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Plastics recycling with microbes and worms is further away than we think (2018)
- scythe 7y agoTrash incineration with district heating is highly underrated. Not only does it save space and prevent methane emissions from landfills, it also lowers the urban cost of living. Unlike an enzyme, oxygen will destroy almost any kind of plastic. https://stateofgreen.com/en/sectors/district-energy/district-heating/waste-to-energy/ https://stateofgreen.com/en/sectors/district-energy/district...
- forgotmyhnacc 7y agoApologies if this is off topic, but I've never read such a well researched science article, citing many primary resources and papers. Well done.
- pen2l 7y agoOne should hope so, if it’s on ACS website. And their journals are also pretty reputable and have pretty high impact factors. :)
- carapace 7y agoTwo promising technologies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization Heat and pressure turn plastic back into oil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_oxidation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_oxidation Oxidize plastic in a molten salt bath, exothermic reaction, produces synthesis gas. "... destroys all organic materials while simultaneously retaining inorganic and hazardous components in the melt."
- konschubert 7y agoShould we maybe not try to recycle plastics, but just try to contain them in landfills? Our atmosphere is polluted with CO2, wouldn't recycling or incinerating plastics release even more of that?
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- SubiculumCode 7y agoCreating microbes for eating plastics seems like a recipe for a lot of goo....turning all our insulation, computer gear, and a billion other things in our homes into microbe food seems to me poorly thought out.
- userbinator 7y agoIndeed. Imagine termites, but at a far bigger scale... Don't forget all the very important medical applications of plastics where their inertness matters --- if organisms exist that can start eating away at those, and proliferate, it could cause even more damage to human life.
- WalterBright 7y agoThere was a recent scifi novel about this, I forgot the title. The plot was some anarchists discovered a virus that ate plastic, and released it all over the world, and caused the collapse of civilization. I don't see any big problem with burying the plastic in a landfill. Just don't dump it in the ocean.
- lostlogin 7y agoBurying it doesn’t really solve anything though. And while seemingly unlikely, dumps can be damaged. A recent storm damaged one in the south of New Zealand, spreading plastic down a river and along hundreds of kilometres of coast. https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/fox-glacier-landfill-washed-storm-now-littering-beaches-hundreds-kilometres https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/fox-glacier-land...
- WalterBright 7y ago> Burying it doesn’t really solve anything though. It solves it better than any of the alternatives. > And while seemingly unlikely, dumps can be damaged. Not only does it seem unlikely, it is unlikely. One case doesn't make it likely.
- leeoniya 7y agowhat about feeding cows seaweed? https://foodtank.com/news/2017/06/seaweed-reduce-cow-methane-emission/ https://foodtank.com/news/2017/06/seaweed-reduce-cow-methane...
- telotortium 7y agoInteresting in its own right, but has nothing to do with this article.
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- astazangasta 7y agoAs the article indicates, the problem is not necessarily technological but economic; trying to find a market-based solution to a notable market failure might be a sign of a pathology of our times.
- zukzuk 7y agohttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/539747/winners-take-all-by-anand-giridharadas/9780451493248/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/539747/winners-take... Great book on this very topic!
- WalterBright 7y agoThe solution to "internalizing the externalities", which is the economic jargon for such, is to tax it. If you want more of something, subsidize it. If you want less, tax it. Governments are good at taxing things. Taxing it aligns the economic incentives to produce the desired outcome, rather than banning it which leads to all sorts of distorted outcomes.
- onemoresoop 7y agoMore and more countries are banning certain uses of plastics such as plastic bags and one time use plastics. Do you think that’s gonna have a distorted economic outcome? I think we could step out of the economic bubble sometimes and do things that are good for the environment - without which there would be no economic activity possible.
- WalterBright 7y ago> Do you think that’s gonna have a distorted economic outcome? Yes. Typically, such laws embed exceptions. But the exception list is always inaccurate. For an example, when the EPA set fuel economy standards for cars, it exempted trucks. The station wagon disappeared and was replaced with the SUV, which was a "station wagon" configured to pass the EPA definition of a truck. Instead of banning plastics and having an ever-wrong list of exemptions, raise the price (via taxation) so other materials become cost effective.
- the8472 7y agoNote that the article only covers PET. Some polymers are much more difficult to decompose, e.g. PTFE.
- ReptileMan 7y agoBut their mass is orders of magnitude less than PET. We just don't use that much teflon relatively speaking.
- hammock 7y agoPET is by far the most common plastic, and it's not the most dangerous (to humans or the environment).
- a2tech 7y agoIs it really? I've just assumed all along that it won't be during my life time (outside of small scale demonstrations and special plastics). I think most recycling (outside of obviously simple wins like aluminum and steel cans) is a joke, designed to keep people busy and distracted while real polluters (like aluminum manufacturers who use gigantic amounts of electrical power mainly derived from coal plants and over the road truckers who are still fighting implementing 30 year old emissions standards) go about their business. We train children that recycling paper and yogurt boxes is going to save the planet when in reality consumer recycling is a drop in the bucket and amounts to basically nothing.
- southerndrift 7y agoWhat could possibly go wrong if those microbes inevitably get into the wild? This should recreate the situation with cellulose. At first, trees didn't decompose but nowadays, you have to prepare wood if you want to use it long-term. Plastic is used because it doesn't decompose. What good would plastics be if they wouldn't be stable anymore?