We have that. They’re called “plants.” If we just stop cutting down all the trees and poisoning the seas, plants will capture the carbon in the air and return it to the ground when they die. Or it will become part of the natural food chain.
So don’t worry, either we will stop destroying all of the ecosystems, or the plants can fix the planet after we’re all gone.
I’ve always wondered how big an impact burying all grass clippings would have… I assume very little since I’ve never heard it mentioned before.
You would have to bury them really deep to prevent them from being converted fully back to CO2, or worse methane, by other organisms.
Well it’s going to happen one way or the other. The only question is whether humans will be there for it.
Cutting the trees down is fine (well the ones we plant for the purpose I mean) - turn them into books and then store the books. As an added benefit you get books!
Then conservatives get elected, burn all the books and we are back to where we started
I’m not a scientist by any stretch, but would disposing of plastics with these mushrooms in a terrarium of sorts help? They would have to be big and numerous.
The mushrooms would break down the plastics into CO2 and water and the plants would absorb the CO2 and water. As the plastics start to go away, we could add more of our excess plastic to keep the cycle going.
If this works, it also keeps the plastic eating mushrooms contained and away from all the essential plastics we have today.
As with everything that sounds too good to be true… what’s the catch?
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
This article (https://www.treehugger.com/mushroom-that-eats-plastic-5121023) goes into more detail. There are at least three species. It’s from 2022, so there’s probably something more recent…
From July last year (https://www.shroomer.com/mycoremediation-plastic-eating-mushrooms/)
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.
Man, Vincent and Jules were some really fun guys.
