Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution | Hacker News Reader

Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution

phys.org

597 pointsfh973308 comments

"To confirm it wasn't just the chewing mechanism of the caterpillars degrading the plastic, the team mashed up some of the worms and smeared them on polyethylene bags, with similar results."

A disturbing but effective way to test the hypothesis.

Yeah, pretty horrible.

Why is this horrible?

I think he felt bad about the caterpillars being mashed up.

Life is not fair, never has been, never will be.

Grand. We're off the hook then. No need to attempt to make it any fairer. Phew!

She was going to kill them anyway, they're a virulent pest.

> virulent pest

Humans are also by any measure really.

And we'll get to them eventually.

It helps that the "caterpillars" in question look like dirty tequila maggots instead of friendly, bumbling, inchworms.

Listen, it can be horrible and wonderful at the same time.

Ever killed a fly because it annoyed you? This is not much different. In fact, this was done for science.

Do we really need the /s tag on something so obvious?

Unfortunately, yes. Keep in mind that in text any vocal tone and visual clues are lost, and a lot of sarcasm is signaled those ways, so some additional indication in text is useful.

Also, Poe's law is alive and well here. You assumed it was sarcasm, but I'm not so sure. It's not too far fetched for me to imagine someone thinks mashing up bugs to spread on a plastic bag is horrible. See my first paragraph for the solution to this...

Oh sure because satire wasn't commonplace in books long before the internet. How would those poor souls have figured it out it wasn't serious?! IMPOSSIBLE.

Regarding Poe's law, if it looks like sarcasm assume it is and move on, but I understand that commenting on the internet is of utmost importance and a task that shouldn't be taken lightly.

For what it's worth, in books and other print media it is usually easier to tell if a piece of text is sarcasm or not based on context.

What /s tag? It seems genuine and has NO TAG.

I didn't think it was sarcasm. Its a bit sad that they had to squash up the bugs just to run that test.

Yep, it wasn't sarcasm.

http://reducing-suffering.org/do-bugs-feel-pain/

I try not to kill flies, no. The only exception is for multiple flies that won't go away. Ditto for ants.

It's a bit strange that violence toward insects is fine, but violence towards dogs is not. Ever killed a dog because it annoyed you?

That said, doing it for science at least has a justification.

Well, some insects represent a genuine threat to food supplies and the spread of disease.

I don't really follow where you're going with the dog example. What kind of comparison is that supposed to be?

Edit to add: Even ants produce antibiotics that they groom on to their bodies to prevent the growth of bacteria and fungus on themselves and inside their nests. So I'm going to continue to swat flies and not lose any sleep over it.

Probably a bad one. I agree that killing insects is fine if there's a reason. But I was reacting to "I kill things because they annoy me." Which is valid, but always frustrating.

My parents used to flip out and kill caterpillars, spiders, etc whenever they saw them. More than once I'd notice one and corral them outside while my parents weren't looking. There's just no point in killing something because it simply exists.

None of this probably matters though.

At home it was my Dad who told me to be nice to spiders. :-)

Mine too! He would tell me that the spiders are helpful because they kill other bugs, and to leave them alone or put them outside. The more I think about these things, the more connected even the small things in our world are.

Sure, they are good at killing flies and you don't have to feel sorry killing flies yourself. Win-win.

Killing things only when you have to is objectively the safer choice when it comes to not feeling bad about yourself in the future.

Every time I advocate for animal rights on this forum, it's met with downvotes and people huffing and puffing about the benefit to humanity and science.

Your argument is sound...flies are animals. They have exoskeletons, six legs, and compound eyes but they are animals nonetheless. However, our cultural "worth" of flies is much lower than that of dogs, so even people who supposedly value logic above all else would rather scoff and silently disagree than challenge their own shaky belief system.

Granted, if a few dead caterpillars can cure our accumulating trash problem, that's a tradeoff I am ok with.

Does the animal's lifespan matter? Intuitively it seems like killing something that will only live for a few days or weeks at most matters less. So I'm not sure it's all due to "cultural worth" (though I don't disagree that's part of it).

Yeah, I've thought about that too, actually. And certainly, I feel better about killing any animal that I perceived to have had a "full life" (dogs included).

I tend to think that lifetimes are measured in lifetimes (relative scale) by various animals. So where a fly might live four of our weeks, to that fly, perhaps it was perceived as a good 60 years time if it was on our scale.

So to me, lifespan doesn't factor into it too much, although perhaps you're right that that is another piece of data used by people to measure an animal's "worth."

Hey whatup cl-async guy!

I'd liked to add that there are aspects of mutualism underlying how much we value dogs. We used to hunt alongside dogs, there exists a special bond between man and dog that does not exist between any other species, to my knowledge. They know our emotions, our smells, our noises, our physiological needs, they are even aware of fragility of our bodies compared to other animals.

Dogs are pretty amazing

I agree, I love dogs. You wouldn't know it from my comments, but I actually like them more than flies ;).

I think you're right, dogs' historical utility along with their near human-like qualities have brought them much further along on the scale of "things that are not ok to kill" (towards humans). So perhaps there's a point when an animal becomes similar enough to us that we start viewing it as "one of us." This isn't just cultural, as you point out, but a sort of shared viewpoint of the world.

I'm also curious if size in general has something to do with it. Small animals have less value because we're perceiving killing "less of" something. Most people wouldn't think twice about killing a fly (myself included if it's a deer/horse fly) but would feel bad if they killed a bear that was attacking them, or even stepped on a lizard by accident.

So maybe dogs are a bad example (granted, I inherited the argument from a post up the tree from me), but I still think there's a cultural worth put on various animals.

Funny enough, I was in a catholic school when I was in third grade (9 years old?). I'm not catholic, and wasn't then, so I was always a bit suspicious. One of the teachers was talking about how there's a hierarchy to life. Rocks are at the bottom, then come plants, then animals, then humans, and angels/god on top. I remember, even then, thinking "without rocks, none of this would exist. without plants, no animals/humans could live, and without animals humans would die out." In other words, although we put ourselves at the top of the pyramid (of physical beings), the rest of the world would be just fine if humans disappeared tomorrow. Our existence has no meaning beyond our ability to evolve into better life forms. The point being, we have these odd social ratings for the value of other animals' lives, yet in many respects, our lives are almost worthless with respect the rest of the life on the planet. Our lives have value to us, but in essence we live in a bit of a bubble of self-importance.

Going further: if a few dead dogs were the price of some significant increase in human welfare (something more than bag recycling, I guess), I think most people would be OK with that. This is exactly the trade we make in the pharmaceutical industry every day (not with so many dogs per se, but with organisms at least as complex, cute and fuzzy).

I don't see much evidence for a "shaky belief system". Or maybe you're making a specific point about dogs, given that they were bred specifically to "feel like people" to us? Meh. I'm a cat guy.

Humans are not rational. It takes a lot of thought and discipline to attempt to come up with a coherent belief system and align your actions with it.

Do you have a fully-coherent, logical system for deciding which lives to care about, and how much? I'd be interested to hear.

'Animals' is not a natural kind. There's no logical reason to care about all animals just because they are animals.

I care about dogs, pigs, other people, etc. not because they're 'animals', but because I think they are plausibly conscious (to varying degrees) and they can experience joy and suffering. Insects, not so much.

I'm unwilling to care any nonzero amount about insects. Here is why.

There are something like a billion billion insects in the world. Given their short lifetimes, it means dozens of billions of billions are born and die each year. Wild insect lives are mostly short and brutal. If you care at all about an insect's life, that tiny amount multiplied by dozens of billion billions means your moral concern for insects should pretty much swamp out any other concern.

You'd have to select how much you care about each insect life with suspicious precision for the sum total to be significantly different from zero, but less than how much you care about human and dog lives.

So to be coherent, you have to either not care at all about insects, or your first priority in life should be to help insects. I, uh, choose not to care.

(Some people seriously care though. See: http://reducing-suffering.org/the-importance-of-insect-suffe...)

The utilitarian in me chooses to attach value to insects according to how I perceive their value in the ecosystem. Bees, bumblebees, spiders etc. are useful, so I don't kill those. Houseflies, gnats, ticks, mosquitoes on the other hand, I have zero problems killing when they annoy me.

Same here. I avoid killing certain invertebrates on a pragmatic basis rather than one of morality. I'll happily ignore or relocate certain species of spiders simply because they'll keep the things I don't like in check while killing others that present a danger to myself or pets around the house (black widows). On the other hand, if you live in an area that's bordered by vast swaths of forest, it quickly becomes impractical to avoid having the occasional creepy-crawly get inside somewhere, and you soon learn that it's best to live and let live. That's how I was taught, at any rate.

Now, humorously, having had "pet" mantids before is a great way to eliminate nuisance insects around the house somewhat autonomously. Although it doesn't always quite work the way you may intend (they'll self-relocate or sometimes lose interest in prey items). ;)

So you argument is that it's fine to not care for insects because there are a lot of them, and because their lives are short and brutal.

I would say the opposite. Animals whose lives are rife with pain and misfortune can use all the help anyone is willing to offer. Granted, I will not seek out every fly and try to "save" it. But if I come across one I can help, I will do so. I think you're making the argument "either you HAVE to care about every fly or you CANNOT care about any flies." Perhaps that logic works for you, but I think it's a fallacy. I can care about flies without needing to care about the well-being of every fly. I also adhere to non-interference. If a fly is caught in a spider web, I will leave it. To free the fly is to starve the spider. Some things we just don't have control over. But I will do my best personally to not harm other animals.

I said this in another comment, but I'll repeat:

> I will show kindness to animals, but only to the point where it doesn't completely impede my life or my ability to find happiness.

In other words, it doesn't impede life or my happiness to catch a fly and bring it outside. Therefor it falls under the "show kindness to animals" category.

(I should add an addendum to that: any animal that is attacking me physically is subject to death (horse flies, mosquitoes, dogs, bears, etc)).

Given all that, I do not judge people who don't care about insects. I get it, completely. But that doesn't mean I won't stop challenging people's viewpoint on why it's ok to kill some animals and not others.

> it's fine to not care for insects

Well no it's not exactly 'fine'. Maybe we will figure out some day that insects are a little bit conscious and it may turn out we have collectively been literally worse than Hitler for not caring.

In the meantime I choose not to care, not as a fully logical decision, but for my own sanity and well-being. I'm a dumb ape who tries (and even maybe succeeds) to be logical sometimes, my moral 'system' is a hodge-podge of intuition, rule-based and consequentialist thinking, I don't claim I have found a fully logical moral system.

> it's fine to not care for insects because there are a lot of them, and because their lives are short and brutal.

No no no, I'm saying, if you care at all, you should care about all of them, because as a rule their lives are short and brutal.

It's not like with humans where a lot of us have ok lives, so you can focus on the ones that have a bad time. Pretty much all insects have a bad time (if they are 'having a time' at all, i.e. if they are conscious).

I'm saying I reject caring about any one insect because it very probably leads to a repugnant conclusion (that I should care about insects above all else), based on utilitarian math -- unless you choose very very carefully how much you care about each insect.

I understand most people only care about local things. I think that's a moral failing, ideally I want to care just as much about people far away than about local people. I don't in practice but I try (I do donate to charities that help people in poor countries far from home.)

If I follow that logic and extend my caring to insects, I should care about all insects.

> I think you're making the argument "either you HAVE to care about every fly or you CANNOT care about any flies." Perhaps that logic works for you, but I think it's a fallacy

That's not my argument, that's my conclusion, based on utilitarian math, and I'm making a probabilistic argument, not a deductive logic argument, so calling it a fallacy is a type error on two counts.

> I also adhere to non-interference. If a fly is caught in a spider web, I will leave it.

What's the logic behind that? If a child stumbles into a pond and drowns, or is mauled by a wild coyote, will you let them die on the basis of non-interference?

> What's the logic behind that distinction? If a child stumbles into a pond and drown, or is mauled by a wild coyote, will you let them die on the basis of non-interference?

Great point, you got me there. All life forms being equal, then yes if I adhered to my own system I suppose I would have to silently watch a child get mauled by a coyote. Obviously, I wouldn't take it that far, so perhaps there's more criteria to the decisions than I'm admitting or able to even dig out of my psyche at the moment. I'll think about this.

Your other points about utilitarian math are well-taken, and perhaps I misunderstood you there.

> If I follow that logic and extend my caring to insects, I should care about all insects.

So if you care about starving children, and apply the same rules you apply to children to insects, you'd be donating a lot to charity, basically. Makes sense =]. So once again, my live-and-let-die attitude towards insects is at odds with my "help unfortunate members of humanity" "morality." Another good point (granted, I don't donate much to charity, but if I did, I would probably donate to poor/starving people as opposed to insect charities).

> I'm a dumb ape who tries (and even maybe succeeds) to be logical sometimes, my moral 'system' is a hodge-podge of intuition, rule-based and consequentialist thinking, I don't claim I have found a fully logical moral system.

This is probably the most coherent, self-aware moral system I've heard. Most people try to ascribe their beliefs to some overarching theme that they pretend to follow in all circumstances, when in reality most of our actions are governed by a tiny fraction of what we believe to be morality, and the rest is knee-jerk reactions to situations that affect us emotionally one way or the other. Not only that, but our beliefs (as you pointed out in my case), are a "hodge-podge" of rules, emotions, and hardwiring.

All that said, I still try to be nice to all animals, and will continue to do so until I find the next mishmash set of rules to figure out why I believe what I believe.

EDIT: relevant: http://wondermark.com/c/2015-06-25-1135earn.png

> So if you care about starving children, and apply the same rules you apply to children to insects, you'd be donating a lot to charity, basically.

To insect charity yeah. Or spending a lot of time doing insect advocacy or something.

Instead I donate for anti-malaria bed nets for kids and argue about animal ethics on the internet.

> if I adhered to my own system I suppose I would have to silently watch a child get mauled by a coyote

Right. Obviously no one but psychopaths act like that. I think what you call 'non-interference' ties in with the difference between the moral weight of action vs inaction. Most people's moral intuition draw a distinction between the two, and think action matters more. The interesting thing is that you can construct scenarios where that intuition changes.

Don't know if that comic was aimed at me I can sympathize with black hat guy though I know he's supposed to be the annoying dick in the comic.

I think it's interesting to take propositions to their logical extremes, but you have to hedge the results with common sense because when you take things to their extremes a small error in reasoning could lead you far astray.

I enjoyed this conversation chain a lot!

> I think it's interesting to take propositions to their logical extremes

What I find most annoying about animal rights activists is that they mean well, but most of them haven't really thought through their position, and pushing their positions to logical extremes is a great way of exposing it. People actually value human life above other life, and those that claim otherwise are either liars, psychopaths, or they just haven't thought it through.

I mean, if you make a classical trolley problem where you have to choose between saving 1 human baby or N puppies, is there a number, N, such that you would save the puppies instead of the baby? The logical consequence of "all life is equal" is that N=2. That's clearly murderous. If you were to make lifespan a factor, and dogs live 1/7th of a human, then N=8. That's still highly objectionable.

I honestly don't know if there's a number where I would start choosing the puppies.. 1 million? Puppycide or one human? Or is that example too extreme? I don't know, but it's interesting to think about.

Would it be more or less ethical if researchers killed caterpillars infected by parasitic wasps, preventing them from being eaten alive?

Do you eat animal products?

I find it much stranger that violence towards farm animals is ok but not pets.

At least there are principled reasons to care less about insects (much less complex nervous system), I can find no principled reason to care more for dogs than pigs.

The principled reason to care more for dogs from my understanding is mutualism. Dogs are dogs because of humans. Same for cats.

AFAIK the prevailing theory is that humans did not domesticate cats, and instead cats just learned to coexist with us because we attracted lots of tasty pests.

It's the same for farm animals though, isn't it? Modern broiler chickens, egg-layers, dairy cows and beef cattle, turkeys, etc. are very different from their wild ancestors.

Farmed turkeys can't have sex, they have to be artificially inseminated, I don't know who made them that way if not humans.

>I find it much stranger that violence towards farm animals is ok but not pets.

Pets are a recent phenomenon (last 100 or so years, and urban). [edit: recent, not common phenomenon]

In rural places animals like cats and dogs where actually useful: guarding, helping with the sheep, killing mice and snakes, and such.

The bonding came from having them around (and having them be useful), not because there was some bizarro artificial distinction between e.g. cows and sheep and cats and dogs.

And in many cultures and/or periods things we now call pets were/are eaten as casually as we eat cows or kale.

This doesn't address the fact that pigs are no less capable of experiencing pain and distress than dogs and cats. And most people in western cultures would not be okay with killing dogs and cats that are not being useful to them. So even though the cognitive dissonance and the framework that sustains it is well understood (look up carnism), it's still pretty strange when you stop to think about it.

>This doesn't address the fact that pigs are no less capable of experiencing pain and distress than dogs and cats.

No but it addresses the fact that there's no underlying grand principle beyond it all.

Some animals we grew to like more, because they were useful, and we kept them around. That's all.

It's no more strange than caring for some people because they are relatives, and not caring as much (or at all) for other people.

Do you _really_ find it strange? Or just rationally inconsistent?

It seems pretty normal and not strange at all that I develop stronger feelings for animals I personally bond with.

To be fair, that's a cheap strike to go straight for hypocrisy as a means to win this argument.

Whether or not the person posting the argument "animal testing is bad" eats meat doesn't change the question - "should we fatally test on animals."

I'm a bit disappointed that nobody is really engaging this non-sarcastically. A couple are talking about "drawing a line" somewhere but nobody is being allowed to say "all life should fall on the safe side of the line." I think there are interesting arguments for this position but right now HN is being aggressively hostile to that position.

Well, if "all life should fall on the safe side of the line", what would you eat? Perhaps only organisms that have died without human intervention. Scavenging, I mean. But that wouldn't support very large populations.

Dead bodies, unless mummified or otherwise desiccated into jerky, are teeming with bacterial life.

There's simply no way to survive without destroying other life. Even plants kill other living things in self defense (and many plants prey on animals).

Yeah, pretty much. Especially if you're an animal.

Eventually, maybe we'll become effectively plants, creating our food from sunlight, CO2 and minerals. But what about our microbiota?

> But that wouldn't support very large populations.

Well I don't agree at all! Apart from the fact that large populations can live without meat, I can easily envision a "scavenging farm" where animals are liked after until they die, and only then processed. It wouldn't be as efficient as our farms, but completely possible.

I suspect that you're pushing plants over the line.

I can see how it comes across that way but I'm fascinated that OP does not kill flies, I was genuinely curious if it extended to farm animals too. I would have bet they are vegetarian.

The question is worth considering, I wrote up a detailed answer on why I don't care about insects in a sibling thread.

EDIT: I'm not well placed to argue from hypocrisy, I'm like 90% vegetarian but I still eat meat. Meateaters love taking me down a notch for that one time per week or whatever I eat meat.

That's because there's no such thing as 90% vegetarian, it's a binary option which you've re-purposed into a scale.

I eat meat at every opportunity, but if I were to calculate a number such as yours then I'd be say "65% vegetarian" just due to the volume difference between meat and the rest.

People taking a swing at you is most likely just because you describe yourself as a vegetarian to them even though you're still eating meat (regularly) while in their presence.

What I mean is that I eat 90% less meat than I used to as an average omnivore. A can of sardines or tuna per week and beef once in a long while is far from 10% of my diet, in terms of calories or mass or whatever metric you choose.

> I eat meat at every opportunity, but if I were to calculate a number such as yours then I'd be say "65% vegetarian" just due to the volume difference between meat and the rest.

Most people, who don't try to take my words in the least charitable way possible as you are here, understand just fine what 'mostly vegetarian' means.

I don't describe myself as vegetarian (without qualifiers).

> That's because there's no such thing as 90% vegetarian, it's a binary option which you've re-purposed into a scale.

Words are meant for communicating. Arguing by definition is a losers' game.

Note that meateaters give me more crap than full on vegetarians/vegans. If the issue was really that I'm coopting the word, you'd think it'd be the opposite.

My experience is that, at least among my circles, vegetarians can appreciate that reduced meat consumption = reduced animal suffering and environmental impact, even if you're not 100% pure; it's meateaters, who feel you are trying to take a moral high ground, who will try to take you down.

Actually my problem is probably that I did use to be strictly vegetarian, vegan at one point, for a few years, and slipped back for various reasons. I don't claim it anymore but it's not like I made a public announcement that I am no longer strictly vegetarian.

Non-sarcastic question about "all life": don't you _have_ to draw the line somewhere? Bacteria? Vegetables?

I'd even want to put particularly nicely shaped rocks on the "don't" side of the line. Kill a plant to save a rock? It's called building maintenance. Kill a short-lived animal to protect a mighty old tree that has seen entire cultures come and go? Sure! There might even be some rocks that I would hesitate to destroy if it saved a human life, maybe not even excluding my own. The beautiful thing about life is that in the grand scheme of things, only avoiding extinction matters.

I find it much stranger that violence towards farm animals is ok but not pets.

For the same reason people are more disturbed by terrorists beheading one person whose name and picture accompany the story than they are of a statistic where hundreds of civilians are killed by a dictator's bombing attack.

People are motivated by empathy which only works with identifiable beings. We just can't empathize with statistics or abstractions, as horrifying as that sounds.

It's because insects have such a primitive nervous system that we don't see them as being aware in the same way that a dog is.

You draw the line somewhere, right? Drawing the line at a certain complexity of the nervous system is more sensible than drawing it at "animals" in general, IMO.

>You draw the line somewhere, right

Yeah, I just have to worry about higher beings justifying the termination of my primitive nervous system "for science". Perhaps my consciousness is so dim relative to theirs that it would be analogous to me squashing a bug. I hope that their methods are advanced enough that they don't need to.

>Yeah, I just have to worry about higher beings justifying the termination of my primitive nervous system "for science".

They might as well just terminate your primitive nervous system for their own nutritional needs or out of mere hunting instinct. Plenty of animals do this all the time, nature isn't romantic idealistic, it's ruthless and unforgiving.

Or alternatively, beautifully efficient.

Eating other species does have selective advantages.

Efficient at what? Efficiency is always relative to a particular goal, what did you have in mind?

Propagation of a species.

Any consciousness vastly superior to ours would be so complex that we wouldn't even be aware of it. So it wouldn't matter what it would do to us. It's the same with most animals. We might as well be gods to them. An ant lives in a completely different reality. The whole concept of "animal rights" is based on the flawed notion of trying to equate our reality to that of completely different beings. Something that is unable to even understand the concept of rights is incapable of having them, or morals, to begin with. Rights are not given, they are taken. There is a reason why humans rule Earth and not gerbils. Rights or morals didn't exist until we invented them. There is no objective spiritual truth out there.

Consciousness requires a critical mass of brain power. A wolf is relatively intelligent but not conscious, they are biological machines that only think about killing and mating and they have been doing that, without change for hundreds of thousands of years. And if the environment doesn't change then they will continue being identical for hundreds of thousands of years more. Trying to give animals human properties is really very foolish. It's like trying to do that with computers, just because they can give us illusions of intelligence and consciousness, but because computers don't have cute faces and cuddly bodies nobody thinks about it. Evolution really is very efficient but brutally so. Only reason why humans have things like compassion is because it has been evolutionarily advantageous to us. A single human is really quite weak and underpowered, we need to cooperate, it's the key to our progress. It is also why we think babies are cute and why we are instinctively protective of them and why sex feels good. There really is no deeper meaning behind any of it. If we had evolved from tigers then the world would look very (brutally)different, because tigers are solitary and territorial animals that have absolutely no use for things like compassion, empathy or cooperativeness. We wouldn't think twice about killing anything if it suited us, not even other tigers and it would be completely normal to us. If some hairless ape came to us on his high horse and started preaching about morals and rights then we would think that he was crazy, and then we would eat him.

Err on the side of caution. Draw the line as far as practically possible. We have a long history of underestimating the mental abilities of other animals. Heck, now we've got evidence of ants passing the mirror test.

Do you breathe through a filter and sweep the ground in front of you like the Jains?

>as far as practically possible

There's a big difference in effort, and not much difference in outcome, between doing as the Jains do and simply endeavouring not to kill things on purpose.

I don't see what's impractical about breathing through a filter and sweeping the ground. Inconvenient, to be sure, but that's far from the same thing.

I mean, I wouldn't do it, but it seems to me that if you're advocating "as far as practically possible" then it would include that.

I draw the line at Human and Not Human.

Any objective justification for that or just your own bias?

Just as mirimir said, it is biological norm to draw line between your own kind and everyone else. For example, both dogs and cats don't kill each other, but dog can easily kill a cat.

Both dogs and cats do kill each other. It is not uncommon at all.

Yep, cats fight brutally all the time. My wife's old cat was a fighter and had the scars to prove it. No doubt he had killed many cats, and then he eventually succumbed to an infection from a nasty neck wound acquired in a fight.

Ha ha ha, he was quite champion

Chimps form tribes and go to war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

Just because I'm human.

Are you a mammal?

Well, that is the biological norm.

And better than friend vs stranger ;)

Why limit yourself? Draw the line between you and not-you. Such fun.

Especially if we're adrift and starving. In that situation, the more complex the nervous system, the better.

I mean, ants have passed the mirror test.

The fact that I just erased my comment out of fear that it would be misunderstood and downvoted to hell scares me.

>It's a bit strange that violence toward insects is fine, but violence towards dogs is not.

I don't find it strange at all. I find it strange that the notion of "violence toward insects" is even a thing.

More or less horrible than choking the earth with plastic refuse?

Brutal

Roald Dahl comes to mind D:

"A chance discovery occurred when one of the scientific team, Federica Bertocchini, an amateur beekeeper, was removing the parasitic pests from the honeycombs in her hives. The worms were temporarily kept in a typical plastic shopping bag that became riddled with holes."

What a great accident.

The history of science is full of such accidents, the discovery Penicillin being one of the most famous.

http://www.kidsdiscover.com/quick-reads/penicillin-found-fun...

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

Isaac Asimov

A less important result for mankind, but still by accident: the microwave oven.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven#Discovery

Maybe the antithesis to the discovery of antibiotics is the mostly accidental discovery of Tabun: "In January 1937, Schrader observed the effects of nerve agents on human beings first-hand when a drop of tabun spilled onto a lab bench." (Wikipedia)

I think that one might stand out somewhat since I'd expect most accidental advances to be helpful to humanity. Or maybe I'm just an optimist. :)

Scientists that voluntarily work to bring such stuff in the world are amongst the people I least respect. It's one thing to be dumb, quite another to be extraordinarily gifted and to use that gift to do something which has no upside at all and plenty of downside. Exposing them to their own creations would be poetic justice.

I mean, it's not like they're going into it knowing they're about to create a nerve agent. It even says in the history for Tabun on Wikipedia [0] that it was initially meant to be an insecticide. Sarin was similarly created as a way to find stronger pesticides, and IIRC so was Zyklon B, used in the holocaust.

So some of these scientists may not have known what their creations were going to be used for.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabun_(nerve_agent)

After making a demonstration to the army and being set up with a lab by the army and being asked specifically to weaponize your research (and fill projectiles with it) I don't think there should be any 'we didn't know' excuses.

It's pretty clear that even if insecticide was the beginning there was a pretty clear point in time where it was obvious that this had nothing to do with insects any longer.

And at that point what are they going to do? Say no?

Okay, then they'll get someone else to take your work and weaponize it. The bulk of the work would have already been done by then, which is synthesizing the chemical and showing its effects on people.

Principles are pointless if there is no price to pay.

By your reasoning you can excuse away any behavior. Which of course plenty of scientists and other horrible people tried to do. And then there was the collective amnesia epidemic of 1945.

And by your reasoning, you should get locked away the second your research can get weaponized.

Shockingly, it's not a black and white world with many layers of gray in between, which is what I was trying to show. That a lot of research can get twisted for evil.

In your earlier post, you claimed there was "no upside". That's patently false, since these started with the ideal of getting rid of pests more efficiently. Yes, there's a point where it turns from this generic research to weaponizing, but that might not be immediately obvious at the time, nor what the repercussions might be 50 years later.

> And by your reasoning, you should get locked away the second your research can get weaponized.

No, the second people start weaponizing your research you have the option to stop participating.

> Shockingly, it's not a black and white world with many layers of gray in between, which is what I was trying to show. That a lot of research can get twisted for evil.

Chemical weapons research is pure evil, I don't doubt that at all.

> In your earlier post, you claimed there was "no upside".

Yep.

> That's patently false, since these started with the ideal of getting rid of pests more efficiently. Yes, there's a point where it turns from this generic research to weaponizing, but that might not be immediately obvious at the time, nor what the repercussions might be 50 years later.

It was obvious within the lifetime of the scientists involved because they were the ones to help weaponize it. And for that there are no excuses.

I really don't understand why you're twisting so much to come up with excuses for these people here, their role and position in all this is pretty well documented. If not for the Germans fear that allies would be able to retaliate in kind that stuff would have been used.

This is one of the best documented era in the history of mankind, there are people who deserve the benefit of the doubt but this particular group isn't one of those.

> No, the second people start weaponizing your research you have the option to stop participating.

I want to agree with this, but I'm not certain how I would act if I knew my options where a) continue weaponisation research or b) get shot in the face.

Let's hope you never find out.

Crucially, option b) is actually "get shot in the face and then someone else weaponises the research".

Making a principled stand is only useful when it stands a non-zero chance of accomplishing something.

Or 'well shoot your wife and kids first if you don't cooperate'.

>has no upside at all

Basically any powerful/impressive weapon can be justified to have upside as it might reduce further casualties by ending conflict sooner.

And looking at trench warfare, if there had been a way to make it completely unfeasible by being able to "permanently" poison an entire field at a time, perhaps that would have turned out better.

Many of the greatest physicists of that generation worked on atomic bombs. And even more were involved in other military technologies. What are you supposed to do, not give your country the best tools possible? Hope the other side is just really nice and does likewise? Risk your country getting conquered? Your family getting killed?

> It's one thing to be dumb, quite another to be extraordinarily gifted and to use that gift to do something which has no upside at all and plenty of downside

One could extend this argument to engineers who work for nefarious, privacy-violating ad companies, invasive surveillance...

Have a link? I'm not seeing what you're seeing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabun_(nerve_agent)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve_agent

I like how LSD was discovered [0]. It's so potent that it can be absorbed just by skin contact, that's why police must use gloves when seizing it.

Imagine yourself coming home with your bicycle and having a massive (250 ug) LSD trip only having experienced it once, pretty scary and interesting at the same time [1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann#Discovery_of_LS...

[1]: http://www.thegooddrugsguide.com/articles/lsd_accident.htm

I've always been amazed that Shockley's discovery of the transistor was also by accident...

https://books.google.com/books?id=mykDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA80&lpg=P...

I love the stories of how various artificial sweeteners were discovered. Every single one was found by someone accidentally (or intentionally...) tasting some random chemical from a lab. This leads to some interesting questions:

How many random chemicals did scientists accidentally ingest for every artificial sweetener discovered? It must be quite a lot, and many of those must have been quite dangerous.

Would we have artificial sweeteners at all if people practiced decent lab safety?

Could we massively speed up the discovery of future sweeteners and similar things, by intentionally exposing people to as may random chemicals as possible? Ideally after verifying they are at least probably safe in a very small quantity for tasting. I'm guessing that wouldn't be legal.

Five years ago my balcony was invaded by fly larvae (maggots i guess) because my flatmate left some raw meat in the trash bin. While trying to contain the invasion, i put some of them in two or three nested plastic bags, but they ALWAYS found their way through the plastic after some minutes. They were literally making holes in them. I thought this was normal and well-known!

Well, while might be possible they were properly digesting/biodegrading the plastic involved, it's also possible they were just "chewing holes" in the plastic. eg mechanical action making the plastic smaller, but not changing its chemical structure

The caterpillars in the linked article are biodegrading the plastics into non-plastic (fairly quickly). That's the key thing.

Well if you put me in a plastic bag I would also be able to get out by tearing a hole in the plastic bag. That fact doesn't say anything about my ability to metabolize plastic though. I would never even consider the worms were doing anything else but mechanically chewing the plastic.

As any reptile owner will tell you, wax worms will eat through plastic containers so you should store them in glass. It's common knowledge.

It is however amazing that nobody (me included) never thought that this could be a solution to our plastic issues. "It's common knowledge, why waste time thinking about it?"

Also, the really clever part was suspecting and then testing that the plastic isn't just mechanically broken down.

By squishing loads of bugs on some plastic. Reminds me of the playground!

They probably assumed scientists already knew about it but didn't think it was a bid deal.

I wonder how many things are hidden that way.

It's (apparently) common knowledge among reptile owners. That doesn't mean it's common knowledge among the particular scientists studying how to decompose plastics. Siloed knowledge will always be a problem (at least among humans. With omnipresent AI, that could change...).

A day in the life of the omnipresent AI's keeper involves a lot of "Oh, no, sorry, CleverBot2000, we can't solve that global problem that way. This domain's model is incomplete, I guess."

'but keeper, if walmart take the price of your meal off your order and you can refund no questions asked, can't we solve world hunger and the economy by taking and refunding free meals infinitely?'

I'm guessing everyone assumed that was a purely mechanical process - i.e. they just make holes. Lots of critters make holes in lots of things.

Digesting the polymer OTOH - that's a bit of a paradigm shift.

EDIT: It just occurred to me that both wax and plastic bag polymers are large chains of carbon with some hydrogen hanging off the edges. Perhaps it should not be so surprising that wax worms can digest that polymer.

EDIT2: Nevermind, that was in the article, I didn't read the whole thing.

Interesting that a study was reported on the exact same site, but in 2014.

https://m.phys.org/news/2014-12-gut-bacteria-worm-degrade-pl...

Could be the same bacteria mentioned in the Caterpillar article here:

> Scientists say that the degradation rate is extremely fast compared to other recent discoveries, such as bacteria reported last year to biodegrade some plastics at a rate of just 0.13mg a day.

.13mg of plastic per day per _____? How many bacteria, or what weight or volume of bacteria?

.13mg of plastic per day per bacterium would be incredible; per kg of bacteria would be not so amazing.

highlight Bertrand Russell's praise of idleness. if the person were too devoted to her work, it would have never produced the breakthrough allowed via her seemingly unrelated hobby.

I am skeptical that any sort of bacteria/insect based plastic decomposition project will address the problems with plastic waste.

The biggest problem with plastic is not with the products that make it into the landfill, where bacteria could be used. The problem is with what happens when they don't make it into a landfill, and they end up as basically permanent pollutants in the water.

I, for one, have never understood the problem with landfills. There's tons of unused space left, and landfills take up a tiny fraction of that. Who cares if we make a trash hill somewhere and styrofoam sits there for a million years?

One of the better solutions, but nobody wants a landfill near them.

They're disgusting.

Visit one sometime, they are quite clean actually.

with plants on top after a while (and sealed properly) ...

Decent number of golf courses got built over landfills. Don't have to be disgusting when we are done filling.

In a small town my parents live in they opened a park with a large hill, originally landfill, and the kids tobaggon on it every year. One of the most popular destinations in the town during winter. So agreed it's not all bad and destructive.

The buffer zone around a landfill doesn't have to be that large. A couple kilometres and you're good to go. less if you put some industrial at the edge of the buffer instead of residential.

In Victoria, BC they've taken that buffer around their landfill and built some pretty great mountain bike trails. Whenever I'm out there I always go for a ride at the dump.

I think the biggest issue people have with landfills is that it's basically banking on the things being dumped there not having an adverse effect on the environment, ground water, etc over a long period of time. Even if no one really knew/knows/ensures what is entirely safe to dump.

Yeah, I'm not sure why anyone would think burying waste underground is an okay solution. It made sense when most household waste was fabrics, wood, old food etc but nobody stopped quick enough to evaluate the impacts when our waste got more and more toxic and non-biodegradable. I've recently move to the Netherlands from the UK and was amazed to discover they don't recycle household metal items (e.g. soft drinks cans, food cans etc). That's been a staple of the recycle industry for as long as I can remember in the UK, maybe it's a business opportunity waiting to happen in Holland :)

Depending upon the facility. Some places do quite a bit of sorting on trash. Especially things like metals. While they don't have a separate bin. They might still filter or export some components to be recycled?

In many places in Europe consumers separate their waste themselves prior to collection, Holland included. Any waste that hasn't been separated and is just in a rubbish sack and presumed to be non-recyclable and buried without being opened or sorted. The metal cans in Holland end up in the rubbish sacks and are buried forever along with non-recyclable plastics, food waste, nappies etc

Well... the Dutch are very enthusiastic for more landfills, I gather.

I guess it doesn't help that 1/3 of the country is below sea level...nowhere to dig

A modern landfill is not like a landfill back then either, there's a lot of engineering that goes into it, it's not just a hole in the ground. You make it sound like no thought was given to the problem but municipal solid waste disposal is an entire science and engineering discipline.

There is room for improvement but I'm pretty ok with modern landfills. Methane capture IMO is the biggest lack. It's such a waste to let it pollute the atmosphere (at 30x the GHG potential of CO2) when you can capture it, scrub it and burn it for energy. Google says landfill gases account for about 10% of global GHG emissions.

(That's in North America, probably most of the world has woefully inadequate waste management solutions.)

It's clear there's not enough thought and resources going into preventing environmental problems but IMO landfills are not at the top of the list.

> I've recently move to the Netherlands from the UK and was amazed to discover they don't recycle household metal items

Wikipedia says metal cans are separated from regular trash (at the plant) to be recycled. It also says recycling in handled by municipalities so YMMV.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_in_the_Netherlands

Interesting, well that is reassuring as nobody I asked in the Netherlands believed that they were recycled.

Regarding your early point, obviously there is a industry built around waste disposal - but the problem is still that we are creating types of waste that are destined for landfill. The fact there is this option to put it in the ground is a barrier to solutions for how we package our products, which chemicals we use, what we actively recycle etc.

Actually you can recycle a lot of metal items (soup cans, aluminum foil, etc) together with plastic. It might depend on your city but have a look here: http://www.plasticheroes.nl/wat (sorry Dutch only)

"I, for one, have never understood the problem with landfills. "

Says the person who doesn't have to live near a landfill.

Are advanced cities even allowed to have landfills in a residential area?

Mountain View (in the area nearest the bay) is a former landfill.

http://www.mountainview.gov/depts/pw/landfill.asp

I only mean to point out that although it may not be "allowed in the present," these problems last a lot longer than it takes for humans to move in to the area, or write new laws.

The misnamed Shoreline Amphitheater and the golf course are built on the old landfill site.

Events early in Shoreline's history had a problem with the lawn catching fire due to the uncontrolled seepage of methane from under the lawn (as a decay biproduct). Sort of the "everybody-hold-up-your-lighter-for-mood" effect, but uncontrolled.

The bigger problem is everything that doesn't make it into the landfill, particularly the plastics that get into the water. The oceans have tons of plastic breaking down into smaller pieces that fish and birds and eat.

But how will these caterpillars help with that issue?

... That's why it's a problem.

We could try and replicate the degradation processs or find a similar one in the lab. Nature has often been an inspiration for new inventions such as burrs for Velcro.

My problem with landfills is that it's so inefficient. Particularly for things like wood waste or construction demolition, it makes a lot more sense to grind it, burn it, and make power from it, then bury the much smaller amount of ash that is left over.

It's better for the environment to bury wood unburnt. Burning it will release carbon back into the atmosphere. Burying the tree will re-sequester the carbon.

As for grinding it, that's a question of whether the space saved by grinding up the wood is worth it versus just digging/finding a bigger hole.

It's probably better to turn it into charcoal first otherwise gasses like methane will eventually seep out. If you use these gases to fuel the carbonisation, then it will be CO2 neutral.

Think of all the carbon that is sequestered because of landfills. Makes you think twice when recycling paper products.

This. Recycling is important, and the net value must be properly calculated (how much you spend producing paper, recycled paper, and which one ends consuming more CO2, for a specific area, since the impact isn't the same everywhere).

But sometimes producing new paper must be beneficial.

There was interesting segment on NPR discussing paper recycling. Most of our paper comes from tree farms and because of the lack of demand of paper these tree farms are converting to farming other crops which are lot less environmentally and wildlife friendly.

This is interesting, to someone not well informed in this, how do landfills sequester carbon?

Burying paper or other organic items. In a sense your recreating the fossil fuel cycle.

Landfills are actually not that bad of an idea. If we someday find a way to recycle that stuff we can just dig it up again and use it. If a caterpillar eats it who knows where it ends up. In the water? In the ground? In our food? In our blood?

If I understand correctly, the idea is they're dissolving the plastic into different chemicals which presumably don't have the toxic qualities that make plastic so concerning.

>If a caterpillar eats it who knows where it ends up. In the water? In the ground? In our food? In our blood?

That assumes landfills are hermetically sealed systems, they are not. We have plenty of examples where landfills contaminated the groundwater and with it large swaths of ground. It's an irresponsible practice that's pretty much based on the naive principle of "out of sight out of mind".

If the goal is to recycle it's far more advantageous to actually recycle and not mix all the garbage in a giant mess, just to hide it in some hole in the ground. That makes the job of recycling just that much more difficult because you have to pick all the stuff apart and make sure you got everything out of the ground.

> We have plenty of examples where landfills contaminated the groundwater and with it large swaths of ground.

The old "dumps" had this problem. Modern landfills with liners, leachate management, etc. are probably the best way to handle garbage, out of all the possible options. It's simply not possible or even practical to recycle everything.

Many of those "old dumps" were either exempted or grandfathered from the 1991 implemented federal rules for groundwater quality. The liners sure do help, but they are only a temporary fix because "it's widely recognized that even the best installed plastic liner will succumb to deterioration and eventually will allow leachate to be created and released." [0]

I also never said anything about recycling everything, but at least putting some effort into recycling would already go a long way. According to EPA data [1], the majority of municipal waste disposed of in US landfills is made up of organic materials: 29% paper and paperboard, 27% yard trimmings and food scraps. That's 56% of the landfill of which much could be recycled instead of just being dumped, with composting people can even recycle some of that stuff themselves at home and get some quality fertilizer out of it.

The only thing stopping this from happening is the laziness of people who rather want to dump all their garbage into a single bin/bag and be done with it because waste separation is not considered "practical", even tho there are plenty of countries who've practiced it very successfully for years already and as such are leading the "recycling race"[2].

[0]http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/La-Mi/Landfills-Impact-on-G...

[1]https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/web/pdf/ms...

[2]https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/03/04/the-co...

Wikipedia lists some problems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill#Social_and_environmen...

There is also the problem that the trash can get spilled all over the environment during storms.

Mismanaged landfills can have some unpleasant effects on the surrounding environment, like smell in the air or seeping pollutants into groundwater.

Speaking of, don't they use plastic liners to keep the pollutants out of the groundwater? Filling landfills with a chemical to break down plastic could backfire badly.

pretty sure we could come up with another type of liner

It'd be an unusual landfill to start with, because caterpillars generally don't like anaerobic conditions. More like a compost pile that's kept well-aerated.

It seemed like there was a desire to mass produce the chemical that the caterpillar uses to dissolve the plastic, not to use actual caterpillars.

Part of the problem is it is not just the expected trash that is buried there. I've seen people taking plenty of old electronics, batteries and all kinds of other toxic stuff and nobody is really checking a lot of what makes it in there (especially when you haul in a trailer load of demo stuff and just dump it off).

Landfills are basically now the worlds largest plastic bags. Basically a least a foot of clay at the bottom (which liquids flow slowing through), then sheets of HDPE plastic welded together to make a (hopefully) watertight surface. Usually they have pipes to collect whatever leaches through the trash. In NY being not trusting sorts... they double line their landfills with 2 layers of liner.

Then when its filled you put a layer of plastic and soil on the top to stop water from getting in.

Its not perfect, but it seems to be ok. Nothing rots in there since there is hardly any moisture and the off gassing is who knows what (sometimes they burn it, so it has some methane).

Occasionally wonder if the "solution" could be worse than the disease. If plastic-devouring organisms became widespread would it make plastic unsuitable for widespread use because things like car-bumpers and PVC pipe would constantly be biodegrading?

they specifically say in the article that the objective is to find which enzyme is used in order to mass produce it in a chemical plant. multiple times

It makes sense that eventually things would eat plastic.

Lignin (wood) and cellulose are pretty tough to break down, but there are things that eat them.

Plastic fundamentally (chemically) is made of the same stuff as wood, just in a different arrangement of atoms, and releases energy when decomposed. So it seems quite reasonable that there would be things that can eat it.

I think the plastic pollution we are seeing right now is a temporary thing - soon enough there will a large enough population of plastic eaters that it will no longer be a problem.

(We should avoid plastics that have chlorine in them though, except where needed. PVC is the most common example of a plastic like this.)

I think of a blender. Eventually something is going to be found that breaks up pesky combos.

Long molecule chains in plastics seem like they would be easy. I guess it takes the right blender to chop it up!

I also imagine a small caterpillar-sized blender involved. Now I need a smoothie.

I forget where I heard or read this but for something like millions of years wood and other plant materials was not broken down by anything at all as there were no animals to eat away at them.

That's the carboniferous period! [1]

And it went on for about 60 Million years which seems an unfathomable timespan.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous

yeah, imagine all the dead trees that basically don't decompose because nothing can eat them. that'd be a sight to behold.

It actually wasn't the trees it was mostly their bark!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Rocks_and_coal

So it wasn't mountains of wood that lay on the ground during the Carboniferous period, it was like, the best mulching job ever. The trees pwned all other species at that time. Can you imagine being a weed trying to grow up through all that bark? You'd have one hell of an up-hill battle!

I'd evolve growing on the bark itself, given that the nearest soil was a few (dozen?) meters below. See also anything that grows on bare concrete :)

The atmospheric oxygen was 35%. Everything was on fire!

These caterpillars didn't evolve to eat plastic as far as we know. Evolution takes place on unimaginably slow timescales. It took tens of millions of years for things to evolve to eat wood. Probably these caterpillars already happened to produce a chemical that reacts with plastic. I wonder if they even get any nutritional value from it.

That said, bacteria can evolve pretty fast because of high population sizes and low generation times. In the 50's they found a bacteria that had evolved to digest the synthetic material nylon. I wonder why bacteria haven't evolved to digest plastic yet. Possibly there is some scientific reason that it's inefficient to digest. Maybe we could speed evolution up by dissolving plastic in a liquid first so it's more accessible to them.

There was actually a bacteria isolated last year which digests PET plastic: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6278/1196

There's already a much better solution to deal with plastic pollution, a naturally degradable material made from corn.

We heavily subsidize both wind power and solar. We even still subsidize gasohol even though it doesn't produce the environmental benefits we first thought that it did.

But we don't subsidize degradable plastic made from corn which isn't used widely because it costs a few cents more than plastic made from oil. That has never made any sense to me.

You are grossly oversimplifying the issues. You're referring to Polylactic Acid (PLA) which is made from corn and biodegradable. Except it only biodegrades when eaten by bacteria that only lives in soil.

Meaning: If plastic made from PLA ends up in waterways, the oceans, etc it won't degrade there and actually just breaks down into smaller parts creating the exact same sort of problem as microbeads (except PLA doesn't last nearly as long as other plastics regardless).

The other problem is that bioplastics have lower glass transition temperatures than, say, PET or ABS which is what most plastic products are made from. So you're not going to be using PLA in a car dashboard, for example since it would deform rather quickly on a hot summer's day.

"But there's high-temperature PLA now!" Yes, yes there is. You know how they make it "high temperature"? By adding fossil oil-based chemicals to the polymer. This process results in PLA that leaves residues after degrading. It's similar to "wood fill" or "bronze fill" filament in that a certain percentage of it is PLA whereas the rest is the usual does-not-break-down-ever stuff. Better? Yes. A long-term solution? Not really.

...and for reference, we do subsidize bioplastics to the tune of billions of dollars every year:

https://farm.ewg.org/progdetail.php?fips=00000&progcode=corn

PLA and most other bioplastics are made from corn husks.

"Wait: I thought it was pretty much all made from corn?" Nope! There's a teeny tiny percentage of bioplastics made from algae. Now there's the future!

Subsidies to corn farmers don't go to bioplastic producers. Corn husks aren't exactly a scarce resource and would otherwise be left rotting in the field.

There is active research toward turning corn husks into a promising, new clothing fiber:

https://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2014/03/25/farm-waste-fashionista...

This is scientifically very interesting but pretty much orthogonal to solving problems with plastic pollution.

The worms can't live in landfills. If you could separate the plastic before landfilling to feed it to worms, then you could just burn whatever separated plastic can't be recycled. (Yes, that releases CO2, but so does having worms and bacteria eat the plastic.) The problem with plastic as waste isn't that it is super-toxic or impossible to destroy. The problem is that it's mixed in with a lot of other kinds of waste. We don't need new ways to destroy polyethylene. We need ways to separate it from mingled waste streams or prevent mingling in the first place.

Arguably, you could breed worms in a landfill, provided the detritus weren't packed so tightly; Living creatures are usually pretty good at finding foodstuffs among non-edibles.

Do you have sources? The paper cited in the article only tangentially talks about byproducts:

> The most frequent hydrocarbon bond is the CH2–CH2, as in PE (Figure S1B). Although the molecular details of wax biodegradation require further investigation, it seems likely that the C–C single bond of these aliphatic compounds is one of the targets of digestion.

Which seems to imply methylene(o) as the byproduct?

Also burning plastic releases more than just CO2:

> The most dangerous emissions can be caused by burning plastics containing organoch- lor-based substances like PVC. When such plastics are burned, harmful quantities of dioxins, a group of highly toxic chemicals are emitted. Dioxins are the most toxic to the human organisms. (i)

(o) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylene_(compound)

(i) http://www.wecf.eu/cms/download/2004-2005/homeburning_plasti...

Yes, the combustion of PVC and other halogenated hydrocarbons can produce dioxins. This worm digests polyethylene, a halogen-free hydrocarbon that does not produce dioxins even if burned.

The article says "The analysis showed the worms transformed the polyethylene into ethylene glycol, representing un-bonded 'monomer' molecules." Methylene itself is an extremely reactive species that cannot be isolated outside of exotic conditions such as trapping in a frozen noble gas matrix.

Ethylene glycol has a short environmental half-life and is oxidized to simple compounds like CO2 and H2O by a variety of processes:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11302583

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gordon_Craig/publicatio...

I googled and Wikipedia said Ethylene glycol is also toxic to people and animals.

So like yeah it must have to go through some other process after the worms eat it. It sounds like it'll get really complicated.

>The problem is that it's mixed in with a lot of other kinds of waste. We don't need new ways to destroy polyethylene. We need ways to separate it from mingled waste streams or prevent mingling in the first place.

We already have these ways, they are called waste separation and recycling. As a German, I've been separating my garbage for as long as I can think back: Plastics, paper, organic waste and whatever remains as residual waste. In addition to that, we have separate bins for glass bottles, if there's no bottle deposit on them.

Residual waste bins are usually the smallest ones, so people are pretty much forced to separate their waste if they don't want their residual waste bin full after just one week.

It's always weird to me when I'm in another country and everybody just throws everything into the same bin, bottles included, just feels so wrong to me at this point.

Well, since you can't put food stained plastics in the plastic bin (or do you guys do it?), it has to go into the residual waste, and it's that way with many things.

> you can't put food stained plastics in the plastic bin (or do you guys do it?)

I believe this is something that varies.

>Well, since you can't put food stained plastics in the plastic bin.

Why couldn't you? If it's just stained it's not much of an issue after all the food is biodegradable and will just rot on its own from bacteria and insects.

There are some people actually washing out their plastic garbage to prevent bad smells coming from their plastic garbage bag. Imho that's a massive waste of water, just put the garbage bag somewhere where the smell does not bother anybody, the stuff is garbage after all so it's not supposed to smell like roses.

Lipids are an issue for the recycling process. Some people wash them yes, but then you spend more energy on washing than is saved by the recycling so it's kind of pointless.

The article implies that they are trying to synthesize whatever enzyme in the worms break apart plastic.

So it isn't necessary for the worms to live in the landfills. I imagine the idea is to start dropping the pools of the enzyme on the landfill, or something like that.

One day, landfills are vibrant ecosystems that completely break down whatever is placed inside them. As a compost pile today is to plant waste, a landfill one day could be to plastic, glass, metal, styrofoam, etc. We just need to save the planet long enough that evolution can run its course and some lifeforms start taking advantage of all the energy locked inside our "waste".

> We just need to save the planet long enough that evolution can run its course and some lifeforms start taking advantage of all the energy locked inside our "waste".

You realize evolution works in timeframes that are like really really long? On an evolutional timescale 2000 years is pretty much nothing, to us humans it's pretty much our whole modern history of massively polluting this planet.

The pace with which we are changing this planet is way too fast for evolution to keep up with it. If changes to the environment are so fast and so radical then no living thing has time to adapt, they will be extinct before having any chance at adaption.

Well that's a very long time for animals yes. Bacteria reproduce as fast as every half hour. In that 2000 years, that's 35 million generations of bacteria. You can go through a thousand generations in 3 weeks. And every landfill has hundreds of trillions of them. Constantly mutating and competing for resources.

If life on Earth would only consist of bacteria you would have a point, but there's quite a bit more variety to it.

Oh, yeah, I know how this ends. A year from now, when we're chest-deep in caterpillars, you're going to offer to sell us some caterpillar-eating birds...

We already have troubled bee populations throughout the world too. I could also see us getting rids of insane amounts of plastic bags (boo-yea!) and then losing all bee pollinating crops (e.g. Almonds) as colonies collapse (boo-nah?)

If I have to choose one of these:

* almonds

* plastic bags

* bees

RIP the planet.

Three orders of magnitude greater than previously known plastic eating bacteria.

Would be good to have plastic waste broken down, but be careful not to take down our whole civilization with it. Almost everything today is made out of plastic...

In many post-apocalyptic works of fiction it's a disease that wipes out much of humanity; what if instead it was a bacteria or pest that rapidly consumes all our plastic that causes civilization to collapse?

We've been building things out of wood for a long time and wood is a food source to plenty of organisms. If that was going to make civilization collapse, it wouldn't have risen in the first place.

Yes but wood has a pre-existing cycle already in place. Plastic hasn't existed for as long as wood has. If a new microbe or whatever evolves to feed on plastic and becomes widespread, it would certainly be a new experience for us.

I think material science has advanced enough that in 99% of cases, we could find some other suitable replacement (e.g., glass, aluminum, cloth, leather), albeit at a higher cost (although perhaps lower when you account for environmental impact). I'm guessing the remaining 1% of cases are in medicine or some other advanced science.

I'm very well aware of that. I was thinking of a fictional scenario. Also, our modern electronics are not made of wood, many have plastic components.

Which can be replaced with glass, ceramics metal and carbon fiber. I can't think of a single component that uses plastics to function for any other reason than costs.

Also you always have fluoropolymers to fall back on partially.

If all plastic was gone in the span of a week? Again, just an idea for a fictional scenario.

>"If a single enzyme is responsible for this chemical process, its reproduction on a large scale using biotechnological methods should be achievable"

If they're right about the enzyme then the threat is possible. It's different from organisms that eat wood because we are pretty good at mass producing stuff.

We're pretty good at mass producing bombs. Hasn't ended civilization yet. Dropping a bunch of plastic eating enzymes won't be more effective...

Bombs aren't distributed by tiny self-reproducing nano-machines that outnumber humans a trillion to one.

A bacteria making an enzyme that allows it to gain nutrition from plastic would certainly be an interesting problem for humanity. I cannot say if it would be doomsday level or a minor inconvenience, but neither can easily be disregarded because there is no precedent.

Wood is not a good example because nature has had nearly a billion years to figure out an efficient way to reclaim the energy in wood and the closest it got is slow fungal process. This is why when we make wood structures we paint them or treat the wood with fungicides.

Scott Westerfeld's Uglies is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which civilization collapsed due to a bacteria that consumed oil very fast. Good read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uglies_series

Chevy sponsored a short film a few decades ago that looks at small version of that: What if all springs disappeared?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ttYlcrA7ys

That's part of the plot of "Earth Girl Arjuna"

Not to mention that is a parasite of bees...

That reminds me of a certain thing the Puppeteers did in the Ringworld books.

To superconductors.

Or Andromeda Strain.

Imagine this sprayed over a modern army. "The guns.. they are melting."

Modern guns use plastics, but they're usually glass-filled polyamides (e.g. nylon), not polyethylene.

On the other hand, modern hard body armor is often a ceramic/polyethylene composite.

> but be careful not to take down our whole civilization with it

We make lots of things from wood which is biodegradable, without real problem.

Wood is biodegradable, yet we manage to use it in long lasting products.

Or, even more on-theme, woodworm.

Looking forward to moth holes in my fleece.

It would be a very interesting world indeed if you were worried about say, your car becoming infected with plastic-osis and disintegrating!

There was a science fiction story (years ago) along those lines. Someone created a plastic eating bacteria which escaped from lab confinement → mutated to voraciously eat pretty much all plastic (from memory) → downfall of human civilisation.

Not remembering the title off hand though, although it was a good read. Maybe someone else here knows it. :)

What is new here compared to the linked paper from 3 years ago? https://phys.org/news/2014-12-gut-bacteria-worm-degrade-plas...

Isn't this a terrible idea in the large scale? By allowing animals to eat plastic, won't their metabolism release CO2 to the atmosphere through respiration? Plastic has lots of carbon.

Isn't this the same as burning some plastic and saying 'plants can eat it now', just without the direct emissions?

In the small scale, it can solve some local problems. But in the larger scale, shouldn't we just bury plastic deep underground? Of convert it to fuel in substitution of further fossil fuel extraction?

Link to the original paper: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(17)3...

What exactly comes out the other end? Small pieces of plastic?

Reading the article it says that it turns the plastic into Ethelene glycol.

"The analysis showed the worms transformed the polyethylene into ethylene glycol, representing un-bonded 'monomer' molecules."

Moderately toxic, but breaks down in the air in about 10 days. Used in antifreeze.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene_glycol

It's a precursor of polyester. Perhaps polyethilene can be recycled into polyester?

"it breaks down in air in about ten days, and in water or soil in a few weeks."

That is probably the best bit.

Interesting... is this why I've never heard any issues with the amount of windshield washer fluid that is used? I got through many litres every winter.

Probably. The primary complaint I've heard about ethylene glycol is that it smells sweet and it's poisonous, so it attracts animals (esp. dogs and cats) and kills them. It's not highly concentrated in windshield washer fluid, but it is in engine coolant, so sometimes people would leave it out and their dog would drink it and die (and the death was awful IIRC due to the way the poison worked). Years ago, there were some alternative antifreezes offered which used propylene glycol instead: it doesn't attract animals the same way, and has nearly the same (but not quite) antifreeze performance. It seems to have died out though.

It kills people too. Kids, adults poisoning others (or themselves). Bad stuff, better keep it locked away.

Kills people = bad stuff, keep it locked away is a pretty dangerous, slippery slope.

How so? Sweet smelling liquids that kill and children are not compatible in the same space. That's a pretty good reason to keep your various cleaning stuff out of the reach of toddlers whose need to experiment exceeds their capability to understand.

True, but isn't this basic common sense? We do exactly the same with other poisonous chemicals in the house: drain cleaner, etc. Of course, most of them aren't sweet-smelling like antifreeze, but you also don't use antifreeze in the house, only in the car.

I think the real problem with antifreeze is when people drain their radiators at home and then leave the old antifreeze out, either because they're too lazy to put it in a sealed container right away, or because they're letting it evaporate instead of figuring out how to dispose of it properly. Then, usually, some animal comes across it (and is attracted by the smell).

I don't think it was meant that the government should lock it away, but rather that people using such toxins for legitimate purposes should take basic precautions.

I knew about the poisonous aspects, but wasn't sure about the environmental concerns.

I've read that if your dog (or child etc) does drink antifreeze or washer fluid, you are supposed to give them vodka as you rush them to the hospital. It will stop the effects of ethylene glycol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene_glycol_poisoning under Antidote section)

> windshield washer fluid that is used? I got through many litres every winter

You must be Canadian ;) I'm an expat of sorts and once went on a ski trip (from New Jersey to Mont Tremblant in Quebec) with a friend and his parents in January many years ago.

Long story short, we discovered shortly after hitting an ice storm (and finding the wiper fluid reservoir empty) in upstate New York that the wiper fluid reservoir in the car had a large crack in it such that after filling it would only work for about 5 minutes.

This ended up requiring someone to manually fill a cup with wiper fluid and throw it out the window onto the windshield every few minutes for several hours. That being a terribly inefficient delivery system, we went through many litres in one trip!

Not the most fun road trip I've ever been on, but the skiing was great when we (eventually) got there!

Plastics are mostly fairly simple molecules but long chains. I wonder how many variants these worms can eat?

Plasturds(tm)

In my experience, common clothes moth[1] or its larvae is also capable of eating through a plastic bag enclosing dry foodstuffs or cereal. Not sure if they're actually digesting it or could survive on the polyethylene diet though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tineola_bisselliella

This is somewhat orthogonal to your point, but my cats are also perfectly capable of eating through a plastic bag enclosing dry foodstuffs (left a sealed bag of cat treats on the counter one day, found it chewed through and empty the next).

It does seem likely to me, however, that the number of insect species capable of eating through plastics and also breaking the plastic molecules down must surely number greater than one.

This is the best news I've heard all month!

The levels of abraded plastic in our water have gone up steadily over the past half century. While not so much of an immediate threat as rising CO2 levels, it's still something we'll have to contend with eventually. Not to mention the eyesore that is plastic waste. If they can make this work at industrial scale it will really be something!

Looks like this has been know for years...

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es504038a http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/plastic-loving-bact... http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2015/pr-worms-digest-plastics-09...

I bet YC or IndieBio would jump at a project like this, great startup potential.

Scaling up enzymes ftw! Anyone interested?

IndieBio, $250k seed investment: http://indiebio.co/companies/

Sounds like something littered with government regulations and patents. I stay away from anything bio for that reason. Hopefully this one finds some motivated individuals who can take it to industrial scale though.

I imagine most government regulations (i.e. FDA) would apply to pharmaceuticals or medicines. Since this isn't being ingested (FDA) or grown in a field (EPA), I would think it's ok. What did you have in mind?

File under “Diet of Worms”

If there's so much plastic in the ocean, and if it's (obviously) possible for something to evolve in such a way that it can use plastic for nutrition - it seems like we just need to wait a bit, and we'll get some bacteria or weird fish or something like that to solve our floating garbage problem for us. No?

You're right. Unfortunately this also means our non garbage plastics are at risk. For example there is a fungus that converts cloth and similar trash to fuel. It also was a major problem in WWII.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/C8ED057F-...

Reminds me of the nylon-eating bacteria discovered in the 70s in Japan.

It generates an enzyme that digests nylon (nylonase).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria

The paper:

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)3...

Once a bacteria evolves that has a taste for plastics, we might have some trouble. It's probably not a very energy dense food source, but abs burns pretty well. There's some power there

Yet another reason to buy a M1911 instead of a Glock:

Range Instructor: "Mr. Johnson, where's your sidearm?

Mr. Johnson: "I'm sorry sir, the caterpillars ate it!"

But seriously folks, this may turn out to be a problem. I already have ants eating the plastic in my house's wiring.

"'Crazy' Ants, New Invasive Species, Destroys Electric Wiring, Unfazed By Conventional Pesticides":

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/10/crazy-ants-invasive...

This situation is getting out of hand. We need worm- and insect-resistant plastics, obviously!

I'm not a chemist, but I find it really interesting that some enzymes seem to be so versatile that they can destroy chemical bonds they did not originally evolve for.

There's a new Godzilla movie coming in 2019 which is supposed to be a series that revisits all the classic monsters.

Perhaps this could be the new Mothra original story.

Are there any efforts to use computation to discover possible enzymes to solve problems like this?

Now we're going to end up with plastic butterflies.

From Very Hungry Caterpillars.

These kinds of things give me tremendous hope.

Sooo, cover garbage dumps in caterpillars?

i have traveled back in time to warn you that in the future we have too many caterpillars

So what do they poop it out as? Something less pollutant than plastic?

The caterpillars are infected with the Andromeda strain, evidently.

Are they sure it doesn't shit plastic back?

Next story: Caterpillars die from plastic poisoning :(

A typical round about way for human civilization. Since plastic is an environmental problem a logical solution would have been not to produce and use it. Or at least manage its lifetime better. But of course the industry doesn't care about cleaning up since there's no money there.

On what basis do you claim that your solution is logical, but using a caterpillar is not?

If something is a an environmental problem which do you think is better.

a) not create the problem in the first place

b) start creating a solution to the environmental problem you created

Is the problem posed to the environment from plastics greater than the human benefit from their use?

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