Wild bees are recycling plastic, study finds (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Wild bees are recycling plastic, study finds (2014)

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59 pointsMz28 comments

The planet will be here a long long time after we're gone.. And it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, because that's what it does. It's a self correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm - the Earth plus Plastic.

The Earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the Earth. The Earth probably sees plastic as just another one of it's children. Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us..

Could be the answer to the age old philosophical question "Why are we here ?"..

Plastic, assholes!

---

George Carlin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c

The planet will be here, it will incorporate the plastic in some way, like it does with everything. The issue was never about the planet itself. Planets don't have minds (that we know of) and don't care. They just are. It's only us, humans, who care about how the planet looks like - because we can only survive in a tiny band of possible planet states, and live comfortably in even tinier band.

Yes. That's what the man says. "The planet is fine. We are fucked"

Sorry. Didn't realize at first you're quoting George Carlin. I'm watching the video now. It's the first time I hear about him. I see now that anthropomorphisation of planet is a part of humour.

Sadly, too many people think that way for serious - that the planet is important for itself, that this particular state it's in ("blue marble") is somehow meaningful for the planet itself, or valuable for reasons not related to having humans on it.

> or valuable for reasons not related to having humans on it.

If there is life outside then it might value the blue marble.

And it is also possible that it could become valuable for non-human (AI?) reasons later.

While its undeniably sad that we litter so much in our environment - its very very cool that nature is adapting in the way it is to our dirty habits - in the same vein I'm expecting a species of something will evolve to eat and biodegrade plastics, rubbers and other similar materials.

Actually one of my favorite examples of evolution in action are nylon eating bacteria, which evolved the capabilty to catalyze nylon for energy in a lake that was heavily contaminated by nylon production in the 1930s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria

While great for the environment, this would be terrible for things we don't want to degrade!

It is also not a good strategy for the organisms involved since what we produce, especially the organics, changes fast and we're about the only source..

This opens an interesting question, what if we could slightly modify plastic to make it more useful to other species, maybe beavers, maybe bees, maybe ants, maybe woodpeckers, maybe there is an specific trait that one (or many) of this kind of animals seek for when using materials (or eating)

The better solution is to start using biodegradable plastic where necessary, and avoiding plastic altogether where there are reasonable alternatives.

But then we might have to spend money on things that last longer :/

Note that there are two kinds of "biodegradable" plastics. Vegetable based plastics (which are definitely unproblematic when left in the environment) and "OXO-biodegradable" plastics which are just normal plastics (like PE, PP, PS) with additions that make them break down quicker than normally. If a bag feels like a normal plastic bag then it will be one of the latter kind; vegetable based plastics have a different feel to them (kind of rubbery), to my understanding; since they are produced in a different way (by a different industry), and more expensive, you rarely encounter them.

The Wikipedia article on OXO biodegradable plastics[1] seems to be heavily edited by industry participants. Last I heard[2] was that OXO-biodegradable plastics are basically cheating, as they leave the plastic in the wild, just invisibly (perhaps even making things worse as then it can't be collected anymore?). The Wikipedia article argues that the fragments will be decomposed by organisms. I don't know which is true, but wanted to point out that there are two kinds and you should be careful not to mix them up in discussions.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxo_Biodegradable
    [2] from the film Addicted To Plastic [3] 
        or other places, not sure anymore
    [3] http://www.crypticmoth.com/plastic.php

I don't see the issue even if the plastics are invisibly dispersed in the wild. I use styrofoam in my potting soils, for a reason.

Not all plastics are safe for human ingestion, and if you disperse them in the wild, that's where they end up sooner or later.

Ah, I made the assumption that a vegetable oil based plastic would at worst break down or go rancid. And tiny bits of rancid oil wouldn't be harmful. However, if they're using other chemicals to produce these, then it's entirely possible that they would be unsafe. My bad.

I explicitly said that vegetable based plastics are not a problem. What we're worried about are the OXO plastics, which are not vegetable, but mineral oil based.

I obviously misread your comment. My bad. Not a good day for commenting for me.

Cue George Carlin quote in 3... 2...

How about a remix by melodysheep (John Boswell) instead? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FFgVayrWjs

Very interesting! and answers some questions in previous bee-centric discussions re: wild bees.

This isn't recycling, though. The bees are using the material, not recycling it.

If a human uses wasted plastic is called recycling, don't know what would it be any different for bees.

Isn't re-use the slogan-compatible word? I'm not sure if the bees are disqualifed if they use the plastic for a different use or how much physical alteration matters.

Yeah, reuse it the proper word for both scenarios.

Reduce, reuse, recycle!

> If a human uses wasted plastic is called recycling, don't know what would it be any different for bees.

Bee-cycling.

It still stays trash in the environment. If you thought this article was good news, it's not. Stop using plastic.

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