[HN Gopher] Mushrooms Can Eat Plastic, Petroleum and CO2 (2018)
___________________________________________________________________
Mushrooms Can Eat Plastic, Petroleum and CO2 (2018)
Author : karimford
Score : 398 points
Date : 2020-12-03 08:03 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (returntonow.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (returntonow.net)
| 1_over_n wrote:
| mushrooms are amazing
| toxicFork wrote:
| (2018)
| rmason wrote:
| The unanswered question is what will you do with the mushrooms
| after they've munched on petroleum or plastic? My guess is that
| you're not going to want them on your pizza cause they might just
| be toxic. Will we only be replacing one kind of waste with
| another?
|
| For plastics the answer is out there, biodegradable plastic made
| from corn. It has to overcome two problems:
|
| 1. It's slightly more expensive
|
| 2. If we want it to degrade rapidly we need to make an investment
| in plants to do it. Otherwise you're looking at 100 years versus
| 300+ years for regular plastic.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > The unanswered question is what will you do with the
| mushrooms after they've munched on petroleum or plastic? My
| guess is that you're not going to want them on your pizza cause
| they might just be toxic.
|
| Believe me or not, I ate that yeast grown on petroleum paraffin
| once.
|
| At the time of extreme food scarcity in Russia, we had people
| eating animal feed produced from yeast grown on paraffin. It's
| called paprin in Russian.
|
| So, knowing that most of petroleum hydrocarbons are toxic if
| ingested, the result may be more amendable than the source
| product.
| eru wrote:
| As an even simpler example, hydrocarbons can be burned to
| water and C2O. You can feed those to plants just like
| anything else.
|
| (But going that route would waste a lot of energy.)
| hated wrote:
| Heh.
|
| The product disrupted hormonal and water balance, causing
| edema to form throughout the body of the animals, reported by
| the Russian business consultancy, which brought studies from
| Bashkiria State University.
|
| "Meat obtained from animals fed with Paprin contained an
| accumulation of abnormal amino acids that were incorporated
| into the membranes of nerve cells, thus disrupting the
| process of conducting a normal nerve impulse," said Raisa
| Bashirova, principal investigator at Bashkiria State
| University, who added that it was even harmful to humans to
| paintings with Paprin:
|
| "Factory staff and local citizens were presenting diseases
| such as canker sores and bronchial asthma. " In the 1990s,
| almost the entire production of bioprotein in Russia was
| stopped. Gaprin, although it had proved to be safe and
| efficient, could not compete with rather cheap imported
| protein feedstuffs, which began to land on the local market
| in large quantities. Now, several decades later, bioprotein
| production in Russia seems to be getting a second chance.
|
| From: http://benisonmedia.com/bioprotein-may-bring-self-
| sufficienc...
| rv-de wrote:
| Mushrooms and mycelia can be used as a resource to fabricate
| textiles, packaging, bricks etc.
|
| Also, if the mushrooms grow only on what they can break down
| it's totally safe to eat them. It has to be a controlled
| process. Not just trying to grow mushrooms on a heap of trash
| you'd otherwise just burn.
|
| Having said that - even mushrooms won't liberate us from using
| resources more responsibly.
| lee wrote:
| "The mushrooms' enzymes re-manufactured the hydrocarbons into
| carbohydrates, fungal sugars,"
|
| I wonder if the process would be similar for plastics. If so,
| it could then be used as feed. I don't see any information, but
| the fungus grown from plastic might not be toxic.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| when we move to renewables, the production of oil will go down,
| and plastics as a byproduct will decrease in supply increasing
| its price, so I'm predicting point 1 to happen in time.
| ttsda wrote:
| If those mushrooms truly degraded the petroleum or plastic into
| something harmless, they can be simply turned into compost.
| mcv wrote:
| Exactly. There's a big difference between merely absorbing
| plastic and petroleum, and metabolising it. The former might
| be nice if you want to collect microplastics or clean up oil
| spills or something, but the latter would actually get rid of
| the plastic and the oil and turn it into something more
| ecologically useful.
| smarx007 wrote:
| I am not sure if you explored the links in the article but
| https://aem.asm.org/content/77/17/6076.full#aff-1 states that
| plastic is not "munched" (absorbed/attached) but biodegraded
| (broken down/dissolved) by the fungi. Also, the kind of fungi
| used is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pestalotiopsis and that's
| not a kind you'd ever have in your pizza, I guess.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| I'm very much not an expert on this, but I believe there's an
| additional problem with plastic made from corn:
|
| 3. It requires huge land areas to grow enough corn to make
| enough plastic for the whole world's population, which requires
| clearing huge expanses of existing forests and other natural
| areas.
| oblio wrote:
| I think for plastics the right answer is standardization. I
| know that's not people want to hear, but I don't think there is
| any way around it.
|
| 1. Ban all single use plastics that can be replaced somewhat
| economically with biodegradable materials (with a small price
| increase, maybe 2-5-10%).
|
| 2. Standardize plastic container compositions, shapes and sizes
| in a huge ISO catalog. _EVERY_ product a company makes /uses
| has to be from this catalog. Companies can add another category
| one by going through the standardization process. Marketing can
| be done by applying biodegradable materials to the exterior.
|
| Basically have a few material compositions:
|
| - high strength/heavy
|
| - medium strength/medium weight
|
| - reduced strength/light
|
| Have a standardized set of sizes:
|
| - 100ml (and US equivalent)
|
| - 250ml
|
| - 330ml
|
| - 500ml
|
| ...
|
| Plus a standardized set of shapes for each size.
|
| At the end of the day you'd get:
|
| 3 x number of sizes (probably 40-50 sizes?) x number of shapes
| (probably 10-15 shapes per size?) = 1200 - 2250 categories. And
| I'm being generous here, I think we should probably keep this
| total number under 500, ideally under 100, but I don't think
| such a low number is feasible.
|
| Then charge a deposit for each plastic container and upon
| container return give this deposit back.
|
| Same thing for glass, actually.
|
| This would make plastic containers reusable, even across
| brands, and would probably reduce our plastic waste by orders
| of magnitude.
|
| Heck, the same thing could probably be done for plastic bags.
|
| However, this plan would also reduce plastic consumption (and
| production, so $$$) by orders of magnitude, so I don't expect
| it to ever pass a solid lobbying plan.
| eru wrote:
| What's the problem you are trying to solve here?
|
| In general for the kinds of problems that intersect with
| economics, taxes are more efficient than outright bans.
| oblio wrote:
| A)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
|
| B) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics
|
| Plastic containers of all types should be reusable and
| there should also be incentives for reusing them. We don't
| make a screw, use it to build something and then discard it
| once we disassemble the thing.
|
| For the last point, I'd definitely want to see examples
| where taxes are more efficient than bans. Everything I've
| seen and read (and I like to read a lot), points the other
| way around.
|
| So I'd definitely want to read some studies that says that
| tax increases are better than bans.
|
| As a single counterpoint, we've been taxing cigarettes a
| ton for several decades. Smoking rates have gone down, but
| only extremely slowly. It took decades. So if you consider
| partially solving an issue after several decades
| "efficient", then yeah, taxes are efficient.
| toopok4k3 wrote:
| Sounds like proper sewage processing and landfills would
| be better and faster solutions to A and B.
|
| Then we can also talk about Asia being the primary source
| of the trash in oceans...
| oblio wrote:
| 1. People throw trash everywhere. You'll see trash on
| Mount Everest, you'll see it in a random forest in
| Eastern Europe.
|
| 2. Landfills are not enough. Rich countries just "export"
| their trash for storage in poor countries.
|
| We're just making too much trash, there's no "proper" or
| "better". Reduce, reuse, recyle. Recycle is mostly a lie.
|
| We need reduce and reuse.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| In Poland it became harder to export trash to other
| countries, so instead landfill owners started burning all
| their trash to make space for new. Commentators refer to
| it jokingly as "storing trash in the cloud".
| alexisread wrote:
| This is great, though I wonder what we would do about
| laminates. For example, a can of cola has a plastic lining to
| protect the aluminium from degrading, tetrapak containers are
| laminates to prevent leakage, counter tops and flatpak
| furniture tends to be plastic-wrapped chipboard.
|
| A lot of these laminates can be replaced, but some are rather
| harder to. Progressive taxation based on recyclability is an
| easy win which incentivizes correct packaging (and transport
| packaging as well) and would be an easier sell. Additional,
| homogeneous packaging would be taxed less.
|
| The branding that goes on the packaging is still open to
| design, so there's room for differentiation there - a
| necessary component for adoption.
|
| Lastly, standardizing recyclability across the
| state/county/country would be useful as then tourists etc.
| can also understand a simple recycling message.
| chongli wrote:
| Soft drinks can go back to glass bottles and returns with
| deposits. This works extremely well with beer, wine, and
| liquor bottles.
| astura wrote:
| Where do wine and liquor bottles have a bottle deposit?
| Around here is only soda and beer.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I wish we did this more.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Or perhaps encourage "container for life" storage with refill
| machines. e.g. purchase a long-lasting detergent container,
| and refill it at a detergent dispensing machine.
|
| Otherwise you'd need to provide an easy way or sorting
| returned containers (by type) so they go back into
| circulation. Maybe QR-codes on bottles and "smart bins" that
| pay you for disposing of them?
| cobbzilla wrote:
| I really like the idea of standardization. Even if there are
| 500 standards, that's much better than an unbounded number.
|
| Regulation would certainly force the issue, but one way or
| another the consumer packaged goods industry (and other
| industries) need to get their heads around focusing
| competition around everything BUT packaging.
|
| When packaging has become standard, no one competes there any
| more. If everyone has the mindset that this is expected and
| OK, just focus competitive efforts elsewhere -- product
| quality, branding, better ingredients/parts, lower price,
| whatever. Your packaging design/pollution budget is now free
| for other opportunities.
|
| There is some advantage in selecting the right standard size,
| but you either know what your industry is doing or you pay a
| consultant to tell you which one to try next.
|
| What you __don 't do __is spend lots more money designing
| your own custom packaging that may or may not help sales and
| will never be recycled.
|
| And then there is the entire packaging design industry, not a
| small one, who will not like this at all. Anyone want to play
| devil's advocate and guess what they might say?
| oblio wrote:
| > When packaging has become standard, no one competes there
| any more. If everyone has the mindset that this is expected
| and OK, just focus competitive efforts elsewhere -- product
| quality, branding, better ingredients/parts, lower price,
| whatever. Your packaging design/pollution budget is now
| free for other opportunities.
|
| They can still brand the packaging. Just use biodegradable,
| safe glues, paper, paint, etc. to put on top of the actual
| bottle. Yes, the bottles will be a bit generic, but there's
| a lot you can do with a bit of creativity.
|
| What they're doing is like developers rewriting the Python
| library 1 billion times because they all want to be special
| snowflakes. Though rewriting does happen, the vast majority
| of developers build on top of the standard library, not
| besides it.
|
| > And then there is the entire packaging design industry,
| not a small one, who will not like this at all. Anyone want
| to play devil's advocate and guess what they might say?
|
| When a few benefit and many lose, that's called corruption.
| Any proposal will have some people against it, you can't
| please everyone all the time.
| contingencies wrote:
| Point A: Biostarch PLA wastes huge amounts of energy to
| convert biodegradeable starch in to nominally biodegradeable
| PLA. It would be better for everyone to (1) move to non
| single use plastics; or (2) recycle plastic (very problematic
| and rarely economical); instead of (3) wasting the energy and
| CO2 to fabricate biostarch PLA just for the option of
| throwing it away carelessly.
|
| Point B: As I have spent months of time on thermoforming
| research (just visited 9 machine manufacturers last week and
| am currently buying a line to produce permanent parts) I will
| try to raise a few points as to why this plan might also be
| difficult technically. Many parts are custom produced for
| specific use cases. Moulds degrade over time and may not
| produce the same caliber of part early, middle and late run.
| Some people require different polymers for valid engineering
| reasons (optical, thermal or structural properties,
| joining/printing/other post-process compatibility, etc.) Say
| you have a mould and you use virgin material versus some
| other material. Polymer selection affects all properties.
| Thickness affects thermal characteristics and structural
| properties. Equipment and ambient environment state including
| thermals, air particulates and humidity, mould state, die
| state, air pressure, configured cycle time, coolant circuit
| state, type and care of handling after forming. However, the
| kicker is food safety (a legal requirement in most markets) -
| rarely guaranteed outside of purely virgin material (there
| are exceptions: I believe there is a UK recycler that does
| it) and food safe material is _the_ dominant single use
| plastics market.
| oblio wrote:
| I know my plan doesn't cover everything and there are a lot
| of exceptions.
|
| But if we don't want to destroy the planet, we have to do
| something like it. Everyone thinks they're special. Why
| does Coca Cola have a different bottle shape compared to
| Pepsi or to Fanta? That makes no sense.
|
| We should turn the approach on its head with what is a
| dangerous material: you should have to prove that what
| you're doing deserves being made. Have you thought about
| the consequences of your actions when this product is mass
| produced, 30 years from now? I doubt many have.
|
| The standard catalog could have more axes, such as
| different material types, mine was just an example.
|
| Get 10 world famous materials engineers and have them come
| out with a catalog that covers the most widespread uses.
|
| This doesn't need to be a 100% solution, it needs to cover,
| say, 95%. The rest of the 5% could be treated as exceptions
| and you'd have to get a license. Yes, some creativity would
| be lost. But you could for example, exempt some smaller
| producers (if your factory makes fewer than 10k units per
| year, in total, no need for approval, just show us the
| proof that you're only going to produce that much).
|
| But again, plastics have proven to be dangerous materials,
| in an insidious way. They're not explosives but they do a
| lot of damage.
| sul_tasto wrote:
| I think you're spot on. The simplicity of your solution
| suggests, though, that the root of problem isn't knowing
| what to do.
| oblio wrote:
| Well, my last paragraph was:
|
| > However, this plan would also reduce plastic
| consumption (and production, so $$$) by orders of
| magnitude, so I don't expect it to ever pass a solid
| lobbying plan.
|
| That's why we're being buried in trash, because people
| are making money from that trash.
| contingencies wrote:
| Regulation can help. If we regulate though, perhaps we
| should _ban the CPG industry as it stands_. Look for
| example at how Australia has forced cigarettes to be sold
| in blank packages. Remove the marketing element from
| packaging, and have the supply chain utilize larger,
| shared, reuseable storage containers for larger
| quantities of currently individually packaged items.
| Force the collection of goods in customer-owned reusable
| packages. Many places already do it at the level of
| banning or charging for plastic bags and banning low
| grade /thin/single use plastic bags. We should apply the
| same thinking to single use packaging in general and
| request that people BYO packaging for all bulk items.
|
| ie. Don't just remove custom plastics, or move to the
| lesser option of recycling, rather remove the vast
| majority of single use plastics in the consumer supply
| chain and simultaneously reduce the effect of retail
| packaging advertising on consumer behavior to force a
| real change.
|
| PS. I don't think a courageous change on this level is
| ever likely to occur in the west (well, perhaps Europe?).
| I think it is far more likely to occur in China.
| peterlk wrote:
| I have some friends who have recently started a business
| based on this model. They don't have a site up yet, but are
| doing some small scale tests in Colorado. I'm happy to direct
| anyone who is interested toward them.
| 495636483 wrote:
| Also standardize the composition and coloring. That's the
| major problem with recycling. I say transparent and one
| opaque variant for photoprotection.
| oblio wrote:
| I have included composition in my description ;-)
|
| And coloring, well, a part of it would be composition and
| the rest should IMO temporary marketing coloring on top of
| the base composition (i.e. paint the bottle with something
| biodegradable).
|
| Color should not be part of the standard as it would make
| the "support matrix" unsustainable and companies should not
| be allowed to "pass the buck" back to us consumers.
| detritus wrote:
| I was discussing this with a friend the other night.
|
| I can envisage a future where plastic packaging is all
| entirely standardised and left as virgin as possible for
| recycling - no dyes, no printed elements or thin film
| decoration.
|
| Instead, basic (/complex, if you like) low to medium
| resolution laser-etched graphics and descriptions, and any
| fancy-ass graphical marketing/advertising visible through
| whatever spectacles/phone AR is popular.
| sriku wrote:
| This isn't theoretical any more. My state (tamil nadu/india)
| has banned plastic bags and cups .. generally what we might
| think of as single use. You have to take your own bags or (in
| some shops) buy reusable+degradable cloth bags. There are
| also grocery shops like "eco indian" to which you take your
| own containers, fill them up, weigh and pay. That's how we
| used to do it when I was a kid, but it all went plastic after
| that. Glad to see it coming back. Covid threw another curve
| ball but the ban hasn't changed. Next up should be food
| packaging.
| r00fus wrote:
| Damn this sounds so advanced coming from the USA. COVID
| massively disrupted reusable bag effort here in CA, USA.
| _iyig wrote:
| Last I checked (circa 2017), bioplastics like PLA had poor heat
| resistance. This made them unsuitable for certain applications
| like bushings or gasket seals. IIRC "heat resistant" varieties
| of PLA are rated up to 120 Celsius, which is good for many
| applications but not all e.g. automotive seals, washers, and
| bearings.
|
| Footnote: I was going to compare the properties of heat-
| resistant PLA to those of PTFE aka Teflon, since the latter is
| commonly used in heat-resistant applications, but after some
| Googling I've learned PTFE is not petroleum-based.
| [deleted]
| gameswithgo wrote:
| in the evolutionary tree, humans descend from mushrooms. We are
| more related to them than plants.
| known wrote:
| May be this is the reason I am allergic to Mushrooms;
| LeCow wrote:
| I can eat plastic, petroleum, CO2 and mushrooms.
| aritmo wrote:
| Bad title. It's not mushrooms but "some fungi". They cannot "eat"
| but can "decompose".
|
| "eat" and "digest" are functions relating to animals.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| "Decompose" would imply they also break down toxic chemicals,
| which would be even better - do they actually do that?
| giantg2 wrote:
| They do decompose hydrocarbons into carbohydrates, which they
| then "eat"(absorb).
| giantg2 wrote:
| Decompose wouldn't, by itself, be a completely a accurate word
| either since fungi does consume some of the decomposed matter.
| I think digest can be appropriate since they are breaking down
| the food for consumption. I believe the enzymes they use are
| called digestive enzymes, even though they excrete them and
| reabsorb it (some microorganisms do this too as they are
| animals and lack a true digestive tract).
| thrawn0r wrote:
| What bugs me most is the use of long-living plastics in fast
| moving consumer goods. I have to buy 12g of plastics to get 80g
| of Prosciutto. From packaging to EOL its lifespan is max. 60
| days, most of the time more like 20 days I suspect. Why does it
| need to be in a container that degrades in 300+ years?
| bjarneh wrote:
| I guess the only reason this happens is due to price, but we
| could force a "plastic tax" on those types of products unless
| they came in something that was biodegradable.
|
| Seems like a solvable problem, but only if we make it harder to
| pollute; otherwise price will dictate.
| laci37 wrote:
| Hungary has plastic tax, still it's every where. In the case
| of prosciutto I guess it's because sliced up meat needs to be
| protected from drying out even if it is preserved. You can't
| prevent this with paper, so the shelf life would be short. So
| you either need a deli counter in the shop, or have customers
| buy the meat in bulk.
| devilbunny wrote:
| Plastic just lets you see it. Wax paper works perfectly
| well for protecting things from desiccation.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Does it spoil faster with wax paper since it is open to
| the outside air and oxygen and microbes that are about?
| undersuit wrote:
| You enclose the product in the wax paper and seal it
| closed with the slightest amount of heat.
| varispeed wrote:
| Tax will not make it go away, only make it more expensive to
| people on a budget. You gotta buy food and at some point you
| don't care how it is packaged as you must eat.
| mikem170 wrote:
| But is it fair to pass the externalities onto someone else
| - you get your prosciutto and someone else gets the mess?
| That's doesn't seem right to me.
|
| As opposed to an arbitrary tax discourage something I would
| whole-heartedly support that the cost of all products
| includes the cost of all externalities.
|
| Maybe people on a budget should wait in the deli line for
| their prosciutto, or buy something cheaper.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| because it makes a crinkle sound that makes you want to buy
| more
| agentultra wrote:
| For me it's the sheer volume of the stuff and how casual people
| are about buying it. My kids have more toys than they know what
| to do with and they're all plastic. Every week I buy produce
| wrapped in plastic. All of our dental care products: plastic.
| My tools: have plastic in them!
|
| That lego set my kid builds for Xmas? It'll be here for
| thousands of years and Lego is manufacturing billions of bricks
| each year.
|
| Fungi are great and all but we have a destructive behavior we
| need to fix. We can't rely on a quick fix or a miracle cure.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I loved lego as a kid and I now have an embarrassingly large
| pile of bricks collecting dust at my parents' house. I don't
| quite know what to do with them. in theory, they're worth a
| decent chunk of change. looking at used sets on ebay, I'd
| estimate it's somewhere in the four figure range easily.
| trouble is they're all disassembled and jumbled together. I
| can't even find someone who would take a bag of random bricks
| for free, let alone the whole pile.
| detaro wrote:
| > _I can 't even find someone who would take a bag of
| random bricks for free, let alone the whole pile._
|
| People sell Lego by the kilo on ebay etc all the time.
| SteveGerencser wrote:
| Take them all to a local children's hospital and drop them
| off if they embarrass you. Sell them on eBay by the
| kilo/pound if they embarrass you but you want the money in
| exchange for them.
| jonfw wrote:
| I got rid of my childhood legos when I was like 15 in a
| garage sale. The lego bucket was completely disorganized
| and it was easily the hottest commodity we had there- there
| was a woman who showed up 5 minutes early to buy it and the
| next 6 hours of garage sale we had people showing up a few
| times an hour asking about it from the ad.
|
| Throw that up on Facebook marketplace or something and
| people will pay hundreds for it
| leetcrew wrote:
| good to know, I've just been trying and failing to give
| them away to friends with young children.
|
| I probably ought to just donate them like the sibling
| posters suggest. it's not like I get any use out of them
| now, but psychologically it's kinda hard to think about
| just giving away something that was so important to me as
| a kid to someone I don't know and might not even meet.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| If there were carbon taxes, plastic taxes, or more generally if
| the externalities were priced in this would be less of an
| issue. Plastic would still be used where it is economical, or
| where it is really needed, but cardboard, paper, and other
| materials that can be recycled or reused would be cheaper and
| more common. Glass jars or wax paper could both work, but
| currently the glass is more expensive than plastic, and wax
| paper would probably give a shorter shelf life. And these taxes
| don't need to be for 100% of the cost to change behavior.
| swiley wrote:
| A lot of food is packaged in cellophane though isn't it? That's
| edible by earthworms just like cardboard/paper is.
| boringg wrote:
| Do we have enough earthworms in concentrated enough areas in
| order to eat all of this packaging were generating?
| bluntfang wrote:
| wait til you hear about the factory farming industry that
| produced that prosciutto!
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| voted with your spend
|
| you ensured more plastic bits
|
| is now in your karma
| eganist wrote:
| one soul's not enough
|
| how else can you spread such word
|
| past HN haikus?
| smichel17 wrote:
| How come these each have
|
| too many syllables on
|
| one line? Six, not five.
| eganist wrote:
| I'm a bit confused.
|
| which one in particular?
|
| see 5-7-5
| smichel17 wrote:
| Grandparent poster:
|
| "is now in your karma." Yours:
|
| first line, pre-edit
| greenkey wrote:
| > is now in your karma
|
| is now your karma.
|
| 5-7-5 haiku fixed.
| smarx007 wrote:
| I would guess packaging transparency is very important from the
| marketing PoV in retail?
| wolfi1 wrote:
| unfortunately sometimes wax paper is proposed as an alternative
| but although the name suggests it to be ecologically it isn't.
| most, if not all, "wax papers" use paraffin instead of wax
| lopis wrote:
| Also if you would use real wax, suddenly fruits and
| vegetables wouldn't be vegan anymore.
| giantg2 wrote:
| What about soy wax?
| mattkrause wrote:
| Or carnauba wax (which is already used in some foods).
| giantg2 wrote:
| Paraffin is a wax, it's just synthetic (and all the issues
| that come with that). More concerning is that many "waxed"
| products contain PTFEs.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| It wouldn't practically matter if there were only 500m of us on
| the planet. I'm not advocating any particular policy btw, but a
| lot of pollution problems just go away when you minimize the
| multiplicative factor.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Or if there were only 10000 of us. So what?
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| PBS Frontline has a good documentary called Plastic Wars. It's
| part conspiracy where the Petro Companies need alternative
| sources of $$$ since the Energy $$$ is drying up with the
| advent of Renewables and EVs
|
| https://youtu.be/lXzee3tIZco
| DenisM wrote:
| That piece of plastic will spend its hundreds of years of
| retirement buried in a hole in the ground in the landfill. It
| produces no harm to whatsoever, and we are not going to run out
| of land for millions of years.
|
| Whenever I bring this up someone inevitably brings up polluted
| oceans, so I might as well address it now - if you don't throw
| your plastic bags into the ocean and neither does your local
| waste management those bags will never make it to the ocean.
| They will be in the landfill.
| lkuty wrote:
| We should be able to buy things in bulk and it should be
| generalized. The norm, not the exception. And if it is not
| possible to sell stuff that way, then the goods should be
| forbidden to be sold (with probably some exceptions).
| JosephRedfern wrote:
| Bulk buying isn't _always_ the solution though (perishable
| goods, for instance), and isn 't always affordable. Your
| financial situation shouldn't dictate your ability to avoid
| unnecessary waste.
|
| In my opinion, the move should be towards normalising
| reusable containers (where practical). Where I am, there are
| some more "specialist" shops who are doing great work in this
| area, but it's not mainstream and is often more expensive
| than just going to the supermarket.
| lkuty wrote:
| You're right, I guess I used the wrong word... "bulk". I
| wanted to say that we should buy food which has no
| container and as such no plastic container. Not that we
| should buy them in large quantities, if it's what has been
| implied by my use of the word.
|
| Anyway, someone thought I should be thanked with another
| -1. Can we go to -Infinity ?
| SamBam wrote:
| Yeah, it's confusing terminology, because "buying in
| bulk" usually means buying large quantities, but the
| "bulk bins" of e.g. nuts at the grocery store really
| means "buy as much as you want."
|
| But when the tomatoes are loose, we don't call that bulk.
|
| Anyway, we can just say "without packaging."
| powersnail wrote:
| Fresh meat and vegetables, however, should be buy-able in
| small portions. Otherwise, you either have to buy a giant
| freezer and eat frozen food all the time, or go to a diner on
| a daily basis.
| samstave wrote:
| TOTALLY AGREE!!!
|
| I personally think that long-life plastics should be illegal
| for quickly used items.
|
| Glass and wax-cardboard should be our primary packaging methods
| for food.
|
| It should also be required that all plastics be recycled. I
| HATE plastic.
|
| Also, look at cars - whats the average lifespan of a car these
| days - and in all the millions of cars - with thousands of
| parts made from plastic that never get recycled.
| lkuty wrote:
| Completely agree! Probably going to 28 :-)
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Why does it need to be in a container that degrades in 300+
| years?_
|
| Because there's no other cost-effective material we've invented
| that keeps the prosciutto airtight (so it doesn't dry out in
| hours), won't puncture/rip easily, holds up to
| shipping+stacking, and is transparent (to examine for fat
| percentage, slice thickness, etc. -- always essential for meats
| and veggies).
|
| Can you provide a material that does all that but starts
| degrading after 60 days? If you can, you stand to make a lot of
| $$$.
|
| Obviously, the main alternative is having someone slice it at
| the deli counter for you, but that means you could only ever
| buy prosciutto at places with a staffed deli counter, including
| the 15-minute wait for the deli counter if you're going grocery
| shopping at the end of a regular workday...
| minikites wrote:
| >Can you provide a material that does all that but starts
| degrading after 60 days?
|
| What's the motivation (market pressure) to develop such a
| thing? Plastic is cheap, so without other external pressure,
| there's no reason for any company to fund the development of
| something new. This is why pollution and other society-scale
| problems need a society-scale solution (government
| regulation).
| michaelbrave wrote:
| There are bio-plastics(usually made from corn) that degrade
| fairly fast, the problem is they cost less than a percent of
| a cent more. This is really a thing where government
| subsidies that are forward thinking about the environment
| could help.
| ksdale wrote:
| Are bio-plastics really a big improvement though? Growing
| corn burns a lot of fossil fuels. I think there's a case to
| be made that plastic that ends up in a landfill after few
| carbon emissions is better for the environment than plastic
| that degrades after lots of carbon emissions. Not saying
| that's definitely the case, just that I'm not sure it's so
| clear.
| Loughla wrote:
| The assumption there is that plastic emits less carbon
| when it's being created than corn. Is that accurate?
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| There is also a land cost. I'd be surprised if we
| determined that plastic is better than bio-plastic, but
| until we are making bio-plastic with a low land footprint
| land will continue to be a factor here.
| Loughla wrote:
| This might be a really stupid question, but how does land
| factor into carbon emission?
| frettchen wrote:
| I think the issue isn't emissions in that case but a
| "amount of land space necessary for landfills for
| traditional plastic" vs. "amount of land space necessary
| for plant growth for bioplastic."
|
| If the bioplastic growth land takes up more space by a
| certain amount than is used to dispose of regular
| plastic, that's presents its own set of issues.
| ksdale wrote:
| I believe that pulling oil out of the ground is way less
| carbon intensive than growing the necessary amount of
| corn, and I believe plastic is made from some tiny
| fraction of the petroleum that isn't used as fuel, so the
| petroleum would be extracted anyway, but the corn would
| not be grown anyway. I'm assuming the actual production
| of the good itself is similar in either case.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| In some ways, yes, and in others, definitely not. I think
| we'll get there: I also think some plastics are made
| using byproducts of fuel (gas/diesel) production, and as
| long as that's the case, we should probably use and
| recycle that (or find something else to do with it). Kind
| of like using every part of the animal, except with oil.
|
| https://phys.org/news/2017-12-truth-bioplastics.html
| lenkite wrote:
| > Growing corn burns fossil fuels
|
| Head-scratching a bit there. Corn absorbs CO2 while
| growing right ?
|
| From https://www.agweb.com/article/corns-carbon-cowboy-
| busts-outs... ...At 200 bu. per acre, every acre of corn
| absorbs 8 tons of carbon dioxide. In 2012, U.S. farmers
| grew almost 100 million acres of corn and absorbed 800
| million tons of carbon dioxide...
| ksdale wrote:
| Tractors, combines, trucks - there's a lot of heavy
| equipment that gets used to grow corn, and then there's
| emissions related to both producing and applying
| fertilizers.
| tomcam wrote:
| > they cost less than a percent of a cent more
|
| Citation please? I have dealt with packaging products for
| 35 years now and it's expensive. In my experience anything
| close to what the parent poster described would result in
| packaging costs an integer multiple price increase per unit
| if biodegradable. Storage requirements would also increase
| because 60 days is not a long enough shelf lifetime for
| prosciutto or anything similar
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| I think they're referencing PLA, polylactic acid. It
| takes a while to fully break down, but it still does
| degrade.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polylactic_acid
| lordgrenville wrote:
| There was a piece in _The Economist_ a couple of weeks
| ago about how some scientists made disposable coffee cups
| out of bagasse (wasteproduct of sugar production) which
| were basically as good as plastic on all the metrics GP
| mentioned but just fractionally more expensive.
| https://www.economist.com/science-and-
| technology/2020/11/14/...
| macspoofing wrote:
| Come on, be serious. These kinds of science-y puff pieces
| come out every day, on all kinds of topics (I can't count
| the number of times claims around cancer cures, fusion
| reactors, new battery technology that's 1000x better,
| etc. are made). This is one engineering group making very
| preliminary case (that they may have embellished for the
| media attention - wouldn't the first time - see: recent
| "life on Venus claims"). It takes time and lots of effort
| to figure out if this new material can satisfy all the
| necessary constraints in order to scale to the market.
| economusty wrote:
| And they ignore the viability of producing the object at
| scale. Making one and making one billion are worlds
| apart.
| lhorie wrote:
| IMHO, material transparency is the only difficult to meet
| requirement. Paper works fine to wrap most cold cuts and it's
| already used extensively in packaging for fruits and
| vegetables.
|
| People are already willing to pay premium for organic and
| other hard to inspect/certify labels; it doesn't seem outside
| the realm of possibility that people would be ok buying
| paper-wrapped prosciutto that has some similar stamp of
| quality.
| gabuyabdabudabu wrote:
| Honestly, it's called a glass jar. Folks should eat fresh
| local meats and produce and make their own preserves. Less
| reliance on mass-produced products and support local
| farmers/producers. Back before the garbagization-of-food
| you'd go to the butcher and get high quality meats. You'd go
| to the market to get produce. And, you'd make your own
| preserves for the winter WITHOUT PLASTIC. Simple, and in fact
| they taste much better if seasoned well!
| slothtrop wrote:
| What will actually happen is they'll make the switch to
| biodegradable plastics. Too few will want to give up the
| convenience of ready-made packaged foods. It could also
| require more travel to reach small distributors who don't
| use plastic, which wastes CO2 and time.
|
| The alternative would be more feasible if we had better-
| designed, walkable cities. But in North America places are
| built staggered, public transpo sucks.
| gabuyabdabudabu wrote:
| Yeah, it's unfortunate really. All I can say is, as a
| collective people are really lazy and stupid. Even smart
| people are stupid because they think adding an
| _unnatural_ amount of mushrooms to the world will solve
| the problem. Like, hello people, adding _a bunch_ of
| something to the _bunch_ of something else is not a
| solution. By bunch I mean _trillions of tons_. People
| just value money more than anything and it will be our
| undoing.
| hinkley wrote:
| If we solve the problem by proliferating plastic eating
| bacteria and fungi, then all of these qualities will be lost.
| ev0lv wrote:
| Couldn't we just augment the existing plastic with
| seeds/fungi is some way? That way, after some time in the
| trash, the fungi actually develops a colony which eats the
| packaging?
| mikem170 wrote:
| Does it need to be a big deal to wait a few minutes at the
| deli counter?
|
| In our rush to maximize everything for efficiency we are
| causing numerous small problems that are adding up, a tragedy
| of the commons and loss of our humanity. Our culture seems to
| value efficiency above too much else.
| mariodiana wrote:
| Yes. Deli counter people are notorious for interrupting you
| while you have your nose buried in your phone. And then you
| have to actually talk to them. It's a big deal.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| It's not always about just waiting in a line. If I have a
| small store selling pre-packaged meats, I may not have
| enough money to staff a deli counter.
| powersnail wrote:
| It's not always easy to find a deli that stocks actual
| Prosciutto; probably not enough people buy them.
|
| On the one hand, I agree that efficiency is valued too
| high. But on the other hand, sometimes, efficiency is what
| makes things accessible at all.
| minikites wrote:
| >Our culture seems to value efficiency above too much else.
|
| Capitalism tells us that if we're not making money, we're
| worthless as humans. It's not about hard work or
| efficiency, just look at the lack of respect for work that
| doesn't make money (e.g. stay-at-home parents).
| Chris2048 wrote:
| No it doesn't it says that the value of living in a
| capitalist society should be reciprocated with value,
| i.e. individuals providing value _to_ society, as
| societal value is nothing more than the aggregation of
| individual contributions. I 'm not saying this is
| entirely good/correct, but I am saying you misstate the
| message.
|
| > just look at the lack of respect for work that doesn't
| make money
|
| This conflates individual value with societal/communal.
| But why should anyone give a dam about stuff that doesn't
| benefit them? To be clear, I'm not saying people _shouldn
| 't_ give a damn, I saying why _couldn 't_ they i.e. why
| should they be forced if they choose not to.
|
| There's also a nuance to value: Capitalism determines
| value on the basis on what money people are willing to
| spend. Firstly, if people go out of there way to ensure
| money is not involved with something, don't be surprised
| if it's value is miscalculated by a capitalist system:
| this is like not winning a competition you never entered.
| That said, the economic impact of packaging is
| undervalued because no one is attaching an accurate
| debt/penalty to it, which is arguably the real problem
| here.
|
| Secondly, there is a notion that things of value create
| "market demand", so if little money is offered for
| something, then market doesn't want it, and people
| supplying it are refusing to offer what society actually
| wants. I think this makes sense: people have children
| even though parental benefits might be low suggesting
| they aren't really doing it for society, though I've
| discussed this before:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24423077
|
| TLDR: Capitalism only deals with societal value; so it
| only determines your value (of actions, say) on the basis
| of value to society. People are free to value things
| outside that system; If you think "people don't care
| about X" because "people don't provide money for X" then
| it is _you_ declaring the value of something to be its
| dollar amount.
| mikem170 wrote:
| > Capitalism tells us that if we're not making money,
| we're worthless as humans.
|
| I agree that pure capitalism thinks that way, and some
| cultures are closer to that than others.
| CountSessine wrote:
| _we are causing numerous small problems that are adding up_
|
| Those numerous 15 minutes waiting in a deli line and
| waiting in a bakery line and waiting in a butchers line add
| up too. We value efficiency because we need it and you'll
| learn the value of time efficiency once you have kids that
| need to be fed every day and a 9-5 job with a commute.
|
| How did we solve this before? We deprived half the
| population of their right to work for a wage and had them
| run around doing all this waiting and cooking. That's over
| now and the rest of our lives need to be more efficient.
| crazygringo wrote:
| This x1000.
|
| There's nothing romantic or natural or virtuous about
| wasting time waiting in line and visiting multiple shops
| and having less items available.
|
| It's just boredom and tedium.
|
| It's a _good_ thing when we 're able to free up time from
| mundane tasks so we do things that are rewarding to our
| soul -- whether it's spending more time with your family,
| playing sports with friends, going to the theater,
| reading a good book, whatever it is.
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| you trade environmental stability for petty convenience?
| pathetically short sighted
| mikem170 wrote:
| There's also nothing virtuous or efficient about the
| typical modern middle-class American lifestyle, double
| the house size of fifty years ago, three cars, college as
| status symbol, etc.
|
| I think most people would say that all this new
| efficiency is crushing peoples souls. Isn't everyone
| talking about the loneliness of the modern age, the scary
| amount of people who are depressed at any time, hiding
| with drugs, the loss of clubs and other social
| institutions?
|
| I tend to think that we've been selling our soul for
| efficiency. We'd have so much free time if we we didn't
| need to consume so much.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Absolutely _none_ of that has to do with how efficient
| your grocery shopping is.
|
| What you choose to spend your extra time on is your
| choice. But that's the point -- it should be your
| _choice_ to be able to spend it on hanging out with
| friends, rather than standing in long lines waiting to
| buy food.
|
| If you want to spend in on working extra hours to buy a
| third car, I mean that's your choice too I guess. But
| it's not like wasting your life waiting in line is any
| _better_.
| mikem170 wrote:
| I'll try to clarify/refine where I'm coming from:
| Systemically we as a culture care more about our quick
| cheese than we do about the hundred of years of trash.
| Ideally the price of the fancy cheese and everything else
| should include the cost of disposal, and right now it
| doesn't, and that's not right.
|
| Would you agree?
|
| I do believe that our culture is too focused on economic
| efficiency, and ignoring numerous consequences of that.
| That might be a separate discussion?
| polishdude20 wrote:
| That first paragraph is funny. More and more young people
| are renting more than ever. Three cars to a household is
| not common.
|
| Although, yes I do agree that wanting to consume and have
| more items is causing us to suffer.
| whiddershins wrote:
| I feel the same way, but it's worth noting not everyone
| does.
| jazzyk wrote:
| So efficient = working 12 hrs/day and being able to
| afford everything ready-made/shipped for/to you (frozen
| and flavorless, on occasion past expiration date).
|
| Even if you have an exciting/fulfilling job (a relative
| rarity) it gets old very quickly after a few years
| because most people need some variety in their lives.
|
| Every time I vacation in southern Europe, I love going to
| markets, picking fruit/vegetables, having prosciutto cut
| for me. I think the time you claim it takes exagerrated -
| usually there are 1-2 people in line.
|
| People dream to retire and tend to their garden (very
| "inefficient"), cooking their meals from scratch
| everyday, etc.
|
| Lots of cooking shows and shows like "Escape to the
| country" (BBC) seem to prove my point.
| crazygringo wrote:
| What are you even talking about?
|
| Most people work 8 hrs/day, not 12. If you go to your
| local supermarket, you'll see tons of people shopping for
| fresh produce and meat, not frozen or flavorless or
| expired (???).
|
| You're inventing a total straw man. Yes _some_ people
| work 12 hour days and eat frozen food but it 's a small
| minority.
|
| If spending lots of time at markets is what you enjoy,
| that do that. That's what farmer's markets in the US are
| for. But lots of people prefer to spend their free time
| doing other things they enjoy. Farmer's markets can get
| old very quickly too. Sometimes people want to spend just
| 5 minutes grabbing some ingredients and checking out to
| make a quick dinner, not 30 minutes visiting different
| stalls, waiting for the three people ahead of you at each
| one, and then haggling over prices.
| jazzyk wrote:
| Not inventing anything.
|
| Northeast US:
|
| Office hours: 9-6pm -> 9 hours (yes, includes "lunch"
| where people get a sandwich and eat it at the desk) Note
| that many people work longer, till 7pm or 8pm (startups,
| etc). Many people need 2 jobs to pay the bills.
|
| Average commute time: 45 mins (you can google it) x 2
| E-mail checking/responding at home after the kids go to
| bed: 1 hr
|
| Total: 11.5 hrs easily (or more if you want to climb the
| corporate ladder)
|
| So market-browsing/cooking is not your thing - that's
| fine. But let me just note that we invented all these
| life "efficiencies" - and are less and less happy
| (loneliness, drugs, etc).
|
| What's the point?
| [deleted]
| jonfw wrote:
| > But let me just note that we invented all these life
| "efficiencies" - and are less and less happy (loneliness,
| drugs, etc).
|
| There are quite a lot of non-packaging related factors
| that also play into this
| jazzyk wrote:
| Absolutely, but since we are off-topic, let's just leave
| it at that.
| mikem170 wrote:
| So how about we add the cost of proper disposal to that
| cheese? It is inefficient and unfair to pass the cost of
| someone's cheese to everyone else now and for three
| hundred years. Then if you have the money you don't have
| to wait in line. Does that sound fair?
| [deleted]
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| We do pay for proper disposal - Often through taxes that
| go towards waste disposal, but some folks pay direct. The
| cheese plant pays for this sort of thing too. It simply
| isn't entirely in the cost of the cheese itself. If
| things aren't getting properly handled, unfortunately
| that is a political issue with legal solutions.
|
| Having someone slice the cheese at a counter comes with
| its own risks: Have they cleaned properly? Are they
| treated fairly? Is the price going to go up because now
| places need a staffed deli, sinks, and equipment? Will it
| be just deli products or is everything in the grocery
| store going to be more expensive to pay for this extra
| stuff? Heck, what sort of impact is all of this stuff
| going to have on the environment?
|
| I'll add that no matter what, we all are paying for
| things that we, personally, don't do, haven't consumed,
| or disagree with. It is part of living in a society. If
| you buy a pair of pants, you are covering the cost of
| theft and loss. If you go to the doctor, you are paying
| for other people's care in addition to your own (heck,
| that's what health insurance is). You may or may not feel
| you get much back for your tax money, which is really
| dependent on where you live in the world.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Whether it's prosciutto or cheese, of course. It's a
| common view among economists that externalities,
| including environmental ones, ought to be factored into
| costs. It's an unfair subsidy, exactly as you describe,
| when they're not.
| mikem170 wrote:
| I'm an optimist, I assume we'll get there eventually.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Which was the deprivation?
|
| Then or now? Running around and being efficient after
| spending your days working away in an office might not
| feel like an upgrade to someone who had the other option.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Is this a catch-22 though? Would it be a less busy world
| if we the price of cheese packaging included the
| externalities of disposal?
|
| Some people would choose the cheaper of more time
| consuming alternative, and what is wrong with that? Do we
| have to have everything possible asap, damn the
| consequences?
| mikem170 wrote:
| But what is the goal of all these new efficiencies?
|
| Many of the efficiencies the modern age brought us have
| been in service of "more" - more house, more car, more
| entertainment, more clothes, more disposable technology,
| more status symbols, etc. We totally live in a consumer
| society, our biggest companies revolve around
| advertising. The economy would fall apart if people
| stopped buying stuff they don't need.
|
| Instead of all that we could have chosen the best
| modernity had to offer and only worked twenty hours a
| week. That would have been way more efficient than what
| we have now.
|
| But no, everyone went for the prosciutto. The advertisers
| won.
| loco5niner wrote:
| > We deprived half the population of their right to work
| for a wage and had them run around doing all this waiting
| and cooking.
|
| Here's the funny thing though. Your perspective changes
| when you have kids.
|
| As a personal anecdote, we just had our first baby 3
| months ago. My wife had spent the last 3 years getting
| her masters degree and getting her teaching certificate.
| She pushed hard. It was important to her. She got the
| email that her certification came through the day after
| the birth. She didn't care. All she want's to do right
| now is take care of her baby. That will likely change,
| and she'll probably work part time sometime in the
| future. But saying we've deprived half the population of
| their right to work is missing another perspective. The
| joy and privilege of raising a family. Yes, the
| efficiencies are wonderful, and for my wife (and for me),
| that means more time with our family.
|
| Who is being deprived now? I would hate to see my
| daughter deprived of her time with Mom so Mom could sit
| in an office all day. And I feel like our society is
| suffering because kids aren't being raised by their
| parents anymore.
| emj wrote:
| I'm very privileged to have gotten 12 months paternity
| leave, even in Sweden that is a bit unusual but not
| unheard of. I had 7 months at 70% pay financed from the
| goverment, so I had to pay a lot and it was a bit risky.
| In the end my girl got a better job because of the time I
| spent with my daughter, and I had a wonderfull time.
|
| So for me personally getting those 12 weeks alone with
| the child would be worth every penny, and can be very
| liberating for your wife, but the first two months were
| hard on me. Good luck, what ever you decide.
| gus_massa wrote:
| The time with the father is also important. Did you
| consider to take a one year sabbatical to be with your
| daughter instead of sitting in an office all day?
| loco5niner wrote:
| I would if I could. I'd retire and be full-time Dad
| (among other things) if I didn't have all these dang
| bills to pay ;-) I did consider a 12-week sabbatical, but
| couldn't afford it since we just bought a house. I do
| plan on prioritizing daddy-daughter time though, because
| it's important to me. When I mentioned the efficiencies
| meaning more time for family, that was including myself.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| > _She pushed hard. It was important to her. She got the
| email that her certification came through the day after
| the birth. She didn 't care. All she want's to do right
| now is take care of her baby._
|
| I had a similar discussion with my brother the other day.
| After multiple miscarriages, they're finally pregnant, 17
| weeks in and healthy.
|
| He worked from the time he was a teenager joining
| military reserves, degree in criminology and kinesiology,
| and finally a provincial constable around 6+ years in to
| get to where he is.
|
| An hour after their latest ultrasound, his only words
| were: work sucks.
| loco5niner wrote:
| Congrats to your brother! We can share in both their
| grief and their joy, as we've suffered through multiple
| miscarriages too.
| jonfw wrote:
| It's great that she's made that choice, and it's also
| great that it's her choice to make. That wasn't the case
| before.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Not because of people forcing other people to not do
| things. Because most of the things were super dangerous,
| and there wasn't enough value sloshing around to have
| lots of nice time-flexible desk jobs.
| 8note wrote:
| Cached cutting would make some sense?
|
| You don't need to be waiting in line but the meats also
| don't need to be all precut and stored before they get to
| the store. Cut some off in the morning and put it in
| simpler packaging, and if that runs out, Cut a bit more
| hairytrog wrote:
| The ham itself will protect it, wrapped in Aluminum foil or
| even a hemp bag for shipping. The packaging is simply an
| artifact of people not wanting to buy a whole ham and wanting
| it presliced, which is perhaps an artifact of the fact that
| most people in the US will heat the majority of their meals
| by themselves and do not like to prepare meals. Sad.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Even when I ate meat, I wouldn't buy a whole ham. What the
| heck am I going to do with a whole ham?? I literally do not
| have the freezer space for this. I've never had children,
| and have only been in a house with one other human.
|
| That's a _lot_ of food waste. Heck, I sometimes lament that
| I can 't buy smaller amounts of spinach because I hate
| seeing half the bag go to waste.And I'll add that this has
| nothing to do with cooking or not cooking: I like to cook,
| and do so most days.
|
| That packaging keeps food waste down because it breaks
| things into smaller portions - not to mention that many
| food places seal them in ways to make them last longer
| (example being adding a mix of gasses to help it not
| oxidize).
| crazygringo wrote:
| Maybe you don't know what prosciutto is...? It's not just
| ham.
|
| Buying an entire prosciutto costs hundreds of dollars,
| _obviously_ people don 't want to buy a whole one.
|
| It's also usually not heated, by the way. This has _zero_
| to do with not liking to prepare meals... most people who
| buy sliced prosciutto are doing it as _part_ of the meal
| they 're preparing. We're not talking about hot pockets or
| frozen lasagna here.
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| Maybe they know what prosciutto is but don't know that in
| USA we use that term to only refer to prosciutto crudo?
| powersnail wrote:
| It's not sad; it's practical. A whole ham is giant,
| expensive, hard to store, and might take months to get
| through, unless you eat it every meal.
|
| I prepare my own meal, and I don't need meat to be pre-
| sliced, but I do need it to be in a small enough portion
| that can be put into my fridge.
| [deleted]
| SN76477 wrote:
| Makes me wonder what our diets would look like if plastic was
| never invented.
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| probably healthier
| [deleted]
| walleeee wrote:
| > Obviously, the main alternative is having someone slice it
| at the deli counter for you, but that means you could only
| ever buy prosciutto at places with a staffed deli counter,
| including the 15-minute wait for the deli counter if you're
| going grocery shopping at the end of a regular workday...
|
| This and a million other small inconveniences hardly seem too
| great a price to pay to avoid filling the planet's air and
| water (and by consequence our bodies) with plastic waste
| whiddershins wrote:
| I think this is overblown. The earth is already 'full' of
| oil and gas and minerals and lots of toxic things. We are
| just transforming one type of substance into another - more
| useful to us - type of substance.
|
| The issue is when the waste gets in to places where it
| wreaks havoc, like especially waterways.
|
| Currently, afaik, this problem is primarily driven by a few
| countries in Asia, so I think the effort that would have
| the most impact is figuring out how to convince those
| particular Asian countries to stop throwing plastic in to
| rivers.
|
| And anyone else who gets it in their head to throw plastic
| in to rivers.
|
| As long as waste is contained properly it doesn't seem to
| make so much of a net change in the earth.
| walleeee wrote:
| > Currently, afaik, this problem is primarily driven by
| Asia, so I think the effort that would have the most
| impact is figuring out how to convince Asian countries to
| stop throwing plastic in to rivers.
|
| The west could start by not exporting a huge portion of
| its plastic waste to said Asian countries.
|
| > I think this is overblown. The earth is already 'full'
| of... toxic things.
|
| The earth was certainly not "full" of macro-, micro-, and
| nano-plastics 50 years ago.
|
| Americans ingest and inhale tens to hundreds of thousands
| of microplastic particles per year[0]. Microplastics
| likely impair cognition in hermit crabs[1]. Nanoplastics
| accumulate in plants[2]. It's not just waterways.
|
| Nobody really understands how this might affect human
| health. We're all participants in a planet-sized
| experiment to find out.
|
| [0]: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0030
|
| [1]: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.9b01517
|
| [2]: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-020-0707-4
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _The west could start by not exporting a huge portion
| of its plastic waste to said Asian countries._
|
| That's not how it works. Worst-case scenario that winds
| up in landfills instead of being recycled.
|
| The problem in Asia is _100% domestic_ , with _citizens_
| and households and apartment buildings dumping their
| local plastic trash on the side of the road, burning it
| in backyards, dumping it in the river.
| walleeee wrote:
| > That's not how it works. Worst-case scenario that winds
| up in landfills instead of being recycled.
|
| It's a problem even if it ends up in landfills. Plastics
| can leach chemicals into groundwater. My point is that
| the "Asian countries are responsible for most of the
| world's pollution" narrative is simplistic and unhelpful.
| Most of the plastic in the oceans is indeed from Asian
| countries. But plastic concentrations are 4-20x higher on
| land than in the oceans. The United States has the
| highest tapwater contamination rate in the world (94%).
|
| > The problem in Asia is 100% domestic, with citizens and
| households and apartment buildings dumping their local
| plastic trash on the side of the road, burning it in
| backyards, dumping it in the river.
|
| You're of course correct to point out that this happens,
| but calling the problem 100% domestic is disingenuous.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Traditionally, that would be cellophane.
| [deleted]
| peanut_worm wrote:
| Isn't Cellophane biodegradable?
| minikites wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane#Material_propertie
| s
|
| >Cellophane is biodegradable, but highly toxic carbon
| disulfide is used in most cellophane production.
| peanut_worm wrote:
| Oh well, I tried.
| undersuit wrote:
| If the only reason we're choking our planet with plastic is
| so we don't have to wait at the deli counter might I suggest
| we just start placing orders to the deli counter a few hours
| before we arrive?
| speleding wrote:
| Counterintuitively, because food that's not wrapped in plastic
| spoils faster it's actually better for the environment to use
| plastic, owing to reduced waste elsewhere.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| But it's not. Spoiled produce is biodegradable. Plastic is
| not.
| speleding wrote:
| Food takes energy to produce, transport and store, that
| releases (much) more CO2 for now than plastic packaging.
| Plastic is rather efficient, you only need a tiny drop of
| oil to create a lot of packaging.
|
| If food production at some point becomes CO2 neutral you
| still have a lot of other detrimental effects to the
| environment from food production to account for. Plastic is
| a net positive for the environment when it comes to food
| packaging.
| panzagl wrote:
| But if you need to ship twice as much unpackaged as
| packaged you're harming the environment in other ways.
| kitcar wrote:
| In many cases that's a function of food safety regulations, re:
| minimizing bacteria growth on the food while traveling though
| the logistics chain.
| lotyrin wrote:
| The logistics graph probably needs to have fewer edges, and
| the average path be quite a bit shorter, but then we can't
| all have whatever we want whenever we want wherever we want.
| leetcrew wrote:
| since you used prosciutto for an example, we ought to discuss
| how absurd it is to need a special container to keep slices of
| cured meat fresh in the first place. the block of prosciutto is
| already a container! perhaps the big block needs some sort of
| protection in transit to meet modern food safety requirements,
| but buying 80g at a time of prepackaged prosciutto creates a
| needless inefficiency. we ought to be able to go to the meat
| counter and buy a few days worth of prosciutto wrapped in
| paper.
| murukesh_s wrote:
| It's too much in developed nations. Went to Tokyo and almost
| every thing is wrapped in plastic over plastic without guilt.
| They say its burned/recycled but not sure how much is true and
| how much impact it is bringing to the surroundings.
|
| The volume of packaged foods in developing nations are
| comparatively lower but can't imagine the footprint it could
| cause when those nations also develop into heavily packaged
| FMCG consuming behemoths.
| zorba20002 wrote:
| True, in Iran everybody buy their fruits and vegetables from
| designated stores that only sell those. you can have even
| bring your own container to consume zero plastic. in Denmark
| it is not even an option. Day to day groceries are bought in
| supermarkets with insane amount of plastic wraps.
| JTbane wrote:
| What if a requirement was made for producers of products to
| handle the disposal of their packaging? I have no idea how much
| of a financial burden it would be but that could go far to help
| reduce waste.
| hairytrog wrote:
| Just nuclear waste?
| janlaureys wrote:
| This drives me crazy as well. Even sillier is that at my local
| supermarket where I can either buy regular tomatoes in bulk and
| take them home in a paper bag that the store provides or just
| in my reusable bag or I can buy the biologic organic tomatoes
| that are packaged by 6 in a little cardboard tray and wrapped
| in plastic.
| lopis wrote:
| I hit this dilemma often. Do I buy bulk regular produce or
| organic produce invariably wrapped in plastic or in plastic
| bags?
| bluGill wrote:
| Organic is a buzzword that doesn't mean anything useful.
| They can't use some chemicals so they substitute others
| which are often more harmful. Or they destroy the soil
| because they can't replace the nutrients that they are
| taking out.
| furyg3 wrote:
| Classic example I saw was Chamomile farming in Egypt.
| Traditionally done along the Nile. 'Sustainable' in terms
| of family owned farms for literal millennia, community
| works projects of maintaining the nile flooding
| irrigation, etc. Of course there are issues, but the
| families live close to their fields, kids go to school,
| they make their own business decisions, don't want to
| deplete their soil, and there are social frameworks in
| place for solving collective problems. BUT! Doesn't work
| for organic: if a neighbor 3 fields up uses pesticides,
| and a tiny amount blows over onto your field, your crop
| isn't organic.
|
| No problem! We found an aquifer (fossil, non-renewable)
| in the middle of the desert, we'll pump up the water and
| irrigate the ground out there where we're far away from
| pesky neighbors. Of course this is a big operation, so we
| need big investment, and thus a big company. Also we need
| workers, since nobody lives out there. We'll bus them in.
| They'll need a place to stay, so we'll put them in camps.
|
| After my evening yoga I like to have some warm chamomile
| tea to wind down before bed. I like this one because it's
| organic and has a haiku on the inside about how we should
| take care of the planet.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| I suspect the picture does vary somewhat around the
| world, but in the UK there are eight government approved
| organisations which are allowed to certify for organic
| labelling [1] and the EU has something similar[2].
| Because the organic logo adds financial value to
| products, there is a significant interest in protecting
| its usage. You may disagree with the content of the
| legislation, but it does mean something.
|
| In any global industry there are going to be outliers and
| people breaking the rules, but suggesting that organic
| farming destroys soil and uses more harmful chemicals
| than non-organic farming as a general rule sounds very
| much like FUD.
|
| [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/organic-
| certifica... [2] https://ec.europa.eu/info/food-farming-
| fisheries/farming/org...
| realce wrote:
| This doesn't feel like an accurate representation of
| organic farming. My family has 2 organic farms and
| neither of them do what you're saying.
|
| Not difficult to rotate crops.
| bluGill wrote:
| Crop rotation is a useful technique that both organic and
| non-organic farms use. However there are lots of other
| farming techniques. By being organic you are limiting
| yourself out of them all.
| NateEag wrote:
| I think the complaint is meant to be "organic doesn't
| mean anything".
|
| I read GP as saying that while an organic product _might_
| be produced responsibly, as your family 's farms do, it
| could also be factory-farmed using pesticides worse than
| Roundup.
|
| If that is true, then the word "organic" is not
| meaningful for consumers who want to support sustainable,
| low-impact farming.
| robotbikes wrote:
| There is certification and regulation required and a fair
| amount of promises to become USDA organic or even use
| organic on the label of a food legally in the U.S. So if
| they were using pesticides they would be engaging in
| fraud. There is large scale organic farming that is
| probably not sustainable though and this is likely the
| source of a lot of organic produce that is not locally
| sourced, but it also probably doesn't have pesticides on
| it. O. The other hand fraud does happen and there was a
| big organic grain trader who was found to be substituting
| non-organic grain for grain and I think he was prosecuted
| for it but he got away with it for years. There are also
| local sustainable farmers who grow organically but can't
| afford or can't justify the cost of organic
| certification. So while it does mean something it isn't
| doesn't always mean what you might think it does.
| NateEag wrote:
| I believe the US law defining what "organic pesticides"
| are is here:
|
| https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-
| idx?c=ecfr&SID=9874504b6f1...
|
| I'm not sure what the industry standard for something
| being a "pesticide" is, but there are clearly plenty of
| tools organic farms can use for pest control. It would be
| an undertaking to figure out the potential health and
| sustainability ramifications of all of them (and of
| course, the label "organic" could encompass the use of
| any or all of them).
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Organic farms use pesticides: They are just limited in
| what pesticides they use. This isn't a secret or fraud.
| Unfortunately, the pesticides allowed can easily be worse
| for the environment than the chemical counterpart.
| Fertilizers have the same woes, and folks can still not
| take care of the land.
| joekrill wrote:
| It's a buzzword, but that doesn't mean that what people
| think of as "organic" - in the good sense - doesn't
| exist. I'm sure you didn't mean it, but your comment
| gives the impression that _all_ "organic" food is a
| shame. There are plenty of sustainable farms that don't
| use harmful pesticides. It's unfortunate the word has
| become what it has, but it's not a catch-all one way or
| the other.
| svachalek wrote:
| Agh, I hate choosing between differently correct. Do I buy
| the paper towels that are giant sheets of recycled paper, or
| the little sheets of bleached paper?
| rini17 wrote:
| When manufacturer was asked about this, they did try to sell
| organic tomatoes in bulk. But these tomatoes are too soft and
| usual bulk handling by customers resulted in too much waste.
| tt433 wrote:
| Sounds like a fundamental problem with the organic product,
| on top of the existing lower expected calorie yield per
| acre.
| blix wrote:
| If you actually want to optimize calories per unit land,
| you should be considering neither organic nor non-organic
| tomatoes, as both produce significantly fewer calories
| per unit land than crops like wheat, corn, and soybeans.
| redisman wrote:
| Or any kind of product other than plants producing edible
| oil. Maybe lentils and soy and wheat.
| ZephyrP wrote:
| I'd imagine the honor of "most efficient yield" would
| belong to root vegetables like sugar beets, yams or
| potatoes
| nojokes wrote:
| Most bio dairy products I can buy here come in plastic cans
| that have cardboard clued around of them. I guess it is done
| to make the look more organic but of course it makes it worse
| because it makes the recycling more difficult and introduces
| more waste of resources.
| tombert wrote:
| I wish it were more acceptable to simply bring your own
| packaging to the grocery store and let them do a tare-weight.
|
| My wife and I tried this a few years ago for a few weeks,
| either bringing in our own Tupperware or Mason jars to do it,
| and each time the person working in the deli area had to get a
| manager involved, and one time they accused us of stealing
| their tupperware, since they sold that same container in the
| shop. We did this partly for environmental reasons, but mostly
| for "meat packaging gets really stinky in your garbage can
| after a few days in a small apartment" reasons. After awhile,
| we decided it wasn't worth the headache to us.
|
| In NYC (and California too I think?), they're starting to
| encourage bringing your own bag instead of buying them at the
| register, so I might retry this experiment again.
| titanomachy wrote:
| Probably depends where you shop. At the more expensive,
| bougie, "socially-conscious" grocery stores in the US, this
| is pretty normal or even encouraged. Whole Foods is the most
| prominent example of the kind of store I'm thinking of.
| tombert wrote:
| In my case, it was in Washington Heights, not typically
| considered the yuppie-stronghold, and I've since moved to
| another similarly non-yuppie place.
|
| Next time I go to C-Town or Food Bazaar or something maybe
| I'll make another effort and try again...there isn't a
| Whole Foods near me.
| undersuit wrote:
| I really like glass growlers for beer. I can walk across the
| street and buy a canned 6-pack of a local beer or I can ride
| my bike to the brewery and have a drink while I wait for my
| growler to fill. It's about the same price for me.
| davesque wrote:
| This made me think of Miyazaki's Nausicaa.
| foxhop wrote:
| I use fungi mycelium to convert woodchips into soil for food
| production, I document the process here:
|
| https://youtu.be/u4w9ir45Ebw
|
| 4 minute video, no capital investment, and no infra required.
|
| Truely an amazing and under appreciated lifeform just waiting to
| be utilized for planetary healing. I'm looking forward to
| continuing my research, please subscribe if this is of interest
| to you.
| scrooched_moose wrote:
| Any idea how well this would work with sawdust? I generate a
| ton in my workshop. The city currently takes it in our organics
| bin, but it's a pain. Have to buy expensive compostable bags,
| then transfer from the dust collector to the secondary bags
| which takes a while and is messy.
| nolroz wrote:
| Sawdust can be a great media to grow mushrooms on. There are
| species that prefer hardwoods vs softwoods so you might have
| to do some research. Oysters generally eat anything.
| virtue3 wrote:
| Lol what's up buddy! It's Tor!
|
| SO FUNNY.
|
| Just wanted to comment that mushrooms naturally erode wood and
| decomposing biomass (I used to study environmental science).
| That's sort of just what they do. Keep em damp and away from
| sunlight and they should do an even better job!
| wil421 wrote:
| I do a similar thing with leaves. There's a place where I blow
| all my leaves in the fall and it's become a long term
| composting pit.
| samstave wrote:
| I was going to ask this?
|
| How compost leaves? Just put in a pile?
|
| How add mycillium/fungi to said pile?
|
| I just put a bunch of leaves out to green pickup - but I
| would rather learn how to compost them... off to google - but
| would love your input
| wil421 wrote:
| Yes just rake them into a pile.
|
| For anaerobic (no oxygen) composting you just leave the
| pile alone and let nature do it's work. The spores are
| already there they just need the right conditions. It will
| take months to year(s) if you just let it sit.
|
| For aerobic composting you should layer leaves and grass
| clippings. One brown layer, one green layer and so on. It's
| best done in a sunny area and you'll need to turn the
| compost weekly. It should only take a few months or more
| and it will be hot. Ever driven by a steaming pile of wood
| chips or some other steaming earthy pile? Organisms are
| making heat while they feed on organic matter.
|
| Just remember the fungus and organisms are already there
| they just needs the right conditions to flourish.
| foxhop wrote:
| Keep up the great work!
|
| That said leaf blowers are so loud (make sure everyone around
| has hearing protection)
|
| Have you considered using a rake to make piles on a tarp?
|
| The tarp is then dragged to your desired composting location
| and emptied.
|
| I learned this method from my elderly Korean neighbor when I
| was young and have used it over leaf blowing for the last 20
| years.
| therealx wrote:
| Electric leaf blowers are a lot quieter, as well.
| bdamm wrote:
| I'm really enjoying the new generation of battery powered
| lawn tools. From chainsaws to leafblowers to lawnmowers,
| li-ion is taking over. I won't miss the mess and cheapo
| carbs and tricks like shipping products without a simple
| fuel filter.
| wil421 wrote:
| Good luck when your manufacturer changes their battery
| system or drops their electric line all together. Or your
| batteries start to deform. I've seen all of the above
| happen to family members.
|
| Keep ethanol fuel out of the equipment to keep the carbs
| in good shape.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Third-party battery packs are super common for electric
| tools, especially for the older generations.
| snark42 wrote:
| There's usually a third party manufacturer you can get
| replacement batteries from for any decently popular
| system.
|
| My cost on batteries/electricity is probably less than I
| would have spent on fuel. The noise/size/maintenance-free
| advantages of electric are huge too.
| clairity wrote:
| i can't wait either. gas leaf blowers are technically
| illegal in LA, but yardworkers still use them all over
| the place without concern. they're loud, but more
| gravely, emit noxious pollution. all the more, it's not
| much more work or time to sweep or rake whatever it is
| they're (more rigorously) blowing up into the air and our
| lungs.
| samstave wrote:
| DOPE.
|
| I am sure you have watched Paul Stamets EVERYTHING - and if you
| havent, watch his Joe Rogan Podcasts and his Ted Talks...
|
| Also start taking Lions Mane pills
|
| --
|
| Is your Mycillium natrual - or are you seeding it some how?
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| How is this better than just shoving it in a compost bin?
| foxhop wrote:
| Great question.
|
| The difference is huge, for starters this method uses a slow,
| cold, and mostly anaerobic environment, the conditions
| mycelium enjoy.
|
| Trying to use a hot compost methods would require epic
| amounts of nitrogen feedstock for the bacteria to run the
| process.
|
| This is also faster and requires less human input, no need to
| turn or aerate the pile, no need to carefully monitor the
| balance the nitrogen to carbon ratios throughout the process.
|
| The change in chips I show in the video was 8 months. Leaving
| the chips for longer in the ditch/trench will yeild better
| results, I plan to leave this latest batch for a couple years
| to really let the mycelium break down the materials.
|
| A portion of aged fungi composted material can be added to a
| hot compost pile to let the bacteria take over.
|
| Fungi dominant soils are better for food forests and more
| stable than bacteria dominate soils.
|
| I typically use bacteria dominated soils for kitchen gardens.
|
| It's all inputs and outputs at the end of the day and simply
| dropping material into specific conditions can yeild
| different material outputs. It so much fun to think in terms
| of systems. I fell in love with computers and networks for
| this reason. Natural systems are even more impressive to me.
|
| Gardening, food production, and nature is all about inputs
| and outputs over the course of days, months, and years. It's
| a much slower feedback loop to programming, but a feedback
| loop nonetheless.
|
| Thank you for the question.
| scruple wrote:
| Just wanted to say, I checked out a few videos and I'm hooked.
| You have a great and very informative channel going here, keep
| it up!
| carapace wrote:
| I found this out by accident.
|
| I took some woodchips that had been used as bedding in a
| chicken coup (so it had feathers and poop in it), put down a
| layer about four inches thick, then covered it in a rich mulch
| that had lots of mycelium in it already[1], and left it alone
| for about six weeks. The mycelium went all through there and
| converted the woodchips to a chalky almost asbestos-like form.
|
| I had another experience with this same mycelium mulch[1] where
| it literally sealed off an area of sandy soil and routed water
| somewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15059654
|
| [1] Kellogg's GROMULCH 2-in-1, it's my secret weapon.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Can we recharge carbon to bare soil and make it erosion proof
| using mycelium, if it rains a lot?
| special12345 wrote:
| All CO2 will escape at some point. Where do you store the
| mushrooms so that they rot less quickly?
| Tepix wrote:
| If they produce soil as stated in the article it will take a
| very long time until it gets released back into the air.
| noselasd wrote:
| Are you certain the CO2 is not used to build up other molecules
| that will not always be broken down back to CO2 again ?
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| In Goats?
| leoedin wrote:
| Pyrolysis of trees can produce charcoal (biochar) which is
| stable in soil for thousands of years (and potentially stable
| in other locations for much longer). I wonder if you could
| pyrolyse mushrooms to produce similar products.
| special12345 wrote:
| I have read about it, Charcoal is transported to the oceans,
| where it has a chance to get in the atmosphere again.
| asplake wrote:
| Trivial point, but did they name the ST:Discovery Stamets
| character after the author of this article? (Mycelium network)
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| As someone who enjoys ST:Discovery, also instantly noticed
| this, looked it up quick and it's mentioned on IMDB as well.
|
| TIL. Quite cool.
| dgb23 wrote:
| Yes, also the core idea of the network came from him. There are
| a couple of interesting podcast interviews with Stamets.
| Fascinating stuff. He truly and deeply cares about nature and
| mushrooms in particular, has done extensive research over the
| years and has found a wide variety of applicable solutions.
| headmelted wrote:
| Indeed they did! A good explainer about this on his Wikipedia
| page.
| rplnt wrote:
| I was confused for a while, not the author of the article, but
| someone mentioned in the article.
| brewtide wrote:
| Just recently watched a movie last week, 'Fantastic Fungi'. It
| covers some of this, as well as many other interesting (and
| beautiful) aspects about Mushrooms/Fungi.
|
| Highly, highly suggested.
|
| "Fantastic Fungi" (IMDB link below)
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8258074/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Great movie, I've also watched it last month. Its focused on
| Paul Stamets (the same scientist mentioned in the article)
| Roritharr wrote:
| Whenever someone mentions something organically eating away at
| plastic this the idea that it decomposes faster than we are used
| to scares me.
|
| Imagine what would happen if the plastic insulation of our cables
| rotted away, plastic housings of powertools fail... Basically
| most of our modern world would melt away in front of our eyes.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Sort of "the Rust" in "A piece of wood" by Ray Bradbury,
| applied to plastics ...
| bdamm wrote:
| It is highly likely that these fungi don't grow unassisted.
| They aren't likely to colonize in your wiring, for example,
| without significant help and ideal conditions, such as a great
| deal of starting spores all over the wiring and lots of water
| and a good dose of additional nutrients that the fungus needs
| to grow.
|
| In other words, if you shred your wiring and put it on top of a
| pile of fungi that are bred to eat this type of plastic,
| they'll probably use rainfall to extend their mycelial network
| and eat the plastic. But if you just park your car next to the
| pile, it's probably never going to colonize your car and digest
| its electrical system.
| yc12340 wrote:
| This isn't really a big concern. Bacteria and mushrooms can eat
| anything: rock, metal, radioactive waste, basically anything at
| all. But metabolizing those things isn't very efficient.
| Plastic-eating mushrooms will always lose to ordinary dung-
| eating ones.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| > Plastic-eating mushrooms will always lose to ordinary dung-
| eating ones.
|
| Lose what? They're not competing for the same food.
| bigbubba wrote:
| > _radioactive waste_
|
| This one seems over-hyped to me. Some species of fungus have
| been observed extracting energy from gamma radiation. While
| incredible, it's roughly similar in principle to the way
| plants extract energy from visible light. The fungus isn't
| breaking those radioactive isotopes down into stable
| isotopes, it's just basking in the glow. Maybe this could
| have some positive benefits for others, if perhaps layers of
| fungus grew around radioactive particles, thus somewhat
| shielding them, but this is a far cry from what the popsci
| headlines seem to suggest.
| insickness wrote:
| On top of that, an organism genetically modified to eat plastic
| could surely change the ecosystem drastically since it would
| thrive like crazy due to so much dormant plastic in our
| environment.
| leafmeal wrote:
| The post-apocalyptic, young adult series "The Uglies" by Scott
| Westerfeld is based on a similar idea. A Fungus is created that
| causes petroleum products to explode when exposed to air (thus
| further spreading the spores).
| adrianN wrote:
| Wood decays fairly rapidly in nature, and yet we can build
| things out of wood that last centuries. Keeping things dry goes
| a long way towards preserving them. That of course doesn't work
| for all applications, but I don't think there is a concern that
| some fungus will eat your Nylon shirts while you're wearing it.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| GP mentioned cable insulation. Between that and food
| containers and gaskets, I can easily imagine that if a
| biological agent that could decompose petroleum-based
| materials were to spread, it could topple our civilization.
| Like, I don't care about my nylon t-shirt, but I care about
| the gasket in the LPG bottle underneath my sink, or about the
| PVC pipes that carry water into my apartment, and waste out
| of it.
| eru wrote:
| Well, depending on how fast it would spread, we might have
| enough time to replace things with not-yet-rottable
| materials.
| fredley wrote:
| ...and then we're back to square one...
| eru wrote:
| Why?
|
| Some materials have been around for much, much longer,
| and so things had an opportunity to evolve to eat them.
| So we can judge. Eg we know how fast different woods rot.
| Or how fast stones or steel can be attacked.
| adrianN wrote:
| Pipes for example can be made from ceramics or steel.
| Those are not biodegradable, but also not a problem in
| the environment.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Except they rust or break. They leech too sometimes.
| adrianN wrote:
| It's not like PVC pipes are perfect either.
| wil421 wrote:
| There are 1,000s of agents and organisms in nature that eat
| everything around us. Wood is pressure treated to prevent
| these types of things from happening.
|
| Not to mention oxygen is probably one of the biggest agents
| that "eats" or oxidizes our world. Water and moisture are
| catalysts for other life forms to start eating stuff.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| We don't use wood for insulation or high pressure or
| airtight applications as a general rule.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| with the current fungi no, but with geneticaly altered
| mushrooms who can do fast plastic processing - well, shirts
| on your body contain sweat as well.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| We would add a chemical into the mix that would protect the in-
| use plastic from the mushrooms.
|
| But them we would have to invent a new mushroom that would eat
| that new kind of plastic waste.
|
| Oh.
|
| It's a never ending cycle.
| visarga wrote:
| So if the current Mushroom OS has a plastic version > your
| bottle's, then the bottle melts away.
| leoedin wrote:
| This isn't really discussed enough. There's so much chemical
| energy in plastic that it really is just a matter of time
| (although evolution scale time could be thousands to millions
| of years...) until something evolves to break it down.
| Depending on the rate that happens, it might cause some real
| issues.
| Tepix wrote:
| Nature shows us that stuff needs to rot away. If it doesn't
| rot, it's not sustainable.
| brmgb wrote:
| Nature shows us nothing. Nature is an abstraction for a
| collection of different systems in a state of dynamic
| equilibrium. What is unsustainable disappears and the rest
| remains as long as it can until it is replaced.
|
| Wood used to not rot for millions of years. That's where
| lignite comes from.
| myrmidon wrote:
| This is nonsensical. Rocks don't rot either.
| rataata_jr wrote:
| Oh my god, are you right. But they do weather away but at a
| much slower rate, they do turn into sand.
| eru wrote:
| Plastic weathers away, too. And UV light breaks it down.
|
| People usually talk about shorter timescales when they
| want plastic to rot.
| eru wrote:
| You mean like granite?
| michalhuman wrote:
| If there's enough stuff, nature will find a way to rot it :)
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| That's why Mars is all rotten through and through.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It indeed is - it's _rusted_.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| Rot is decomposition of organic matter; rust is a
| chemical reaction, oxidation, in fact.
| hobofan wrote:
| That may have been a pun on rust the fungus:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(fungus)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| From practical point of view, rusting is just inorganic
| version of rotting via oxidizing agents. Both happen
| naturally over time, given appropriate environment, and
| both result in interesting/useful stuff turning into less
| interesting/useful stuff.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Well, perhaps it is? We don't know if there is life in
| Mars. Or if there was life at any point of its history.
| newyankee wrote:
| What is described just sounds too good to be true ? Wonder what
| the bottlenecks are ?
| Tepix wrote:
| I think the main problem is that it's still a slow process and
| it will be hard to scale it up to the levels we need to get rid
| of our single use plastics.
| DarkWiiPlayer wrote:
| Ideally, we'd throw a sack of spores on a huge heap of
| plastic and few years later it would all be gone. Getting
| there will surely be a long process and require a whole lot
| of research.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| If that heap of plastic will be at least partially covered
| with soil or wood, then maybe.
|
| But without probably not.
|
| Also, if you have a fast plastic processing mushroom, that
| would mean all plastics in use would not be stable anymore.
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| A very interesting article, to be sure.
|
| It makes me wonder if there are any mushrooms that could survive
| on Mars...
|
| If not, then one poster suggested that the surface of Mars is
| rusted (oxidated).
|
| If that's so, then my question becomes something of the
| following:
|
| Is there a food chain (from rust/oxides, to simple bacteria that
| would eat that rust, to more complex bacteria (that would survive
| on those simpler bacteria), to spores, mushrooms, etc., such that
| that whole "food chain" could survive on the surface of Mars?
|
| Speculation: Maybe we'll find strange/weird "food chains" (for
| lack of a better term!) like that on Mars, and if they aren't
| directly on the surface (due to violent dust storms, too much
| radiation, or what-have-you), perhaps such "food chains" exist in
| caves, or perhaps deep underground, in caverns protected from
| Mars' harsh atmosphere...
|
| I would love to know the answer to this in the future!
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| It looks like bacteria that eat rust do exist:
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101210-new-s...
| agumonkey wrote:
| and the usual pun about rust being a kind of fungus too
| dalbasal wrote:
| Th power of biology is vast and amazing.
|
| Biology gives us the existence proof for most of our big
| technological aspirations. Solar energy, energy storage, dealing
| with waste, "artificial" intelligence, nano bots.... obviously
| every medical problem.
|
| Biology is already doing all these things in clever, scalable
| ways. It's one of the great technology wildcards, long term.
|
| It's not surprising that _something_ eats petroleum waste
| products. It 's organic and energy rich.
| noodles_nomore wrote:
| Slightly offtopic but, one thing I've been thinking: If we can
| produce plastic that won't degrade for thousands of years, why
| not leverage this and make books from it?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| We do. But plastic is simply not as nice as paper in your
| hands. Thats why there is low demand for it.
|
| But for a archive it might make sense to do this approach in a
| bigger style.
| anonymou2 wrote:
| There are some books like that already:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melcher_Media#DuraBooks
| arijun wrote:
| The article doesn't contain any more information about the topics
| in the title. Which is too bad, because I would be interested in
| hearing about the economics of these things and hearing from
| companies attempting them.
| janvdberg wrote:
| The actual link (at the bottom of the article) which produces a
| 400 error because of a bad href is:
| https://www.wired.com/2014/12/mini-farm-produces-food-plasti...
| [deleted]
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| There is a general hope that science will save the world from the
| mess it is in. I think this have been part of the problem all the
| way trough the last century.
| pm90 wrote:
| Science and engineering have actually helped us address
| ecological challenges in a way we could not have imagined. It's
| science that allowed us to extract coal and stop depleting
| forests at incredible rates. Science that allowed us to extract
| oil and gas powering the economic growth and prosperity
| unprecedented at any other time in human history. Science gave
| us Renewables too... today, it's mostly a question of whether
| we have the political will to commit to mobilize on a large
| scale to convert to clean energy and end the inevitable climate
| catastrophe.
|
| If we survive intact, science will give us even better tools to
| deal with the problems we face. There is so much we don't know
| about our universe. We have barely scratched the surface of the
| earth, barely discovered what lies outside our immediate
| planetary neighborhood, barely understood the biochemistry of
| us even....
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Since 1950 lifespan and healthspan have increased on every
| continent. In every continent bar Africa wealth per person has
| increased as has education level. Seems to be working well
| enough so far.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Destruction of the earth has increased and even accelerated
| too. Forests, corals, and vertebrate populations have been
| decimated.
| collyw wrote:
| Overpopulation seems to be a root of a lot of the problems.
| yipbub wrote:
| This is disputed.
| collyw wrote:
| In terms of resources being used by by the planets
| ability to regenerate them it seems to be true. Too many
| people consuming too much. And that's with billions
| living very modest lifestyles.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Which people consume what?
|
| Many consume very little and a few consume far too much.
| You can't say the average/sum is the problem when a
| minority is ruining everything.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| Spot on!
|
| It's obvious that a 10x smaller human population would
| have a 10x smaller environmental impact (assuming the
| same behaviors and lifestyle)
|
| However, what is killing us is overproduction,
| overconsumption and a whole economic model devoid of
| sustainability goals.
|
| "Overpopulation" is used by some people as a diversion
| tactic.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Ask them how to solve the "overpopulation" problem, and
| you'll find that for many of the people who bring it up,
| it's a lot worse than a diversion tactic.
| anonymou2 wrote:
| Not if you accept that the earth is a sphere (and hence
| finite).
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| USA is not a densely populated country, so I wouldn't
| call it overpopulated. And yet, USA is one of the biggest
| polluting countries per capita (if not the top polluter).
|
| As far as I know, people in dense cities also pollute far
| less than other (less heating per capital, smaller
| households, less commute, more walking/biking...).
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| meh, we'll figure it out soon enough.
| bclemens wrote:
| > In every continent bar Africa wealth per person has
| increased
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
| barry-cotter wrote:
| GDP per capita is a measure of consumption. Consumption has
| increased on every continent bar Africa since WW2. People
| are a lot less poor.
|
| If you want an illustration of this look at this graph of
| the cost of 66 technologies dropping over the 1951-2013
| period. That's people getting richer.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/costs-of-66-different-
| tec...
|
| This is increases in broad based prosperity, the same kind
| of thing we think about when we consider how antibiotics
| went from cutting edge technology to ho hum, or how air
| conditioning made large parts of the world amenable to
| industrial civilization. You know the kind that reduces
| poverty.
| andbberger wrote:
| Life expectancy is decreasing in the states
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| That is a good point. Lifespan/health has improved and that
| is great. I refer however to the matter that many people
| would just sit back and read a half cooked news about a
| mushroom that eat plastic, <<with the hope science wil fix
| it>> instead of taking a real possible action within their
| reach to improve conditions on earth.
| eru wrote:
| It hasn't increase in Africa?
| TMWNN wrote:
| As barry-cotter said, no.
|
| From 1961 to 2015 (http://www.worldeconomics.com/papers/Glo
| bal%20Growth%20Monit...), real GDP per capita in Africa
| grew by 1.1% annually (!), compared to 3.9% for Asia, 1.7%
| for the Americas, and 2.2% for Europe. Growth from 2001 to
| 2010 of 2.9% is included in that figure; it was the _first_
| decade in that period in which Africa outgrew _any_ other
| continent.
|
| GDP per capita in US 1990 dollars (http://www.worldeconomic
| s.com/Data/MadisonHistoricalGDP/Madi...) for several
| African countries: Country | 1980 |
| 2008 -------------|------|------ Algeria |
| 3152 | 3520 Botswana | 1765 | 4769
| Cameroon | 1192 | 1212 Gabon | 6777 |
| 3811 Ivory Coast | 2041 | 1095 Kenya |
| 1051 | 1098 Liberia | 1162 | 802
| Madagacar | 1054 | 730 Malawi | 630 |
| 744 Mauritius | 4367 | 14529 Niger |
| 810 | 514 Nigeria | 1305 | 1524
| Seychelles | 4444 | 6109 South Africa | 4390 |
| 4793 Zimbabwe | 1295 | 779
|
| For every Mauritius, Botswana, and Seychelles there is a
| Zimbabwe, Niger, and Ivory Coast.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| I'm not confident it has. It hadn't as of 2000. Population
| growth in Africa has been break neck for decades. It's
| looking like there might finally be some major success
| stories there this century, like Ethiopia and Nigeria.
| eru wrote:
| Makes sense.
|
| I remember reading that Africa had some decent economic
| growth more recently. But yeah, the time before 2000 was
| rather bleak.
| nsoonhui wrote:
| Why?
| parksy wrote:
| Science can point the direction, but it takes the will of large
| populations of individuals to put in the effort to achieve any
| kind of positive outcome. That will has been continually
| undermined and attacked by anti-science rhetoric driven by
| economic and political interests, culminating in our modern
| "alternative facts" anti-reality bubbles so many people seem
| lost inside of.
|
| People need to move beyond hope into action, populations need
| to value education, learning, and the discipline to undertake
| massive endeavours if the knowledge gained through careful
| science is to have any value at all to humanity.
|
| "Sure but what's in it for me."
| Fjolsvith wrote:
| Global warming solved. Check.
|
| Next crisis please.
| evolve2k wrote:
| Paul Stamets received an Invention Ambassador (2014-2015) award
| from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
|
| The character Lieutenant Commander Paul Stamets on the CBS series
| Star Trek: Discovery was named after the real Stamets. The
| fictional version is an astromycologist and the chief engineer of
| the USS Discovery, and is credited with discovering a mycelial
| network that powers an advanced spore drive.
|
| Ref: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Stamets
| ZeWaren wrote:
| Mushroom can eat and decompose mostly everything. That's their
| role in the carbon based life ecosystems.
|
| I strongly suggest reading Paul Stamets' books. Mushrooms are
| fascinating.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| The character in Star Trek Discovery was named after him, also
| works with mushrooms, in a way.
| gus_massa wrote:
| The part about "eating" CO2 is a linkbait.
|
| The plants "eat" CO2, the mushroom eat plants and keep the carbon
| fixated for some time. Using the same accounting method elephants
| and whales also "eat" CO2.
| maga wrote:
| If I understand this correctly, mushrooms can eat the
| carbohydrates in oil and oil products. I wonder what happens to
| metals mixed in the oil, do mushroom suck those in as well or
| somehow filter them and leave in the ground?
|
| Old oil well and refinery sites in the developing world are full
| of ponds with a mix of water and oil/oil products that often come
| as a result of cleaning processes. Over time, due to evaporation
| and dust, these turn into asphalt like hard substances. Mushrooms
| could be a low cost solution to removing those over time, the
| slow speed of growth won't that much of issue as with fresh oil
| spills.
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