
Fantastic. Styrofoam is not recyclable like Polypropylene or even the Polyethylenes. Styrofoam ends up in landfills. I want it in mushrooms.
It’s not the magic bullet but it’s a fucking howitzer. Yas kween.
Styrofoam is technically recyclable, it’s just that there are very few facilities that handle it.
From other times something like this came up:
- The rate of conversion is too low
- It will only eat plastic if other carbon sources aren’t available
Probably more, this is from the top of my head. Also, this will still cause the plastic to eventually be converted into CO2 which is released in the atmosphere.
Having it actually break down into CO2, water and a few other things would be way better than it permanently contaminating our food, water and ecosystems.
I agree, and it will probably break down anyway giving enough time. But it would be even better to take it out of the environment completely. The best would be not to even produce it for trivial stuff, so it doesn’t get to pollute the environment.
You get a similar result by burning it for electricity and that removes coal/gas from the grid.
Yes. That’d be way better than having it kill animals and contaminate our food and water to the point where you basically cant avoid it. We literally want plastic to biodegrade. Just as long as it biodegrades after we are done using it. Which would be a wonderful problem to have compared to the current state of things.
Even if we don’t eat it, converting the plastics to something biodegradable would be a huge win.
It is not a matter of conversion. most plastics can be recycled or burnt cleanly. It is a matter of collection, sorting and operationg the recycling facilities at an economic rate. The last thing can be done easily. Just introducing a high enough tax on non recycled plastics would do the trick.
As always in capitalism plastic waste is not an issue that lacks technological means. What lacks is the economic and political will to deal with it.
Well, everytime I see an article saying “we’ve found a [mushroom | bacteria | whatever] that eats plastic, yay!”, I always think: well, yeah, that’s great, but what about all the plastic we don’t want eaten just yet?
The amount of micro-plastics in everyone’s blood - even in tiny remote villages that have had next to no contact with the outside world - might make human beings look like an attractive meal to them? Surely nothing bad could happen if instead of micro-plastics we all have fungus in our blood?
Human beings already look like an attractive meal to all kinds of bacteria and virus
There are hundreds of different plastics, each chemically different and created for different conditions. At least with heavy metal detoxification, fungi also tend to bioconcentrate what they eat. You can’t eat them growing off a hemlock tree without being poisoned by hemlock. Something will eat these and probably get a belly full of petroleum byproducts or whatever it metabolises that into.
That’s nice and all but these are fungi release CO2 into the atmosphere just like burning it would. It’s a bit counter-intuitive but burning it with carbon capture is less CO2 emitting.
Filtering out particles is obvious requirement and easier than filtering CO2. This is all a worse solution than to simply use less plastic. Taxing plastic out of existence is the real solution.
Preach.
Everyone wants a silver bullet to the problem. The silver bullet begins and ends with a corporate pocketbook.
But the plastic already is captured carbon. Burning it and then capturing it again makes no sense at all.
If you want to avoid the micro plastic, store it better, that’s still much cheaper.
Taxing wasteful uses and protecting life saving uses (sanitization, hospitals, etc). Is the only solution. Treat every other approach as distractions by people who want to profit from the way things are.
Plastic is one of the greatest inventions of all time. But just like nuclear energy, it’s also the most deadly to us if we are stupid.
Don’t even ask. Just start releasing that shit.
Among a hundred other end of days scenarios.
Know what the difference between plastic and oil? (not just crude or motor, but cooking, lubricating, buttering?)
Let’s release a designer consumer that would require very little mutation to end humanity. Do it already.
Depending on your outlook this might just make the notion more enticing.
