Microbes discovered that can digest plastics at low temperatures

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/10/microbes-digest-plastics-low-temperatures-recycling

by sandebert • 3 years ago

12 9 3 years ago

JoachimS• 3 years ago

I'm curious to what is the output from the digestion - apart from more microbes.

sytelus• 3 years ago

For past two decades, this news shows up every year as if some new ground breaking discovery is made. We have seen no impact of any kind so far. It seems some research group releases this to media whenever they are due to apply for funding.

arbitrandomuser• 3 years ago

It's also kind of sad , for all of human history we never had this wonder material like plastic , light , strong , moldable , cheap and very importantly resistant to chemicals , pests and microbial destruction and in the few decades that we have had it we are scrambling to look for bacteria that will digest them because we over did it .

montalbano• 3 years ago

This is newsworthy because the bacteria can function at lower temperatures (15 C) than previous bacteria discovered.

jaclaz• 3 years ago

I have no idea of the actual data, but I believe that percentage in waste plastics of those kinds (PE+PUR+PBAT+PLA) are something like:

95.0% PE

3.9% PUR

1.1% PBAT+PLA

so, even if these newly found microbes are effective and come into use they probably won't make in practice much a change, and - as you say - every year it comes out some article about research on these microbes (including some with potential for "eating" PE) but no news about them being used industrially.

parasti• 3 years ago

This is the start of a sci-fi book I read many years ago, but I can't remember the name of it.

lasercat• 3 years ago

Ill Wind by Kevin J. Anderson?

rasz• 3 years ago

"...et in pulverem reverteri", a short story by Janusz Zajdel (up there with Lem of Solaris fame) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Zajdel

TLDR: Someone invents catalyst able to encode any material with programmable expiry date. Every country adopts it to ensure steady employment across planet. Pants? 3 months and revert back to dust, wrist watch? 1 year, car? 2 years, etc.

Can only find Polish copy https://web.archive.org/web/20170722210628/http://zajdel.dza... google translate doesnt like this particular web.archive link so you would have to manually copy text to translate

RecycledEle• 3 years ago

Was this how Ring World fell?

A recycling bacteria got out of control and ate the infrastructure and the machines.

Microbes discovered that can digest plastics at low temperatures

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