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Fungus breaks down ocean plastic
- dilawar 2y agoImagine bacteria and fungi breaking down all the plastic into CO2. Don't know which is lesser evil: plastic as it remaining in the environment or more CO2 but less plastic?
- Ma8ee 2y agoCompared to the amount of CO2 we add to the atmosphere continuously (still!), I’m quite sure that the CO2 from all the plastic in the ocean is insignificant. edit: just to make sure that my guess wasn't too far off, I looked up some numbers: we relase about 8 million tons of plastic into the ocean every year. Burning 1 units of plastic produces 3 units of CO2, giving 24 million tons of CO2 if all that plastic were broken down by fungus (or incinerated). We release around 35 billion tons of CO2 every year from burning fossil fuel.
- webprofusion 2y agoSo don't release it directly to the atmosphere, it has industrial uses. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435117300223 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...
- gitaarik 2y ago[flagged]
- scrollaway 2y agoThe O in CO2 is for Oxygen, it’s not a zero. I get the sensation you might not know what you’re talking about if you don’t know such a basic thing.
- swagasaurus-rex 2y ago> breakdown of PE by P. album occurs at a rate of about 0.05 per cent per day At what rate does all the plastic in the world start to soften and crumble?
- sage92 2y ago``` total_plastic = 8.3e9 # total plastic in tons degradation_rate = 0.05 # degradation rate per day in percentage # Calculation of daily degradation in tons daily_degradation = total_plastic * degradation_rate / 100 # Estimation of time taken to degrade all plastic in days total_days = total_plastic / daily_degradation # Conversion of total days to years total_years = total_days / 365 # Print the result print(f"It would take approximately {total_years:.2f} years to degrade all the plastic.") ``` It would take approximately 5.48 years to degrade all the plastic.
- akie 2y agoThat’s… wrong? The amount of plastic would decrease every day (assuming no new production), so 0.05% of that amount would not be a constant number. Your daily_degradation is incorrect.
- IanCal 2y agoIt's also not reasonable to assume that a growing organism will break down a smaller amount of stuff every day.
- jazzyjackson 2y agoit's chatgpt of course it's wrong
- lanternfish 2y agoReview exponential functions.
- arresin 2y agoYeah. Use the compounding interest rate function with the eat/expel/eat period.
- tredigi 2y agoI hope you don't estimate the earnings from your investments that way. But +1 on f-string use.
- userbinator 2y agoPE is a very-long-chain saturated hydrocarbon, so it would not be surprising if this fungus will also be able to "burn" other petroleum products too. Finding plastic-degrading organisms is urgent. Is it?
- gitaarik 2y agoDo you have any other genius ideas on how to deal with an exponentially growing waste product that doesn't seem to easily break down naturally and gets shredded into smaller pieces eventually ending up in the environment as micro particles and get into our food and bodies and affect our and our environment's health?
- userbinator 2y agoand affect our and our environment's health? Zero concrete evidence. Lots of vague handwaving and paranoia.
- gitaarik 2y agoWell everything is relative of course, but from a human perspective, an environment can be "unhealthy", and that is what we ultimately care about, right?
- ImPostingOnHN 2y agoIt seems like only a matter of time before this spreads uncontrollably, consuming all plastic in the world.
- ssijak 2y agoWhy dont they grow them st land fills
- can16358p 2y agoWhile it's a great discovery, I'm concerned that this will be abused by plastic manufacturers as an excuse to produce more plastics and talk about "how harmless" plastics are as "they break down organically by fungi" anyway.
- MOARDONGZPLZ 2y agoDo you get the sense that the plastic manufacturers are limiting production in any whatsoever now?
- StimDeck 2y agoExactly. If anything, they have every plan to increase production already.
- thiagocsf 2y agoAs long as we keep buying stuff wrapped in plastic, someone needs to keep making more of it.
- littlestymaar 2y agoOf course, I buy things wrapped un plastic because I love plastic and not because there's no available alternative … So convenient to blame the consumer.
- throwaway48476 2y agoMost people fail to understand how useful plastic is because they never lived in a time before plastics.
- littlestymaar 2y ago“most people fail to understand how useful leaded gasoline is because they never lived in a time without it”
- thesnide 2y agoLife finds a way.
- CHsurfer 2y agoIs this process generating the microplastics? If so then maybe it’s not such a great way to post process our litter.
- riffraff 2y agoThe article says carbon contained in the plastic is released so it seems it's a molecular level breakdown. It'd be like rust on an old nail, eating it's way from the outside.
- mlsu 2y agoPlastics are a store of energy. They could be used to sustain life, once evolution catches up. That's why I don't feel particularly bad about throwing plastic into the landfill. I'm taking an energy loan out against evolution; eventually, evolution will recoup it.
- vlovich123 2y agoNo guarantee that the evolution that takes care of plastics results in a more livable world for humans though (not to mention plastics that we don’t want crumbling suddenly having issues)
- selcuka 2y agoWhat is so special about humans? I, for one, welcome our plastic eating overlords.
- colordrops 2y agoWhat is so special is that we are them. Until we are no longer humans, we should look out for our own. Unless you have somehow overcome self-preservation and suffering. I haven't. I never understood this "what is special about humans" argument. Obviously we should do our best to be good stewards of the environment but that shouldn't ignore our own survival.
- mlsu 2y agoYes, certainly. The value of plastics is incalculable. (Personally, if there were a plastic-eating bacteria introduced tomorrow, I would be dead within the week, rather than dead within a month or two like most people). I don't really feel bad about plastics, mostly I feel bad about the egregious stuff -- car tires, fishing gear -- stuff that does not end up in the landfill most of all, because it cannot be segregated from the environment.
- n0n0n4t0r 2y agoThat's funny: do you know why there is petroleum at all? When plants evolved to have line, they where able to become trees. Sadly, no bacteria was able to decompose linine. It took a looooot of time (I don't remember how much, but a whole lot). So trees wouldn't decompose when falling down, so they would grow on top of each other, burying the oldest one more and more. And the end, you have wood very deep, under a lot of pressure and I'm a hot environment: it created the petroleum. So what you're expecting can take millions of year and it would be ironic if petroleum had to be twice in such a cycle.
- localfirst 2y agoi remember plastic bags would also disintegrate over long period of time
- anukin 2y agoI have heard these kind of news for a while now. Fungus breaks plastic. Worms eat plastic. Nothing ever seems to happen to plastic though. Why?
- anon123987456 2y agoBecause then another question arises: what breaks down the fungus? Edit: This question is serious. If this fungus would eat all that plastic, this would introduce a huge amount of new life in the ocean with unknown effects to the ecosystem. We would replace one problem with another.
- zoky 2y agoQuis funguset ipsos funguses?
- HenryBemis 2y agoI had the EXACT same thought. If the fungi eats plastic, what eats the fungi? I find this a veri legitimate question. I assume/hope that it doesn't turn/get converted to a plasticofungi that cannot be eaten by fish/etc. This would only reshape the pollution, not eliminate it. I didn't find an answer to this in this specific article; I hope it will be covered somewhere else.
- gitaarik 2y agoWell, the fungi "breaks down plastic", which means that it converts it into other types of molecules. Just plants use C02 + H20 + sunlight in photosynthesis to convert it into O2 + glucose. If we could break down the molecules ourselves we would have done it already, but it's not easy to do that. That is why we benefit from these natural occurring organisms that break them down and leave a more useful byproduct (to us). Although nano technology can eventually give us the ability to do this in a controlled way.
- anal_reactor 2y agoPlastic-eating whatever evolves in environments of extremely high concentration of plastic and unavailability of anything else. As soon as anything else is available, the plastic-eating thing evolves back to eating something else. If you had nothing to eat you'd also give plastic a try, and you could miraculously be the chosen one who can break down plastic, but you'd switch back to normal food as soon as possible.
- jcynix 2y agoOK, this fungus breaks down polyethylene, which might even find a second use as fuel in combined heat and power stations. But a large part of microplastics found in aquatic environments is abraison from car tires. So we need more and different fungi ... [sciencenews](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/car-tires-and-brake-pads https://www.sciencenews.org/article/car-tires-and-brake-pads...) [theconversation](https://theconversation.com/how-your-car-sheds-microplastics https://theconversation.com/how-your-car-sheds-microplastics...) [springeropen](https://microplastics.springeropen.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s43 https://microplastics.springeropen.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s43...)
- hinkley 2y agoAnd polyester from clothing. I don’t know what the fuck Patagonia thinks they’re doing switching to recycled polyester to make their clothing more environmental.
- shoulderfake 2y agoIts cheaper.
- bombela 2y agoMoney. They are making money. That's what it is, and you know it.
- therobots927 2y ago
- jdthedisciple 2y agoI have increasingly found myself thinking lately that perhaps it is fungi of anything in fact, that are able to provide the ultimate solutions to many of the World's biggest issues but even to treating certain diseases ...
- lynguist 2y agoIt’s not necessarily only good news. The golden age of plastic that we live in allows for food packaging that cannot be penetrated by microorganisms, which in turn increases shelf life of some produce from like half a week to multiple weeks. Once there are more such microorganisms in the next one hundred years we might have problems packaging our food. And plastic is in essence a multi-step “life process” of crude oil: Instead of incinerating heating oil for our houses, plastic lives a first life as packaging, and then gets incinerated and provides heat over communal heating – ideally. Of course, the problem is when it ends up in the water instead of being burned.
- mibsl 2y agoThere is still glass (and silicone?).
- xxs 2y agoglass is a lot heavier and way more expensive (glass is made out of silicon). There are a lot of different types of plastics the common ones use in packaging are LE-PE (light density polyethylene) and PP (polypropylene). They are both thermoplastic, they melt then heated. Silicone is also a form of plastic, it's thermoset (it chars effectively and it doesn't melt) - and it's awfully expensive. There are other plastic, e.g. nylon (PA6) that are still expensive but much cheaper than silicone.
- mrob 2y agoSilicone rubber has high gas permeability. This makes it good for contact lenses, but bad for food packaging.
- konschubert 2y ago> the problem is when it ends up in the water instead of being burned And that is entirely a question of waste management. The plastic straw that the EU just outlawed would never have ended up in the ocean. Meanwhile, plastic gets dumped into rivers by the truckloads - outside the EU.
- 2y ago
- pif 2y agoI can't wait for the Australian border to patrol the oceans in order to block this new "microorganism that could pose a serious risk to their ecosystem and blah blah blah..."
- slifin 2y agoFeel like I hear this story a lot Starting to think it's being over reported because it could be poorly interpted as an excuse to keep producing ocean plastic
- karaterobot 2y agoDo you also hear about legislation or community efforts related to reducing ocean plastic being halted as a result of this news? I have not.
- ogou 2y agoChemotrophs (specifically chemolithotrophs) are bacteria that thrive near super heated deep sea vents. They can consume (oxidise) iron, sulfur, and a whole range of other elements and compounds we consider toxic or immutable. In return they produce a kind of sugar that tube worms consume. I hope that future plastic bio-mitigation research focusses on energy transformation and production like this. Instead of thinking of an impossible zero sum end result (destroy it), it's more future oriented to use plastic transformed into something new and consumable as an energy source. Think like a tube worm to solve this problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotroph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotroph
- exe34 2y agoIf it exists for more than 2 seconds, there's going to be a fungus that will eat it.
- andy_ppp 2y agoOh no, my headphones/camera/polyester clothes have caught Ocean Plastic Eating Fungus and are melting… seriously though is this a real concern?
- 0x1ceb00da 2y agoGeorge Carlin was right. The planet will integrate plastics into its ecosystem.
- palijer 2y agoThere have been scientists with far more accreditation in this field than a comedian who've been researching this exact thing for decades.
- pfdietz 2y agoMicroplastic accumulation in the body makes me wonder if natural biopolymers could have the same problem. We cannot break down cellulose; what happens to micro-cellulose in the body? Or lignin, which is even more refractory to decomposition? Do plant microfibers accumulate in the body over time, like plastic or asbestos fibers? Do we end up loaded with this stuff in old age? One of the most lethal professions of old was baker, because of all the flour dust inhaled. The breakdown of lignin by fungi shows the lengths organisms have to go to decompose refractory organic materials. A whole suite of enzymes and associated compounds are released into the extracellular environment by these fungi, including hydrogen peroxide, some of which is decomposed to highly oxidizing hydroxyl radicals. This also shows why it should not be surprising fungi are capable of attacking plastics, at least to some extent: they are already blasting biopolymers with a barrage of non-specific highly reactive oxidants.
- therobots927 2y agoI wonder if there’s a type of fungus humans could eat that would break down unwanted fibers and microplastics?
- pfdietz 2y agoI don't think I'd want my internals exposed to the stuff fungi have to excrete to break down the fibers. Fenton chemistry is used to clean lab glassware, I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenton%27s_reagent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenton%27s_reagent Review article on fungal degradation of lignin: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3180040/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3180040/
- therobots927 2y agoWell microplastics are micro after all, so maybe the byproduct would only be present in small amounts that the body can absorb? Chemotherapy is rough on the body but if the end result is that the cancer is removed it’s generally seen as a valid trade off. Unfortunately I’m not very knowledgeable about chemistry.
- philipov 2y agoDo you think we could cool our overheating oceans by blocking the sun with a thick layer of fungus? Because this sounds like a plan for covering the oceans in a thick layer of fungus.
- joshuamcginnis 2y agoI've actually isolated and sequenced the subject fungus (Parengyodontium album) from terrestrial sources. If you'd like to check out the photos (and DNA), check out: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/147456216 https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/147456216 https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/150149352 https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/150149352
- methuselah_in 2y agoBut what they will push out? Anything living eats whatever gives waste on which other depends as nutrition one way or other except human.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoOne concern not mentioned would be the proliferation of the fungi if they are exposed to a new endlessly abundant source of food, and which then upsets the current ecosystem balance.
- jrockway 2y agoNo problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the fungus.
- P_I_Staker 2y agoIf find the fungus on my feetzeez does NOT break down.