Microbes in cow stomachs may help our plastic problem | Hacker News Reader

Microbes in cow stomachs may help our plastic problem

interestingengineering.com

44 pointsshoto_io24 comments

Plastic is a difficult one - its key value is the very fact that nature doesn't readily break it down (Edit: and it's lightweight in comparison). Nature learning or us teaching nature to do so removes its usefulness.

I wouldn't consider computation output accurate if the computer is also composting into pieces as it operates, and I wouldn't want to run the risk of a container being 'eaten' spilling/spoiling its contents before it reaches its destination.

That doesn't excuse us from what we did to nature in creating and dumping plastics and associated by-products though. Single-use throw away stuff still does my head in. Just because we can doesn't mean we should, we did anyway, and we're only now beginning to understand the repercussions of our collective actions.

If this problem becomes 'oversolved' we break civilisation as we know it, as anything made of plastic deteriorates much more quickly/readily than its original expected lifetime, and we have a massive plastic dependency issue.

Your last paragraph is very interesting. Yet, I’m much more positive regarding that scenario.

I think it’s helps to look at wood as an analogy. Dead wood could not be broken down for a long time. That’s why we ended up with dead trees turned into coal and oil.

Then bacteria arrived which could break these materials down. But still today we have a lot durable things built out of wood.

I think similarly we will find ways to protect our important plastics.

I thought it interesting to think about too. Because we measure everything using short-term values, we don't understand what we do to the long-term future.

We could, but we don't seem to readily learn from past similar situations.

Ideally the container would serve its purpose for as long as needed and breaks down accordingly - there's a high level of variance though, and our ability to refrigerate extends that. So because the expected 'lifetime' of a perishable good transported in plastic is highly variable, its not a simple time-matching problem.

Who knows - maybe our dumped plastics become compressed into the future equivalent of diamonds...?

But yeah, humanity generally has a way of finding workarounds / treatments etc. etc. For some reason I was recently reading wikipedia about how "Anodizing was first used on an industrial scale in 1923 to protect Duralumin seaplane parts from corrosion" and now its commonplace, extending durability everywhere.

Because we measure everything using short-term values

Generational thinking is something most of us are bad at but it's something we need to strongly emphasize going forward.

It’s a riff on this concept with “natural” nano technology:

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

Cellulose metababolism is unusually hard given all the plants around.

we should not be expecting a magic fix by science. Unless microbes in cow stomaches can fix stupidity in humankind. We do need science, but we really need to pull ourselves together. Why do we have plastic? It all goes down to the system in we live, and the people going to space for fun!

Stopping people having fun doesn't have anything to do with plastics. So that's a weird argument to have.

Just put a return value on plastic. Have governments pay out for plastics returned to them. £20 a kilo? £200 a kilo? At some point it you can make it worth while taking a ship to sea and fishing plastic out to make money.

Where does the government get the money to pay for plastic recycling? Tax the plastic producers.

There are solutions to most of our problems, it's us not voting in a government that will address these issues.

Yeah we used to do that in the Netherlands. Still do, but they dropped the return value so much it's no longer significant. The roadside trash amount of bottles has increased accordingly.

I think we all have a responsibility to the planet. Using billions in planet resources for a joy ride to space is more than questionable. I am not stopping anyone, I just want people to realised of the abuse to the planet that this implies , I hope they stop themselves.

> Nature learning or us teaching nature to do so removes its usefulness.

So, we create bacteria that can eat plastic. The bacteria starts to eat our food packages and spoils the food. We create eating-plastic bacteria-resistant plastic. Full circle.

And i tell you more, is the same company that create both!

Your computer would not be moist enough to be attacked by these bacteria

Yes they like to consume their victims moist.

Arent we all switching from plastic to paper, bamboo and wood? (In particular in throw away items.)

I cant stop thinking about goats after reading this, they eat everything, do they share these types of microbes in cow stomachs, do they differ, are they 'stronger' microprobes, can they perhaps process more different types of plastics?

There's already a solution out there and that's plastic made from corn that's biodegradable. But it has a couple disadvantages:

1. It's more expensive

2. Plastic bags aren't smooth and have a slightly rough texture

3. Plastic can't be made shiny and has a dull look

There is a new generation of folks trying to make a biodegradable plastic chemically without using corn:

https://fortune.com/2021/06/30/emma-watson-twitter-co-founde...

However from what I read it's far from mass production:

I've asked people in the know can the plastic made from corn be improved? Modern plastic made from corn (PLA) technology is over twenty years old. To their knowledge no one is working on it. They said it was a hard problem. My personal opinion is that it's a problem worth working on.

PLA also has a very low temperature threshold before it loses integrity and starts to deform, can’t use it for anything that would see direct sunlight.

If you want it to compost it’s by definition going to start breaking down at about 130-140 degrees F

What are the byproducts of this process? We already know that cows are emitting a concerning amount of methane into the atmosphere. If the result of this is releasing all the fossilized carbon captured by the plastic, then we'll be solving the plastic pollution problem by greatly worsening the greenhouse gas problem.

My first thought exactly. It’s way better to have that plastic on landfills than - as methane or co2 - in atmosphere.

Not necessarily - you're not feeding the plastic waste to cows. You take the microbes and dump them and the plastic waste into vats. This allows you (similarly to existing biogas plants!) to capture gaseous byproducts of the plastic digestion.

Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27724653

Interesting, I was aware they can make plastic from milk - called "casein plastic", so certainly would tie in that their stomachs have microbes that can effect the chains in plastic.

Well need to fund innovative ways to recycle plastic. In the future it will be very problematic as it's number is increasing. Great effort.

And whattabout that seaweed thing that was supposed to cut down 95% of methane emissions from cows ?

Indians must be on the moon!!

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