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Step 1. Invent microplastics.
Step 2. Have people ingest microplastics into their bodies.
Step 3. Evolve plastic-eating mushrooms.
Step 4. ???
Step 5. The Last of Us IRLThose two dudes in the fenced off city led pretty great lives in The Last of Us. Everyone else suffered terribly though.
Step 6: Become a closeted prepper
also closeted gays, I guess?
That needs to be step 3 at the latest, otherwise you won’t be prepared in time for step 5.
This is really bugging me. The article claims the fungus is an edible mushroom, but Pestalotiopsis (the spores on the right) is an endophytic, microscopic ascomycete. Not a mushroom and certainly not edible. So why is there a picture of Pluteus on the left? I can only imagine the author googled “Pestalotiopsis mushroom” and grabbed the first picture that came up.
I’ve seen this every year for a decade still not a thing
Plastic is also such an unspecific term. In regards to biodegradability there is no reason why PE, PP, PVC, PLA, PS and all the others should behave similiarly. Aside from some form of polymerization they are entirely different chemicals.
It would actually be scary to me if an organism evolves to rapidly eat all plastic. Imagine plastic rust… ugh, its just a terrifying idea. You think mantianing a car is difficult now, wait until you have to check the integrity of any “plastic” component
Wood didn’t rot in the carboniferous era. It used to build up in dense layers that became our modern coal veins.
At some point microorganisms evolved to exploit that vast resource. Now coal can no longer generate naturally and we have to keep wood structures dry or painted lest they be reclaimed by the Eafth.
I don’t know if there’s any reason it couldn’t happen to plastics. We’ve created the niche already, how long until something exploits it?
Quality research is slow my dude.
and sensationalist journalism of preliminary research is faster than light
That’s nice and all but these are fungi release CO2 into the atmosphere just like burning it would. It’s a bit counter-intuitive but burning it with carbon capture is less CO2 emitting.
Filtering out particles is obvious requirement and easier than filtering CO2. This is all a worse solution than to simply use less plastic. Taxing plastic out of existence is the real solution.
Preach.
Everyone wants a silver bullet to the problem. The silver bullet begins and ends with a corporate pocketbook.
Maybe we can silver bullet a few executive conspirators too?
But the plastic already is captured carbon. Burning it and then capturing it again makes no sense at all.
If you want to avoid the micro plastic, store it better, that’s still much cheaper.
Right next to the nuclear waste, I guess?
ironically nuclear waste is way safer, because we have extremely strict standards for handling it.
also most nuclear waste is just irradiated tools and clothing
Step 1: make everything from plastics
Step 2: create plastic eating fungus to get rid of the trash
Step 3: create serious damage to all parts of our society and technology, as plastic eating fungus spores get everywhere, including our food chain and your brain.
you eat fungus spores every single day nonstop. They are everywhere. Just cause this one eats plastic why would the spores be dangerous? (also it probably only eats one type so like 5% of plastic)
As with everything that sounds too good to be true… what’s the catch?
From other times something like this came up:
- The rate of conversion is too low
- It will only eat plastic if other carbon sources aren’t available
Probably more, this is from the top of my head. Also, this will still cause the plastic to eventually be converted into CO2 which is released in the atmosphere.
I see this every couple years (I think it’s the same). The fungus can only degrade very few plastic types, like Styrofoam.
Fantastic. Styrofoam is not recyclable like Polypropylene or even the Polyethylenes. Styrofoam ends up in landfills. I want it in mushrooms.
It’s not the magic bullet but it’s a fucking howitzer. Yas kween.
Styrofoam is technically recyclable, it’s just that there are very few facilities that handle it.
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So are we disappointed it’s not the perfect solution, so we don’t bother?
Sounds like we’re on the right track and someone can find a way to make money with this, or decide to dedicate their resources to it for society’s benefit.
We don’t bother because those few kinds of plastics aren’t the ones that are causing most of the polution
If something costs millions and only works in a limited space, at specific conditions, and recycles 0.2% of all plastics, why would anyone want to invest in it?
Because 0.2% of all plastics is still a lot of plastic.
Okay, so go out and pay millions of dollars yourself and do it. If you can’t, why do you expect anyone else to do that, with no hope of return, no hope of sustainability and such?
Because they should care about the future of the human race more than their current bank balance.
We’re doomed as a species.
Then again - go out, sell your house and do it. It’s great to be outraged when “nobody is doing it”. Yet everything requires money to do. I have a company producing humanitarian supplies. Do you think I would be able to do it / should I do it for free?
Do you want to worry about plastic rotting like wood does?
Yes. That’d be way better than having it kill animals and contaminate our food and water to the point where you basically cant avoid it. We literally want plastic to biodegrade. Just as long as it biodegrades after we are done using it. Which would be a wonderful problem to have compared to the current state of things.
There are hundreds of different plastics, each chemically different and created for different conditions. At least with heavy metal detoxification, fungi also tend to bioconcentrate what they eat. You can’t eat them growing off a hemlock tree without being poisoned by hemlock. Something will eat these and probably get a belly full of petroleum byproducts or whatever it metabolises that into.
Nooo fuck this is stupid!
Plastic in landfills is sequestered carbon! Why release it into the atmosphere?
Breeding bacteria to eat plastic will make plastic less useful as a material. Plastic is awesome because it DOESN’T rot. If we do release plastic eating microorganisms that might change. Whatever environmentalist think, we use plastics for a reason.
What we need is:
- Create plastics without oil and from sustainable energy
- Recycle plastics (invent better plastics and recycling processes)
- Stop throwing plastic in the oceans
- bury plastic in landfill to sequester carbon
What exactly is solved by introducing plastic eating microorganisms into the ecosystem? If microplastics don’t deteriorate, they’ll eventually become like sand and all the other shit. I swear to God this is the stupidest thing since solar fricking roadways.
PS: If you absolutely don’t want to recycle or bury plastic you can also burn it in the right circumstances. Instead of feeding it to mushrooms and releasing CO2 and methane into the air you get heat and can capture the CO2.
PPS: Microplastics is a qustion of regulation. And garbage dumping into rivers (like most of the plastic in the oceans comes from a few rivers) is a problem of economic idiocy. Neoliberal Ideology is produced in the US and exported into developing countries. Loans and shit demand privatization of all sorts of services. Including garbage removal. The result? People dump trash in the rivers because muh socialism is bad. Plastic in the ocean is a problem with very simple non-technical solutions.
Would be great if mushrooms don’t burn the carbon and turned it into some other compound using energy(maybe something like fossil fuels)
I did see something about new methods through chemical processes to turn more plastics back into the feedstock. Search “plastic feedstock” or “circular feedstock” or something. It probably requires some chemicals and heat and pressure or something, but that could be powered by solar or wind. It’s just a question of economics (money), investments, and most likely planning.
But really, burning plastic isn’t “nice” but fundamentally there isn’t a big difference between some mineral rock buried below the earth or plastic. And with carbon sequestration it’s a net positive - at least once we stop using fossil fuels and switch to a circular economy.
Now we need one that converts carbon dioxide to something that can be put away forever…
We have that. They’re called “plants.” If we just stop cutting down all the trees and poisoning the seas, plants will capture the carbon in the air and return it to the ground when they die. Or it will become part of the natural food chain.
So don’t worry, either we will stop destroying all of the ecosystems, or the plants can fix the planet after we’re all gone.
That doesn’t work because we added a shit load of Carbon we need to take out, we can also not just let the entire world become Forrest.
we can also not just let the entire world become Forrest.
We could make charcoal from the trees and bury the same amount we dug up, but as long as we burn coal for power it’s kind of pointless.
