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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 woul
by Roritharr 6y ago
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 6y agoSort of "the Rust" in "A piece of wood" by Ray Bradbury, applied to plastics ...
- faeyanpiraat 6y agoWe 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 6y agoSo if the current Mushroom OS has a plastic version > your bottle's, then the bottle melts away.
- leoedin 6y agoThis 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 6y agoNature shows us that stuff needs to rot away. If it doesn't rot, it's not sustainable.
- michalhuman 6y agoIf there's enough stuff, nature will find a way to rot it :)
- pilsetnieks 6y agoThat's why Mars is all rotten through and through.
- nextaccountic 6y agoWell, perhaps it is? We don't know if there is life in Mars. Or if there was life at any point of its history.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoIt indeed is - it's rusted.
- pilsetnieks 6y agoRot is decomposition of organic matter; rust is a chemical reaction, oxidation, in fact.
- hobofan 6y agoThat may have been a pun on rust the fungus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(fungus) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(fungus)
- TeMPOraL 6y agoFrom 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.
- brmgb 6y agoNature 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 6y agoThis is nonsensical. Rocks don't rot either.
- rataata_jr 6y agoOh my god, are you right. But they do weather away but at a much slower rate, they do turn into sand.
- eru 6y agoPlastic weathers away, too. And UV light breaks it down. People usually talk about shorter timescales when they want plastic to rot.
- eru 6y agoYou mean like granite?
- yc12340 6y agoThis 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.
- bigbubba 6y ago> 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.
- Matticus_Rex 6y ago> Plastic-eating mushrooms will always lose to ordinary dung-eating ones. Lose what? They're not competing for the same food.
- insickness 6y agoOn 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.
- adrianN 6y agoWood 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.
- hutzlibu 6y agowith the current fungi no, but with geneticaly altered mushrooms who can do fast plastic processing - well, shirts on your body contain sweat as well.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoGP 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 6y agoWell, depending on how fast it would spread, we might have enough time to replace things with not-yet-rottable materials.
- leafmeal 6y agoThe 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).
- bdamm 6y agoIt 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.