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I feel like I've been reading this story for well over a decade at this point. On one hand this is great news and I would think almost inevitable with enough ti
by kypro 5y ago
I feel like I've been reading this story for well over a decade at this point. On one hand this is great news and I would think almost inevitable with enough time, but as layperson on this subject plastic eating microbes still fall into the category as nuclear fusion and anti-ageing medicine -- something just around the corner, but always a decade or so away.
Is this actually an entirely new discovery in the sense that this was an unexpected find, or is this just another find of many showing the same trend? And what kind of time frames should I be expecting before plastics are considered biodegradable like other natural materials?
I have to admit, the idea that plastic could become biodegradable in a few decades changes my perception of their use a little and I'm not sure this is a positive thing, especially if this is something that isn't likely to happen for a very long time.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hackarimoo 5y agoBiodegradable or not means much less than it sounds like, if micro- and nano- plastics still bioaccumulate in animals disrupting their endocrinology
- throwawayboise 5y agoBiodegrade does not mean "chew up into tiny pieces" it means chemically break down. Biodegraded plastic would end up being much simpler molecules, probably CO2 and methane mostly.
- mlyle 5y ago> Biodegradable or not means much less than it sounds like Long-term stability of plastics means that the problems from microplastics today could still be problems in a million years. It's worse than nuclear waste in that regard: at least the hottest isotopes degrade quickly and the less hot still halve on a predictable schedule. Currently, for a lot of plastics, all you've got removing them from circultion are UV degradation and weathering processes, along with processes burying them in sediments for unknown periods. But the microbial environment could at least confine this to be a very bad problem for our time, instead of forever.
- hanniabu 5y agoCompanies will just create bacteria resistant plastic and continue to fuck us
- freemint 5y agoAnd nature (maybe with our hand) will catch up. It's playing cat and mouse with a mouse that stands still once the plastic is produced.
- trulyme 5y ago"and continue to provide what we want", you mean? It's not the companies that are the (sole) problem.
- soperj 5y agoI don't know. For a while the major toothpaste companies were putting plastic beads in toothpaste as grit. I would say that's a company issue.
- heurisko 5y agoIt's the 21st century version of lead in makeup. I'm certain in 100-150 years it will be viewed in the same way. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian-era_cosmetics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian-era_cosmetics
- hackarimoo 5y agoThe problem is the system. You can expect one or two persons to act rational, but at the scale of 100s, 1000s, millions, it's just crowd dynamics following statistical processes, just as the market itself is. If we want anything to change, we need systemic changes to what behavior is incentivized by the world we live in - and I can not think of anything that would do the job other than abolishing or at least heavily restraining capitalism.
- dclowd9901 5y agoIt is with complete ignorance that I'm asking this, but isn't it the case that, at a molecular level, plastics are just like any other material? That they can be broken down to such a point that their molecular composition no longer matters, and they are, once again, "raw" molecules by which other things (even living things) can be composed? What does "accumulation" even mean in that context?
- mlyle 5y agoAnything can be broken down, but many things are effectively stable in the environment-- including in organisms-- for nearly forever, because nothing breaks them down or the rate of degradation is low enough that it doesn't matter. What I believe he's saying is: even if it looks like bacteria may eventually begin to chip away at the microplastics problem, we still face the prospect of having them accumulate for decades or longer in bigger lifeforms and cause problems. (But at least today's plastic releases wouldn't be a problem forever). That is, this improves the situation greatly but doesn't remove any of the nearer term suck.
- politician 5y agoOn long enough time scales, the all of the plastic on Earth will be incinerated, regardless of whether microbes evolve to make use of it sooner.
- ars 5y ago> we still face the prospect of having them accumulate for decades or longer in bigger lifeforms and cause problems. That's not really accurate - if an organism can breakdown (digest) plastic to any extent, it can do so all the way to water and CO2. There are a few exceptions: Teflon and PVC are the main ones, but most plastic is pretty simple, and once digested it will not accumulate.
- mlyle 5y ago> That's not really accurate - if an organism can breakdown (digest) plastic to any extent, it can do so all the way to water and CO2. I can't breakdown most plastic to any significant extent. If I ate small pieces of plastic, some would be excreted in poop and some would accumulate in my body. If I ate animals that have eaten small pieces of plastic, being high up the foodchain, this may be exacerbated (biomagnification). If bacteria learn to degrade plastic--- that may improve the situation for my grandchildren but it probably doesn't reduce how much is accumulating in marine life now that much.
- ch4s3 5y agoSingle celled organisms don't have endocrine systems, if they are able to break plastics down and metabolize them, then that's the end of those big thorny molecules.
- bena 5y agoWhen I saw bugs, I thought "that's new". But apparently it's just bacteria, which is old news. Or, as you put it, another find showing the same trend. I think it would be difficult to pinpoint how long it will take for plastic to become biodegradable. Evolution is a sporadic process.
- amelius 5y ago> something just around the corner, but always a decade or so away. Is there a word for it?
- dustymcp 5y agoSoon TM
- defterGoose 5y agoNeventual?
- thenanyu 5y agovaporware
- rubyn00bie 5y agoThis video I recently watched, and was well recently made, from Anton Petrov, covers some novel new techniques to create self reproducing cells which might actually be a great candidate for cleaning our oceans. It's at least a _lot_ closer than I ever imagined it would be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnivFz2rbM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnivFz2rbM4
- tasty_freeze 5y agoTo me this sounds like easy cynicism. Is it really your expectation that evolution happens on the same time scale as Latest Software 2.0?
- scrooched_moose 5y agoIt's a mixed bag and I'm not sure which side wins out. On one hand, cleaning up plastic pollution is a fantastic thing. On the other, there is a tremendous amount of carbon currently locked up in plastics which is for all practical purposes inert. Releasing that into the atmosphere is yet one more thing that will accelerate climate change. It also will require a massive shift in our material usage. Bacteria breaking down that plastic bag in the ocean is great. Bacteria setting in on construction, medical devices, or your NES is not so ideal.
- asow92 5y ago> It also will require a massive shift in our material usage. Bacteria breaking down that plastic bag in the ocean is great. Bacteria setting in on construction, medical devices, or your NES is not so ideal. That's a great point, and one that may make material planners think twice about using plastics over other materials like metals, woods, or plasters in their projects.
- louky 5y agohttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2368220.Mutant_59 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2368220.Mutant_59
- tlholaday 5y agoKit Pedler & Gerry Davis overwrite compellingly, if the Goodreads excerpt is representative.
- outworlder 5y ago> over other materials like (...) woods, Plenty of bugs eat wood. From fungi to termites. And yet we can still use wood for construction.
- asow92 5y agoSome woods like cedar are more resistant. Some kinds of ash are more or less susceptible to beetle damage. It all depends of the application and environment, just like plastics might in this scenario.
- rhacker 5y agoI'm also still waiting for my shipment of 90% efficient solar panels.
- jdmichal 5y agoConsidering that black-body absorbers for water heating run around 75%, you might be waiting for a while? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_heating#Energy_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_heating#Energy_pro...
- philipkglass 5y agoIn the extreme limit, for a multi-junction solar cell with an infinite number of layers, the efficiency limit is 68.7% for normal sunlight, or 86.8% using concentrated sunlight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limi... There will never be a shipment of 90% efficient solar panels. Unlike fusion, nobody has even predicted that 90% efficient solar panels might be available in a decade. If this is just a hyperbolic way of saying that people predict more efficient solar panels all the time -- well, yes they do. Many of those panels actually make it to market. The first terrestrial solar panel to reach 20% efficiency was introduced in 2012: https://newsroom.sunpower.com/press-releases?item=122881 https://newsroom.sunpower.com/press-releases?item=122881 Today, a half dozen manufacturers offer modules over 20% efficiency. And the newer entrants are all doing it with simpler and more affordable cell designs than SunPower used in 2012.
- snarf21 5y agoI don't know enough about this subject but does anyone know if this bacteria is harmful to humans? Like could it eat the micro-plastics in our water and food and still be safe if we later ingested it?
- saalweachter 5y agoThe real answer is "no one knows", but my intuition would be that you wouldn't expect them to be particularly harmful. One of the advantages of consuming a novel food source like plastic is a relative lack of competition; this means you wouldn't expect there to be a lot of benefit for producing toxins to kill off competitors for your foodstuff. (For an analogous case, the microorganisms that can grow on maple syrup don't tend to produce toxins; there's not much of a need when their food will kill most bacteria.)
- ShrigmaMale 5y agoFeels like nobody considers that these could make plastic much less durable. If we create them they should be unable to survive at all outside extremely specific conditions so they can't spread.
- MayeulC 5y agoOh, they will certainly evolve to eat plastic by themselves at some point. Some already do. During carboniferous, microbes couldn't eat lignin from wood. Now we have fungi and all sorts of bacteria (including those termites host) that can make use of it.
- thrashh 5y agoEvery time I rake leaves or clean up after my plants, I think of the sheer amount of trash that plants create, from discarded leaves to flower petals. We’re fine with it of course because something figured out how to eat the trash.
- MayeulC 5y agoI think that's a key point: you need to leave enough trash that it's evolutionary interesting to make use of that resource. It needs to provide a competitive advantage. Not sure we're here yet, though some environments like dumps could cross that threshold. Oh, and time. Life is more diverse now than it was during carboniferous, but it still took millions of years for bacteria to learn how to digest lignin/wood.
- gonzo41 5y agocarboniferous, that period didn't have CRISPR. We could give that evolutionary path a little push along if we like.
- smsm42 5y agoI'd rather we didn't mess with that stuff. You can't uncreate a microorganism, we have no realistic way of controlling them (see under MRSA) and our world is made of plastic. I'd rather not have it fall apart because some lab assistant made an oopsie.
- neltnerb 5y agoIt is possible someone is trying to develop these commercially (likely, I'd guess) but if they're just observing natural mutation and reporting it I'm not sure there needs to be a timeline. They have evolved, but there aren't a ton of them yet. It's not very surprising to me that this happened. Just consider how many times covid has mutated and then extrapolate out to how much genetic diversity is likely in play. I do think if it were being done by humans in a lab intentionally even directed evolution would work this out in a few years. In the environment they're competing against other microbes that eat sugars and other easier to grow on stuff so I'd expect these to be a niche species.