Has anyone considered the flip side of this. if we are unintentionally creating a bacteria that eats plastic, and our civilization is made of plastic, then this is a bad thing. Hospital equipment, airplanes, computers food storage, electrical wires…
Don’t get me wrong, I think we should end all plastic use. but in a controlled way, not with a plastic eating plague.
Kind of, but there are plenty of paper and wood decomposers and we still use plenty of those. It will have consequences but you already have to service vehicles and you already need to sanitise hospital equipment
To be fair, this has happened before, and I understand it was far hard for the bacteria then.
There was a time when cellulose could not be broken down. Trees fell and piled up for … miles? Anyway, then bacteria figured out how to break it down. (We also got coal from the trees that were burred.) Anyway, we still build out of cellulose. Sometimes we treat the cellulose, sometimes we don’t.
Plastic may, or may not, end up the same way.
I don’t think bacteria can stop Big Oil from pumping oil to make plastic and Big Plastic from making consumer things.
When the plastic eating bacteria starts endangering the existence of artificial consciousness in the machine, life on earth will be purposefully wiped out.
While this is awesome news (if true as stated), I’m afraid it will lead to a cessation of anti-pollution efforts and a return to the old thinking of “nature will handle it.”
I’m afraid it will lead to a cessation of anti-pollution efforts
The bacteria release carbon during the decomposition process. So this isn’t a “solution” in any meaningful respect. It’s an instance of evolution at work, as a surplus resource becomes a food source for innovative organisms.
Also, we look at this as some kind of “clean-up”. In reality, this is a threat to one of our most useful durable materials. It’ll likely lead to the development of antiseptics to kill these bacteria colonies, as the last thing anyone with a hard plastic shell on their vehicle or appliance or equipment wants is a colony of plastic-eaters deteriorating it.
What if the opposite happens and “oh shit, all plastic in the world is getting eaten, it’s worthless now!”
They’ll just create a new undegradable plastic and then we’ll have the plastic pollutn problem all over again. Its an endless loop from which the only way out is an intentional, designed solution.
That would be so hilarious! The thing you put around shit so it doesn’t spoil? Guess what! IT SPOILS!
It happened to cellulose.
Anyone has a link (or maybe a pdf?) for the original paper this is based on?
