5 ms·

Here's hoping 2200 will be the century of the Polymerphage (some bacterium whose favorite food is polymers, i.e. plastics). It'll be interesting to see what ef

by gen220 3y ago

Here's hoping 2200 will be the century of the Polymerphage (some bacterium whose favorite food is polymers, i.e. plastics). It'll be interesting to see what effect it has on the whole food supply chain, as we're pretty dependent on the idea of polymers "keeping out" the things that normally eat our food before we'd get the chance to. Maybe we'll go back to only eating crazy fermented and spicy things.

kilolima 3y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_Found_in_a_Bathtub https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_Found_in_a_Bathtub Related, great Stanislaw Lem novel about the "Great Decomposition" of paper.
seabass-labrax 3y ago
Why would you hope that wide-spread polymer-munching bacteria becomes a reality? Polymers have been terrifically important in more applications than I could list, and whilst we could go back to 'only eating crazy fermented and spicy things' (or risk dying if we don't), there are plenty of useful things that cannot be that: cheap and widely-available medicines exist partly because of the ease of constructing sterile packaging for them. Distributing pills in glass tubes would be considerably more expensive than using plastic containers, and I am sure that there are some substances for which polymers are the only viable storage material. It feels to me like the mistake is abusing plastics, which are some of the longest living, most resilient materials, for disposable products. Bacteria that eats polymers might clean up our mess, but it will also destroy one of the key foundations of modern industry, and I don't think the world will just sit back and become pre-industrial again - we'll be back with something worse.
- gen220 3y ago
  It was more tongue-in-cheek, but I'm not sure it would (on net, and a long enough time horizon) be a bad thing if we had to go back to some combination of paper and glass – like you said, we mainly use polymers because they're cheap, not because they're the best material when you consider all the negative externalities. Plus, I guess I'm imagining the polymerphages would probably be more interested in soft plastics – grocery bags, styrofoam. The kind of stuff that already disintegrates pretty easily.
  - seabass-labrax 3y ago
    Thank you for the clarification. I agree that paper and glass are excellent materials in their own right. When you go back to books from the 60s, they make bold statements about hard plastics would be everlasting materials, immune to rotting, rusting or shattering - and for the most part, they were right! But for some bizarre reason people chose this 'everlasting' material to make disposable items, and once they realised that it was cheaper than materials that actually do degrade the cat was out of the (polyethylene) bag. I'm hoping that we can rapidly phase out our use of disposable polymers before these polymerphages start chomping through our indestructible wondermaterials like butter. We can keep the hard plastics for truly long-lived things like car bumpers... and try to stop automotive manufactures from making those disposable, too! Here's an idea to accelerate this: "Require by law standard glass bottle designs for all drinks of a certain class, like four or five types of wine bottle and likewise for soft drinks and spirits. Ensure that those designs are public domain. Delegate responsibility of defining the standards to an international organisation like ISO to encourage international adoption. The only losers would be a handful of companies with 'distinctive' or 'iconic' branded bottles (and realistically, people aren't going to stop buying Pepsi because it's in the wrong shape bottle), but the winners would be all manner of industrial bottle-washing and reuse firms, bottle-handling machinery makers and of course consumers getting lower prices. End result: widespread reuse of glass bottles, replacing one-use plastic bottles." What do you think? I think it's pretty uncontroversial, which is the only thing that seems likely to be passed within a premier's term and thus survive the path to the statute books in liberal democracies!
    - gen220 3y ago
      Yea, we should probably adopt these rules regardless of how close to the horizon polymerphages are. Until there's some crisis, though, I'm not very confident in a change. IMO, we should tax plastics manufacturers in proportion to the product of their biodegradability half-life and known toxicity. Alas, a pipe dream.

by gen220 3y ago

kilolima 3y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_Found_in_a_Bathtub https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_Found_in_a_Bathtub Related, great Stanislaw Lem novel about the "Great Decomposition" of paper.

seabass-labrax 3y ago

Why would you hope that wide-spread polymer-munching bacteria becomes a reality? Polymers have been terrifically important in more applications than I could list, and whilst we could go back to 'only eating crazy fermented and spicy things' (or risk dying if we don't), there are plenty of useful things that cannot be that: cheap and widely-available medicines exist partly because of the ease of constructing sterile packaging for them. Distributing pills in glass tubes would be considerably more expensive than using plastic containers, and I am sure that there are some substances for which polymers are the only viable storage material. It feels to me like the mistake is abusing plastics, which are some of the longest living, most resilient materials, for disposable products. Bacteria that eats polymers might clean up our mess, but it will also destroy one of the key foundations of modern industry, and I don't think the world will just sit back and become pre-industrial again - we'll be back with something worse.

gen220 3y ago
It was more tongue-in-cheek, but I'm not sure it would (on net, and a long enough time horizon) be a bad thing if we had to go back to some combination of paper and glass – like you said, we mainly use polymers because they're cheap, not because they're the best material when you consider all the negative externalities. Plus, I guess I'm imagining the polymerphages would probably be more interested in soft plastics – grocery bags, styrofoam. The kind of stuff that already disintegrates pretty easily.
- seabass-labrax 3y ago
  Thank you for the clarification. I agree that paper and glass are excellent materials in their own right. When you go back to books from the 60s, they make bold statements about hard plastics would be everlasting materials, immune to rotting, rusting or shattering - and for the most part, they were right! But for some bizarre reason people chose this 'everlasting' material to make disposable items, and once they realised that it was cheaper than materials that actually do degrade the cat was out of the (polyethylene) bag. I'm hoping that we can rapidly phase out our use of disposable polymers before these polymerphages start chomping through our indestructible wondermaterials like butter. We can keep the hard plastics for truly long-lived things like car bumpers... and try to stop automotive manufactures from making those disposable, too! Here's an idea to accelerate this: "Require by law standard glass bottle designs for all drinks of a certain class, like four or five types of wine bottle and likewise for soft drinks and spirits. Ensure that those designs are public domain. Delegate responsibility of defining the standards to an international organisation like ISO to encourage international adoption. The only losers would be a handful of companies with 'distinctive' or 'iconic' branded bottles (and realistically, people aren't going to stop buying Pepsi because it's in the wrong shape bottle), but the winners would be all manner of industrial bottle-washing and reuse firms, bottle-handling machinery makers and of course consumers getting lower prices. End result: widespread reuse of glass bottles, replacing one-use plastic bottles." What do you think? I think it's pretty uncontroversial, which is the only thing that seems likely to be passed within a premier's term and thus survive the path to the statute books in liberal democracies!
  - gen220 3y ago
    Yea, we should probably adopt these rules regardless of how close to the horizon polymerphages are. Until there's some crisis, though, I'm not very confident in a change. IMO, we should tax plastics manufacturers in proportion to the product of their biodegradability half-life and known toxicity. Alas, a pipe dream.