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"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,
by omarhaneef 4y ago
"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.
- burlesona 4y agoI would be very wary of the unintended consequences of just releasing such a thing into the ocean…
- nitwit005 4y agoProbably convert the trash dense parts of the ocean to sparkling water from the emitted CO2.
- barkingcat 4y agoYup! those fiberglass boat hulls? dissolved in hours!
- xyzzyz 4y agoFiberglass 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.
- spqr0a1 4y agoPlenty of fiberglass uses polyester resin rather than epoxy.
- sideshowb 4y agoUnless the bugs evolve, but it's not like they have a track record of that /s
- DennisP 4y agoIf 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.
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- spookthesunset 4y agoMaybe 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 4y agoThere are so many plastic water pipes and buried cables
- cpeterso 4y agoAnd 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 4y agoPVC 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’.
- aidenn0 4y agoHDPE is used in both plastic bottles and freshwater plumbing (under the name PEX).
- pawelk 4y agoFrom 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.
- hinkley 4y agoTyvek is also polyethylene.
- Angostura 4y agoLife ... uh - you know the rest
- ChrisLomont 4y agoEven 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.
- daveslash 4y agoNot 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.
- dylan604 4y agoIf 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 4y agoHow will we add the caramel color?
- omginternets 4y agoOil spills.
- sdenton4 4y agoBoil the ocean. Then the mountains of sugar will turn to caramel naturally, providing the desired color.
- speed_spread 4y agoI thought vaporizing oceans was only when trying to communicate with whales from space.
- goldenkey 4y agoThat's what the floating teapot is for. Every whale loves a cup of Earl Grey.
- SoftTalker 4y agoShades of Andromeda Strain
- spicybright 4y agoDon'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 4y agoLife, uh, finds a way - Jeff Goldblum's character in jurassic park
- lucumo 4y agoMichael Crichton: the guy who turned reddit-levels of understanding into books before there even was a reddit.
- dylan604 4y agoHmm, 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?
- spicybright 4y agoRe-read my comment > Something more like medical grade maggots that are engineered to never reproduce would suffice. We do this sort of thing already quite a bit. You could also make them unable to survive without some kind of cheap chemical liquid to suspend them in. As far as I know, it's actually a bit difficult to make new organisms that survive outside a petri dish and can spread like an unstoppable plague.
- 4y ago
- ABCLAW 4y agoThe most likely outcome is that the bacteria would be outcompeted by wildtype strains and fail to metabolize very much in the immediate term. It's more likely we'd see this type of microbe used in a bioreactor style setup where plastic slurry and growth medium are fed in for decomposition.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoWhy would they be outcompeted? Other bacteria have no reason to multiply when they can't eat the plastic they happen to be on.
- ABCLAW 4y agoBecause they're using energy making an enzyme that only produces a positive impact on fitness in the event plastic is the best food source in the area. In all other cases, a leaner genome that isn't wasting energy on a useless enzyme is reproducing faster. Even if plastic is heavily concentrated in the environment, if plastic isn't very energetically favorable to decompose, the environment will ALSO need to have a dearth of other available resources in order for the enzyme to provide a fitness benefit.
- pishpash 4y agoAnd the microbe would tend to coexist with plastic, not eliminate it.
- _0w8t 4y agoA good example of the situation is cellulose. Various animals can eat it. Yet trees continue to flourish for hundreds of millions of years since biological machinery to digest cellulose is very energetically expensive and slow.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoThat's a really bad example as plastics don't have defense mechanisms other than how hard they are to digest compared to other materials in the environment. Trees are alive and have multiple defenses.
- louky 4y ago"A BIOLOGICAL TIME BOMB? "In the shaft leading to the [ventilation] grille a mindless, groping mass of malodorous corruption was thrusting its way silently towards the surface. Buoyed up by bubbling foam it steadily rose. Single units in an obscene abrogation of normal order divided and made two. Two became four and four, eight. " https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2368220.Mutant_59 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2368220.Mutant_59
- sillystuff 4y agoI'm thinking that if these become widely distributed on land, that it might be more disruptive. E.g., highway overpasses collapsing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geofoam_bridge_overpass.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geofoam_bridge_overpass.j... But, it might still be a net good, even if some earthworks projects must be redone with other materials, if we can get plastics out of the food chain.
- Robotbeat 4y agoA lot of the drawbacks of plastics in the food chain are theoretical right now. Not saying we won’t find out it’s a major problem, but detecting presence of something (which is what most press releases of plastic pollution are about) does not necessarily mean it’s toxic. I think we should study this first, and try mechanical cleanup instead.
- pishpash 4y agoIsn't the bigger unintended consequence that it makes plastic not durable any more? In some sense it's the wrong problem to solve. You want durability in a material but want a toggle (or condition change) to trigger an alteration in its property when you're done with it.
- alex_duf 4y agoThis might lead to a retro-futuristic look, with wooden TVs and laptops
- bigbizisverywyz 4y agoYes, I can't wait to hear that my car no longer works because all the plastic "rusted"
- trashtester 4y agoStopping that will be harder than it would have been to stop covid from spreading.
- konschubert 4y agoI 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 4y ago> 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 4y agoI 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 4y agoPumping 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.
- barbazoo 4y agoA landfill also emits e.g. CO2 and CH3, it's not that it's a sealed process.
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- oneoff786 4y agoWhat does break down really mean?
- rini17 4y agoThe 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.
- hellotomyrars 4y agoThis is one of the things that bothers me about how PLA is marketed as biodegradable green plastic. Yes it can break down but the conditions for it are incredibly specific that only a handful of facilities exist to do that in. It is 99% marketing, and until or unless there is a real economic incentive to actually deliver on that marketing it will continue to be legally possible but practically non-existent.
- vintermann 4y agoWell, plant cellulose has been around for more than 2 billion years, and it still takes an impressively long time for microbes to break it down.
- Akronymus 4y ago> German scientists have also discovered a bacterium that feeds on the toxic plastic polyurethane, which is usually dumped in landfills." Could that be used to strip polyurethane off of paintings, or would they attack the painting itself as well?