[HN Gopher] Bugs are evolving to eat plastic, study finds
___________________________________________________________________
Bugs are evolving to eat plastic, study finds
Author : achenet
Score : 189 points
Date : 2022-05-24 18:31 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (e360.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (e360.yale.edu)
| forgetfulness wrote:
| The coal formations we exploit today were formed during 60
| million years period in between the evolution of wood and bark,
| and the evolution of fungi and bacteria that could break them
| down.
|
| I wonder if wood had other noxious effects on biology back then
| as our plastics do today. Perhaps not.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| I spent a few minutes googling around expecting the researchers
| or funding to have heavy ties to the fossil fuel industry. This
| seems like something created to make people feel less guilty and
| reduce social pressure on using less plastic.
|
| But I didn't really find anything, so maybe a tiny bit of
| optimism is allowed.
| nick__m wrote:
| The last phrase of the article is either a clue or a pretty
| good deception: Last week, scientists revealed
| that the levels of microplastics known to be eaten by people
| via their food caused damage to human cells in the laboratory.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| We're eating plastic too. It's just harmful. I wonder if we will
| ever encounter a gene expression where it isn't.
|
| What a neat idea. Maybe there is a future where plastic vitamins
| intentionally trigger desired hormonal responses.
| t_mann wrote:
| Feeling somewhat vindicated vis-a-vis my middle school biology
| teacher after being belittled for asking whether this would
| happen.
| bmitc wrote:
| This article doesn't address microplastics. These enzymes degrade
| plastics, but what is left over? Does the problem of
| microplastics still occur such that the plastics only degrade to
| a certain size?
| ars wrote:
| If you "eat" a plastic for energy what's left is water and CO2.
|
| Cutting a plastic into microplastics actually consumes energy,
| so there's no way they are doing that.
|
| The atoms in plastic are just Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Carbon.
| (Chlorine sometimes, but rarely.) If you burn, consume,
| degrade, whatever you like, plastic, all you can get is water
| and CO2.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > Does the problem of micro-plastics still occur such that the
| plastics only degrade to a certain size?
|
| Long polymer chains unravel, so my guess is that the product,
| depending on whether they're aerobic or anaerobic bacteria,
| would be carbon dioxide and water, or methane. Presumably
| smaller grains expose greater surface area and would be
| digested faster.
|
| I spoke about the uncertainty around plastic pollution in this
| interview just the other day [1], and the wisdom that came to
| mind was George Carlin's on the role of humankind being here
| just to create plastic, perhaps so that some new life form can
| evolve [2].
|
| [1] https://www.thisishcd.com/episode/andy-farnell-perils-of-
| e-w...
|
| [2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=v3Yom-EuX0U
| hawksprite wrote:
| At this point humans are behind the curve. We should take this as
| a sign to adapt.
| chaosbolt wrote:
| Lots of species evolved to survive the cretaceous paleogene
| extinction event, it still doesn't mean you should go on throwing
| asteroids on people because eventually some mouse will survive
| and reproduce to eat the plant who survived and reproduced.
| rglover wrote:
| No. But it does mean not having a panic attack (not saying you
| are, just in general) and allowing psychopathic
| environmentalists to enforce ridiculous policy that, in
| aggregate, harms more than it helps. That nature evolves to
| give us a helping hand is an absolutely beautiful thing.
| diob wrote:
| Some others have mentioned it, but it could honestly be a
| worse scenario if it ends up making it's way into our food
| because of it (more so than it already does).
| rglover wrote:
| Good point. In that case we should observe animals that we
| eat and know to eat the bugs exhibiting this behavior and
| see if there's a noticeable change in their biochemistry.
| Would be curious to what degree the composition of the
| plastic is broken down by the bugs digestive system vs.
| what lingers indefinitely.
| sigg3 wrote:
| Nature doesn't evolve in order to do anything. Evolution is
| not a helping hand it's a process, the hollowed out
| chronological pathways in the ocean of death. And what eats
| plastic might as well eat us, or our foodstuffs.
|
| It is prudent to fear any invasive species.
| rglover wrote:
| > Nature doesn't evolve in order to do anything. Evolution
| is not a helping hand it's a process, the hollowed out
| chronological pathways in the ocean of death.
|
| By that logic lizards and bugs didn't evolve to change
| their pigment defensively to avoid predators.
|
| Easy on the pedantry, Francis.
| gnaritas wrote:
| aliswe wrote:
| > The first bug that eats plastic was discovered in a Japanese
| waste dump in 2016.
|
| That wasn't a bug! It was the bacteria Ideonella sakaiensis, if
| my Google-fu serves me right.
|
| Maybe the whole article (meaning the title as well) is off?
| masklinn wrote:
| The entire article talks about microbes. In the article's
| context, it's quite clear that bug is used in the colloquial
| meaning for that, as in "a stomach bug", not in the sense of
| insects or arthropods.
| wubbert wrote:
| They're phrasing it that way for sensationalism.
| windows2020 wrote:
| It's fascinating that evolution can occur so rapidly. Perhaps
| human genome editing will one day be required to help cope with
| novel externalities. Or, in some cases, maybe we'll get by with
| additional help from new enzymes.
|
| I had not considered the evolution of new biological functions
| may not require the death of the organism.
| triyambakam wrote:
| I'm not convinced that it can happen so rapidly. My suspicion
| is that the bugs already had bacteria or fungi in their
| digestive systems that were able to break down plastic, but
| that capability was latent in the fungi. We only notice it now
| because it's a helpful ability. Bringing out a latent ability
| isn't really evolution.
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| That's unlikely, considering these kinds of plastics simply
| did not exist before. Famously, scientists were able to study
| in detail the evolution of the brand new capability for a
| group of microbes living in waste water from a factory to
| metabolize nylon, a completely artificial polymer with no
| natural analogue. Moreover, scientists were inspired by this
| to try replicating these conditions in a lab, with a brand
| new strain of bacteria. I think it took a few decades, but
| they eventually found that that strain, too, evolved the
| capability to metabolize nylon, despite the required enzymes
| _definitely_ not being present ahead of time. Microbial
| evolution proceeds at blinding speed, so maybe you could
| argue this doesn 't apply to insects, but insets also have
| pretty short gestation cycles and at least some species are
| clearly experiencing dramatic selective pressure due to human
| activity, so I don't think it's at all inconceivable.
| hosh wrote:
| > "The next step would be to test the most promising enzyme
| candidates in the lab to closely investigate their properties and
| the rate of plastic degradation they can achieve," said
| Zelezniak. "From there you could engineer microbial communities
| with targeted degrading functions for specific polymer types."
|
| John Todd has been working on ecologies (in a vat) that can
| process waste for over fifty years now. Among his accomplishments
| was developing an ecology that can break down DDT in a matter of
| weeks, instead of years. The main thing he does is drawing from
| all five of the major kingdoms together, and have them self-
| organize around the waste being processed.
| (https://www.toddecological.com/about)
|
| With the self-organization, it's not always necessary to model
| and engineer everything.
| triyambakam wrote:
| I think it's more likely that the fungi in the bugs' digestive
| system have already had the ability to break down plastic, only
| it was latent and unnecessary until recently.
| tomxor wrote:
| Was a bit disappointed by the absence of insects. Maybe fix the
| title to "Microbes" rather than "Bugs".
| Sprocklem wrote:
| The usage of "bugs" to refer to microbes in the press release
| was quite confusing, although note that the study does cite
| work that finds some similar plastic-degrading microbes in the
| gut microbiota of some insects:
|
| > Certain species, such as larvae of Plodia interpunctella
| (waxworms), Tenebrio molitor (mealworms), and Galleria
| mellonella, were even found to have developed a flora that can
| degrade polyethylene (82, 83), polystyrene (84, 85), or both
| plastic types simultaneously (86). However, these organisms
| might have a highly adapted and specialized microbiome due to
| their direct exposure and breeding in specific plastic-
| contaminated habitats (82, 84), [...].
| omarhaneef wrote:
| "The first bug that eats plastic was discovered in a Japanese
| waste dump in 2016. Scientists then tweaked it in 2018 to try to
| learn more about how it evolved, but inadvertently created an
| enzyme that was even better at breaking down plastic bottles.
| Further tweaks in 2020 increased the speed of degradation
| sixfold.
|
| Another mutant enzyme was created in 2020 by the company Carbios
| that breaks down plastic bottles for recycling in hours. German
| scientists have also discovered a bacterium that feeds on the
| toxic plastic polyurethane, which is usually dumped in
| landfills."
|
| Would love to see the timeline and capacity plotted on a chart. I
| wonder how much we need to make it practical. 6x increase in 2
| years but did we go from decades to years?
|
| Hours on bottles sounds like we are getting there in speed but
| how much bacteria, and how quickly do they multiply and what do
| they do once they are done? I am asking because breaking bottles
| down in hours doesn't sound "promising", it sounds like we are
| there. Just pour that on the plastic island in the ocean! If we
| cannot, there must be something else going on that prevents us.
| konschubert wrote:
| I would rather see that carbon sequestered in a landfill or at
| least used in an incineration power plant. What is the point of
| just releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere with no benefit?
|
| One possible use case would be to release it into the wild to
| break down plastics in the oceans. But I guess that requires a
| bit of validation first...
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > What is the point of just releasing the CO2 into the
| atmosphere with no benefit?
|
| opportunity cost.
|
| Simply put the resources to try and otherwise aggregate,
| process, use the plastic may be better invested in other
| forms of sequestering.
| jaqalopes wrote:
| I am personally not up to speed on the scientific evidence,
| but I've heard a lot of people are worried about
| microplastics in the ecosystem, especially getting into human
| bodies via the food chain. Breaking plastics down completely
| could potentially fix this.
|
| And to me as an idealist taking the super-long view, I think
| a "leave as little trace as possible" approach to the
| environment is preferable to one where we keep creating and
| using something literally called a _garbage dump_.
| DANK_YACHT wrote:
| Pumping oil from inside the Earth and then converting it
| into plastic and then into CO2 has a much bigger impact
| than putting the plastic into a garbage dump. The oil to
| make the plastic came from a hole in the ground. A garbage
| dump is a hole in the ground. You've essentially done
| nothing. If you decompose the plastic into CO2, then that
| has a major impact on the atmosphere.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| The estimate I've seen is that 25 million tons of plastic
| are added per year. That much carbon is added to the
| atmosphere every 6 hours.
|
| Plastic in the oceans is not a worrying amount of carbon,
| it's just a worrying amount of plastic.
|
| Even if you burned every single kilo of plastic produced,
| that's still "only" 380 million tons a year, or about 4
| days worth of CO2.
| DANK_YACHT wrote:
| This is a good point I hadn't thought of. One adjustment
| to your calculations is that the CO2 emitted from plastic
| would weigh over 2 times the weight of the plastic due to
| the additional oxygen atoms, but that doesn't change the
| calculus substantially.
| krona wrote:
| Perhaps we should put plastic in to the landfills, and
| not the oceans?
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Absolutely, but if the choice is "burn" the plastic if
| you could (via an oxidative process like digestion,
| rather than combustion) in place in the oceans or just
| leave it there forever, then adding to the carbon in the
| atmosphere is not the thing to worry about.
| barbazoo wrote:
| A landfill also emits e.g. CO2 and CH3, it's not that
| it's a sealed process.
| DANK_YACHT wrote:
| The CO2 is from decomposing food, not from plastic. The
| CH3 can be harvested, or it will breakdown on its own
| after a decade.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Well it will be from plastic once a hypothetical plastic-
| eating microbe makes it into the dump.
|
| Also, what do you think CH3 breaks down into?
| moonchrome wrote:
| Oil deep underground somewhere in the middle of nowhere
| is not remotely close to landfills close to surface, next
| to understand waters and relatively close to cities
| oneoff786 wrote:
| What does break down really mean?
| [deleted]
| burlesona wrote:
| I would be very wary of the unintended consequences of just
| releasing such a thing into the ocean...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Shades of _Andromeda Strain_
| barkingcat wrote:
| Yup! those fiberglass boat hulls? dissolved in hours!
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Fiberglass is not plastic. It's glass, bonded by epoxy
| resins. I guess epoxies are a kind of plastic, but they're
| completely different chemicals than the polymers typically
| used in plastic items, and so likely would be immune to
| enzymes in question.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Maybe not the fiberglass... but those bugs might eat all
| kinds of other plastic.
|
| I mean could you imagine bacteria in the wild that enjoys
| snacking on PET, polypropylene or ABS? Society might
| literally crumble!
| FredPret wrote:
| There are so many plastic water pipes and buried cables
| spqr0a1 wrote:
| Plenty of fiberglass uses polyester resin rather than
| epoxy.
| sideshowb wrote:
| Unless the bugs evolve, but it's not like they have a
| track record of that /s
| DennisP wrote:
| If they're completely different chemicals, then it's just
| as likely that one of the many bugs already in the
| environment will evolve to eat epoxy. The plastic-eating
| bugs wouldn't have any particular advantage.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| cpeterso wrote:
| And then the ocean water and plastic-eating enzymes make
| their way into the fresh water supply, dissolving plastic
| pipes and appliances everywhere. Sounds like a J. G.
| Ballard novel.
| happyopossum wrote:
| PVC and ABS are used in water pipes, PET is used in
| bottles. It seems unlikely that these bacteria would have
| the ability to break down 3 completely different types of
| 'plastic'.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's a good thing evolution is a myth /s
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| Even widespread destruction of any one of those would
| cause massive destruction to humanity as machines, pumps,
| pipes, water plants, sewage plants, transportation
| systems, and more fail. Water touching plastic components
| are everywhere.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| HDPE is used in both plastic bottles and freshwater
| plumbing (under the name PEX).
| pawelk wrote:
| From the Wikipedia page on PEX (Cross-linked
| polyethylene)
|
| > It is also used for natural gas and _offshore oil
| applications_, chemical transportation, and
| transportation of sewage and slurries.
|
| So yeah, a bacteria capable of dissolving that shouldn't
| be released anywhere near an offshore oil pipeline.
| chefandy wrote:
| > It seems unlikely that these bacteria would have the
| ability to break down 3 completely different types of
| 'plastic'.
|
| FTA: "The research scanned more than 200 million genes
| found in DNA samples taken from the environment and found
| 30,000 different enzymes that could degrade 10 different
| types of plastic."
| Angostura wrote:
| Life ... uh - you know the rest
| spicybright wrote:
| Don't see why you couldn't supplement existing recycle infra
| till we understand it better.
|
| TBH, I'm sure any company would jump to be the first to show
| off plastic eating bacteria. Even if it's kept in a clean
| room and only eats employee's soda bottles from time to time.
|
| It would definitely open the door to more funding and
| research if hyped enough.
|
| We just have to make sure we know exactly how it propagates
| and how to safely handle that like anything else.
|
| Ideally you wouldn't want it to be a covid 2.0, of course.
| Something more like medical grade maggots that are engineered
| to never reproduce would suffice.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Life, uh, finds a way
|
| - Jeff Goldblum's character in jurassic park
| dylan604 wrote:
| Hmm, I might suggest reading/watching Andromeda Strain to
| see how well "clean room" reacts to unkown foreign
| substance. How much plastic is used in proposed clean room
| that the bacteria will feast on to weaken the "well laid
| plans" of the clean room's designers before escaping into
| the wild?
| [deleted]
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Probably convert the trash dense parts of the ocean to
| sparkling water from the emitted CO2.
| daveslash wrote:
| Not to mention what the bacteria produce as a byproduct of
| digestion. Do they excrete C02? That would acidify and
| carbonate ocean water. Do they consume 02 as part of their
| digestive process? That'd suck oxygen out of the water....
| Yes-- I would agree with - be vary wary indeed.
| trophycase wrote:
| CO2 would probably be one of the better byproducts
| dylan604 wrote:
| If they are carbonating the ocean water, then that'll go
| just fine with all of the "mountains" of sea grass sugars
| from the recent post on the subject. We're well on our way
| to making the oceans into soda water. Yet another example
| of the prophecies Idiocracy foretold.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| How will we add the caramel color?
| omginternets wrote:
| Oil spills.
| rini17 wrote:
| The plastic bottles must be shredded and held at optimal
| humidity/ph/temperature at least. Doubt any bacteria will ever
| be able to break down so quickly solid material in natural
| environment. Does not happen with wood and there was quite a
| longer evolution time available.
| philipkglass wrote:
| This study from 2013 was a revelation about how plastic is
| colonized and metabolized (!) in the ocean:
|
| "Life in the "Plastisphere": Microbial Communities on Plastic
| Marine Debris"
|
| Full PDF:
| https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/branco2014/files/2014/...
|
| First part of abstract:
|
| _Plastics are the most abundant form of marine debris, with
| global production rising and documented impacts in some marine
| environments, but the influence of plastic on open ocean
| ecosystems is poorly understood, particularly for microbial
| communities. Plastic marine debris (PMD) collected at multiple
| locations in the North Atlantic was analyzed with scanning
| electron microscopy (SEM) and next-generation sequencing to
| characterize the attached microbial communities. We unveiled a
| diverse microbial community of heterotrophs, autotrophs,
| predators, and symbionts, a community we refer to as the
| "Plastisphere". Pits visualized in the PMD surface conformed to
| bacterial shapes suggesting active hydrolysis of the hydrocarbon
| polymer. Small-subunit rRNA gene surveys identified several
| hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria, supporting the possibility that
| microbes play a role in degrading PMD. ..._
|
| The pictures are striking. It really looks like the plastic is
| being eaten. The 2013 study only covered floating debris, though.
| High density plastics that sink to the benthic zone arrive in an
| environment with much slower biological turnover and different
| organisms than the near-surface environment. This current study
| is interesting in that it sampled enzymes from different ocean
| depths, not just the surface, and found elevated degradation
| signals even at depth.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I for one welcome our plastic eating overlords.
| TheMerovingian wrote:
| /me starts wearing non-plastic clothing
| surfpel wrote:
| In my view this is the most likely way microplastics will be
| removed from the ecosystem, as there is neither the collective
| will to clean it up nor will there likely be a way to clean it up
| through human intervention within a reasonable timeframe.
|
| In a way, plastic pollution is like a rapidly growing and
| untapped market that could be taken advantage of by microbes. A
| whole microbial 'industry' could take hold to process the various
| types of plastics along with the waste products that are
| generated when broken down by other microbes.
| paulmd wrote:
| It's nice that plastics/microplastics will be gone but it's
| still very concerning in terms of their plasticizers and other
| impurities/contaminants making their way into the food chain,
| as those are potential endocrine disruptors.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| The humans better make collective will I guess. It's our
| responsibility.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Microorganisms that eat plastics will be great at first, until
| hospitals see breakouts of them. At least with insects, outbreaks
| are far easier to prevent
| sunjester wrote:
| mind the gray goo please.
| xwdv wrote:
| Given the amount of microplastics humans consume, could humans
| one day evolve to eat and digest plastic?
| nend wrote:
| What evolutionary pressure is giving an advantage to humans who
| can digest plastic? The article is talking about "bugs" as in
| microbes, bacteria. Not animals.
| soylentgraham wrote:
| My first assumption would be lack of food
| hanniabu wrote:
| Cancer and other health issues that make you either die early
| or affect your health/lifestyle enough where it becomes more
| difficult to find a mate to reproduce with.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I would imagine the more probable scenario is that, if plastics
| truly have a deleterious effect on human health, as many people
| say, then we will evolve to have more plastic-resistant bodies.
| But this can only really occur if we incur so much damage due
| to plastic that it broadly effects our reproductive potential
| at a relatively young age--a very high bar, and at which point
| it is probably much too late.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| It can work more subtly than that, but takes admittedly a
| much longer time. If being slightly more plastic tolerant
| give you a slightly longer reproductive window, then those
| genes will become more common. Simple as that.
| munk-a wrote:
| Yea - the thing that a lot of comments seem to be missing
| here is that evolutionary pressure comes in the form of mass
| die offs of those unfit for the new environment. If some
| people just have a higher incidence of cancer when they're
| 40+ there will be essentially no evolutionary pressure unless
| it's socially enforced (aka eugenics which is a really bad
| idea).
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't think we could possibly evolve fast enough to keep up
| with the rate at which we change the environment (downside to
| having giant brains -- we can change the world at an
| incredible rate, but our generations iterate at a glacial
| pace compared to, say, bacteria)
| dfxm12 wrote:
| There's no cause and effect like "my parents consumed a lot of
| plastic, so I will be able to digest them", if that's what
| you're asking.
|
| For humans to evolve to be able to eat & digest plastics, we'd
| probably have to be in a situation where we'd die or be unable
| to reproduce if we didn't. There's probably been some
| interesting research around gluten/lactose tolerance that might
| be related (or maybe not).
| masklinn wrote:
| > For humans to evolve to be able to eat & digest plastics,
| we'd probably have to be in a situation where we'd die or be
| unable to reproduce if we didn't.
|
| That's really not how it works. If you get dumped into a
| desert you don't become able to eat sand.
|
| You first need to luck out on the ability to digest the
| thing, before it can become an evolutionary advantage.
| Because we're so big and we evolve so slowly, the thing in
| question would have to be a micro-organism colonising our
| guts. But we consume so little microplastics compared to our
| size and the rest of our feeding that it's unlikely to
| happen.
|
| There are much better odds for large seaborne life e.g.
| seabirds, as not only do they ingest a good amount of
| plastics (macro and micro both) it accumulates and becomes
| deadly as they can ingest pieces large enough that they can't
| excrete or vomit the bits, and it fills their stomach.
| Likewise sea turtles for instance.
|
| Still not great odds though.
| eevilspock wrote:
| Rate of population evolution is proportional to generational
| turnover rate.
|
| Microbes can cycle through generations in minutes. Humans these
| days 2-3 decades.
|
| https://www.quora.com/Why-do-living-things-die/answer/Vas-Su...
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| Maybe not evolve, but perhaps bio-engineer? Brings to mind this
| awful story - people choose to evolve to eat anything, and it
| doesn't go well for all other life on earth:
|
| https://windupstories.com/books/pump-six-and-other-stories/p...
| wyldfire wrote:
| Not humans that have access to conventional nutrients. There's
| no selection pressure to encourage that kind of mutation.
| There's less and less selection pressure in general, these
| days.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Indeed. So many things that would have killed off our
| ancestors are now surviable and managable today, it seems
| likely to me that we are probably "de-evolving" i.e. more and
| more undesireable traits are surviving and being passed along
| to our offspring.
| leksak wrote:
| Depends on evolutionary pressure. If it improves your chances
| of procreation and survival.
| theonemind wrote:
| I'd guess we'd end up hosting bacteria that do that first. I
| think mitochondria themselves started that way with early
| cells.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It doesn't even need to be so intimate/permanent as our
| relationship with mitochondria, gut bacteria are just little
| mercenaries who are here to help with digestion. Maybe some
| of them will figure out plastic (although I suspect they'll
| produce some bad byproducts while doing so).
| convolvatron wrote:
| the bacteria really have an advantage with generation time and
| population and the lack of a society keeping the 'less fit'
| members procreating.
|
| but maybe they'll get integrated into our gut biome since we do
| eat the stuff
| dqpb wrote:
| > society keeping the 'less fit' members procreating
|
| Society is part of the ecosystem within which fitness is
| determined.
| Decabytes wrote:
| It's possible but unlikely. There really isn't any selective
| pressure on humans to do this. It's much more likely that we
| will figure out how to handle microplastics before our bodies
| evolve to digest them.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I believe this is how The Andromeda Strain escaped from the lab.
| Time to stock up on Sterno.
| markm248 wrote:
| George Carlin was right:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBRquiS1pis
| lnwlebjel wrote:
| I had to post the text because, it's just so good:
|
| "And if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the
| planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the
| earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice
| toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth
| probably sees plastic as just another one of its children.
| Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned
| from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself.
| Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to
| our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we
| here?"
|
| Plastic... asshole."
|
| -- George Carlin
| tomatowurst wrote:
| If he mentioned that today he would be cancelled. Already I
| see people anxious that plastic is being somewhat degradable
| because it hurts their narrative that plastic = evil.
|
| It's funny to me that we need to destroy more trees for a
| manufactured moral panic
| manderley wrote:
| What?
| tomatowurst wrote:
| If he mentioned that today he would be cancelled. Already
| I see people anxious that plastic is being somewhat
| degradable because it hurts their narrative that plastic
| = evil.
|
| It's funny to me that we need to destroy more trees for a
| manufactured moral panic
| titzer wrote:
| I like George Carlin, but this is a comedy routine and not
| philosophical advice. It doesn't mean we should go around
| stepping on daisies because "screw daisies, destruction is
| WHY WE ARE HERE!"
| bena wrote:
| It's comedy and it's asking a philosophical question. It
| can do both.
|
| He has another bit about how we're not really concerned
| about saving the planet, we're concerned about making sure
| the planet remains a hospitable place for us to live.
|
| Which, one again, is kind of a perspective shift. No, we
| cannot "destroy" the Earth, all we can do is fuck up our
| ability to exist on it.
| manderley wrote:
| Is this supposed to be some kind of new discovery?
| nemacol wrote:
| In the world of wild imagination - I wonder if we will, at some
| point in the distant future, have an ethical obligation to
| continue producing plastic to stop some species of animals from
| going extinct.
|
| Or will it be an arms race where we have to lace our plastic
| with pesticide to stop everything from being eaten the moment
| it comes out of the injection molding machine!
|
| Not likely but it is fun to have a few minutes of wide eyed day
| dreaming.
|
| Edit: Another thought - perhaps next to my organic compost I
| will have a plastic compost where I layer old clothing,
| cellphone covers, food packaging along with some coal tar or
| old motor oil to break down into a bin of ... hell I have no
| idea what.
| ars wrote:
| > we have to lace our plastic with pesticide to stop
|
| We already do that, it's called PVC, and the pesticide is
| just chlorine. Currently we do that to enhance UV stability,
| but it also works against microorganisms.
| ars wrote:
| > Edit: Another thought - perhaps next to my organic compost
| I will have a plastic compost where I layer old clothing,
| cellphone covers, food packaging along with some coal tar or
| old motor oil
|
| You are making the same mistake so many people make: Plastics
| are not all the same. Each one is different, and something
| that can break down one will not break down another. You can
| not combine them this way.
|
| > to break down into a bin of ... hell I have no idea what.
|
| Most of those things would break down into water and CO2.
| Unlike soil, or food, plastics don't have many types of
| atoms: It's mostly just Hydrogen, Carbon, and Oxygen.
| Plastics are very clean.
|
| You would be better off burning all those, the end results
| (the waste) would be identical, but you could capture the
| energy, instead of letting it get wasted as heat.
|
| Some plastics, like Nylon, have nitrogen, but there's very
| little. It would probably becomes ammonia and evaporate, or
| be released a nitrogen gas. Some, like PVC, have chlorine,
| which would also evaporate.
|
| Basically: If you did have some magical ability to compost
| plastic, you'd end up with water, with some harmless gasses
| being released.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| The earth is going to return petroleum to the biosphere, and
| humans are a part of that process. We are the bacteria that eats
| oil.
|
| The utility of plastic as a material that is very durable is a
| temporary state of affairs. As more of these microbes evolve
| traits that allow them to metabolize it, the utility of plastic
| will wane. It's primary selling point, as well as it's primary
| detrimental trait, is it's ability to withstand decomposition.
|
| Climate change due to carbon dioxide is a part of this process.
| Returning sequestered carbon to the carbon cycle necessarily
| causes disturbances in balance for a time. In the end, what you
| wind up with is more biomass, or more specifically, biomass that
| once existed that is now being reintroduced.
| elil17 wrote:
| There's a theory that most coal comes from a period after plants
| evolved lignin (the substance that makes wood woody) but before
| bacteria and fungi evolved the enzymes to break lignin down.
| Perhaps something similar will happen with plastic.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's been debunked.
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517943113
| infogulch wrote:
| Interesting. Their alternative hypothesis from the abstract:
|
| > Rather than a consequence of a temporal decoupling of
| evolutionary innovations between fungi and plants, Paleozoic
| coal abundance was likely the result of a unique combination
| of everwet tropical conditions and extensive depositional
| systems during the assembly of Pangea.
| elil17 wrote:
| Interesting. I guess that aligns well with how quickly
| we've seen bacteria evolve to digest plastics.
| whateveracct wrote:
| net zero information
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No; "Devonian-to-Permian woods infiltrated with fungi and
| possessing damage consistent with white rot decay or other
| forms of fungal degradation of lignified tissue" means the
| original theory simply doesn't work.
| everdrive wrote:
| I had no idea! Is this definitive, or just another
| supposition?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "The occurrence of these substantial coal deposits 200
| million years after the undisputed evolution of wood-
| rotting fungi sharply conflicts with the evolutionary lag
| model" seems pretty clear, as does the evidence of fungal
| decay in deposited coal.
| 323 wrote:
| At some point bugs will evolve to eat electricity directly.
|
| After all, that's what the electron transport chain does in
| respiration. So just cut the food middleman.
| surfpel wrote:
| That's exactly what plants, algae, etc. do during
| photosynthesis. Photons are self propagating electromagnetic
| waves, just another form of electricity.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The plot of a scifi book I read some years ago was a group of
| people wanted to destroy mankind but leave the Earth intact.
|
| Their method was to unleash a virus that ate plastic.
|
| Civilization ended because of our reliance on plastic.
| pornel wrote:
| It's be hilarious when these become widespread, and plastic will
| start rotting like wood.
| walleeee wrote:
| hilarious and super convenient, assuming there are no side
| effects nastier than inhaling and ingesting plastic as we all
| inescapably do now
|
| honestly sounds like a potential best case scenario
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| Be careful what you wish for. Semi-decomposed plastic flakes
| might prove even more harmful than microscopic plastic
| particles.
| stavros wrote:
| Yes! I can't wait for all my plastic
| keyboards/monitors/furniture/phones to start rotting.
| heurisko wrote:
| I've got wooden furniture. It doesn't rot, because it's
| inside.
|
| If plastic rotted like wood when exposed to the elements,
| that would be great.
| dwater wrote:
| Well, it would be great when we wanted to get rid of
| those items. It would be less great when we wanted to
| preserve those items, like the massive amount of goods
| and infrastructure that are constructed out of plastic.
| The insulation on power cables, for one thing, would be
| bad if it started rotting.
| fitzroy wrote:
| Not exactly the same, but rats eating the power cables
| has been a problem with cars built in the last decade
| because of the switch to soy-based insulation.
|
| https://www.thedrive.com/news/20878/rodents-are-feasting-
| on-...
| ars wrote:
| The already use PVC on cable insulation. If this because
| a problem then everything would switch to using that
| instead of a mix.
|
| Also, I've seen nothing to indicate these enzymes can eat
| nylon, which is the most common insulation other than
| PVC.
| alex_young wrote:
| Cars are largely plastic. They live outside. It would be
| interesting if say your bumper started rotting for
| instance.
| mperham wrote:
| They are plastic today because earlier they were steel
| and rusted. Thus the "rustproof undercoating" which some
| dealers offered. A mechanic said my 1990 Honda CRX was
| mostly rust after 6 years in the Northeast US.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Rust is an entirely different process though. You can
| mitigate it with sacrificial anodes, for example (that's
| how steel ships survive bobbing around in salt water).
| masklinn wrote:
| > I've got wooden furniture. It doesn't rot, because it's
| inside.
|
| Also because it's treated.
| ars wrote:
| Wooden furniture is not treated. You are thinking of
| pressure-treated lumber, which is not used for furniture,
| but rather for outdoor wood in contact with soil.
| masklinn wrote:
| Staining is a treatment. So is waxing, or varnishing.
|
| I'm sure some people leave their wood furniture
| unfinished but it's certainly not the standard, and not
| how you make them last.
| muti wrote:
| Completely untreated wood stored in a dry environment
| will last many years (hundreds? tens at least) without
| degrading. Look at woodworkers hoarding wood in
| basements, beams in old buildings, etc
|
| Staining/waxing/varnishing is used to protect the surface
| from wear and tear or change aesthetics. A varnished
| table that has been worn through in areas can be sanded
| back and look like new. The wood under worn spots won't
| be noticeably different.
| chaorace wrote:
| It would be great in some ways, but it would also have
| enormous consequences. There is _so much_ infrastructure
| that would need to be prematurely replaced -- so many
| consumer durables which will fail years or even decades
| ahead of their expected shelf lives.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised at all if we were to start
| concocting additives with antimicrobial properties, which
| would probably be _even worse_ for the environment while
| also preventing the beneficial function of post-use
| decomposition.
| hosh wrote:
| Or perhaps, our way of life changes and we live without a
| durable, non-biodegradable, lightweight, apparently-cheap
| material that enables a disposable, consumerist
| lifestyle.
| ars wrote:
| Most outdoor plastic is PVC which is not susceptible to
| this.
|
| > with antimicrobial properties
|
| The Chlorine in PVC does that.
|
| In general PVC is used where you want the plastic
| permanently, and HDPE is used for disposable plastic (and
| is edible to microbes).
|
| So basically we are fine, and no need to change anything.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| We often use plastic for things that need to be able to
| deal with environmental exposure, though, or to protect
| things that can't deal with that sort of thing.
|
| Things like water-pipes and cable insulators would be
| especially problematic if they started rotting.
| walleeee wrote:
| maybe it will compel us to build stuff that's more
| substantial, less deliberately disposable, and more easily
| repaired :)
| AlexandrB wrote:
| As with wood, I think this will only be an issue for goods
| left in life-friendly environments (like outdoors). It
| seems unlikely that your monitor would rot on your desk in
| your climate-controlled house, just like the desk itself
| doesn't rot.
| riffraff wrote:
| But the desk is also treated with various things so it
| doesn't rot, isn't it?
|
| And woodbugs still eat old furniture.
| bdamm wrote:
| Wood generally doesn't rot unless it gets wet. Wood is
| typically treated so that if it gets wet there is a
| mechanism to prevent fungi from eating it. Painting it,
| for example, causes the water to slide off the wood
| before the underlying wood can get wet. But even a tiny
| puncture of that paint will expose the wood to rot
| causing fungi that float in the air everywhere. Most wood
| already has rot causing fungi inside of it, all you need
| to do to activate it is add water.
|
| Woodbugs are another water loving creature. No water, no
| problem.
|
| _Dry_ old furniture can last a millenia.
| [deleted]
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The obvious side effect I can see is that plastic will no
| longer be super-durable and plastic goods used outside may
| now start to "rot". It's an interesting problem we're
| creating for ourselves by failing to properly dispose of our
| trash.
| beambot wrote:
| How would you dispose of trash in a way that doesn't
| somehow expose it to microorganisms?
| surfpel wrote:
| It doesn't need to not be exposed to microbes at all, but
| rather just not reach a critical mass / density to become
| a viable and readily available food source.
|
| Recycling and incineration come to mind, albeit
| impractical and environmentally harmful.
| ars wrote:
| If it happens it's easily enough solved by using PVC
| instead. And interestingly most outdoor plastic, that's
| intended to last, is already PVC.
|
| Regular non-chlorinated plastic doesn't last very long in
| sunlight, so it's already not used outdoors.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _The obvious side effect I can see is that plastic will
| no longer be super-durable and plastic goods used outside
| may now start to "rot"._
|
| When left outside, most plastic goods degrade after a few
| years of solar UV exposure. Not well enough to remove the
| plastic from the environment, but sufficiently degraded
| that it breaks and is no longer fit for purpose. Like an
| old plastic lawn chair that becomes brittle and eventually
| shatters when you sit on it.
|
| Indoors things are different. But indoors, wood furniture
| and whatnot can last hundreds of years.
| orblivion wrote:
| Well, maybe we could have "rotting" plastic for stuff we
| dispose of anyway, and "durable" plastic engineered around
| these microbes that we use for stuff we want to keep
| around.
|
| Or, maybe by then we could just rebuild whatever is rotting
| with our home 3d printer.
| hosh wrote:
| A different perspective is that rotting is the ecology's
| natural function for returning material back into the
| ecology for new life and new growth. We have suspended that
| process, so now the ecology is adapting to it.
| pvaldes wrote:
| If somebody could descent from a time travel machine and show
| us new revolutionary technologies like "ceramic", "pottery", or
| "glass"...
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