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Comment by scrooched_moose | Hacker News Reader

It's a mixed bag and I'm not sure which side wins out.

On one hand, cleaning up plastic pollution is a fantastic thing. On the other, there is a tremendous amount of carbon currently locked up in plastics which is for all practical purposes inert. Releasing that into the atmosphere is yet one more thing that will accelerate climate change.

It also will require a massive shift in our material usage. Bacteria breaking down that plastic bag in the ocean is great. Bacteria setting in on construction, medical devices, or your NES is not so ideal.

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> there is a tremendous amount of carbon currently locked up in plastics which is for all practical purposes inert

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...

1.6% of petroleum products consumed in the US went to petrochemical feedstocks (which I'll take to be mostly plastic). Far more petroleum is just burned, and this doesn't even count coal. In terns of CO2, plastics are almost negligible.

> It also will require a massive shift in our material usage. Bacteria breaking down that plastic bag in the ocean is great. Bacteria setting in on construction, medical devices, or your NES is not so ideal.

That's a great point, and one that may make material planners think twice about using plastics over other materials like metals, woods, or plasters in their projects.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2368220.Mutant_59

Kit Pedler & Gerry Davis overwrite compellingly, if the Goodreads excerpt is representative.

> over other materials like (...) woods,

Plenty of bugs eat wood. From fungi to termites. And yet we can still use wood for construction.

Some woods like cedar are more resistant. Some kinds of ash are more or less susceptible to beetle damage. It all depends of the application and environment, just like plastics might in this scenario.

The scary one is medical devices. Plastics were a godsend, enabling the mass production of disposable medical equipment that effectively solved a lot of tricky sterilization problems. There are a lot of other things that plastics are the best option for, we would suffer a fairly major technological set back if we were suddenly faced with a plague of plastic eating microbes.

If these ideas interest you, check out Andy Weir's book Project Hail Mary. I can't clarify why without spoilers.

For those of us interested in the spoiler, could you tell us behind a link? (perhaps pastebin.com)

Spoiler: https://pastebin.com/Vk8T0rSB

That's very interesting! Thank you for sharing.

Having read that book fairly recently, I only see a weak link at best. It is worty a read though.

There's also a link to a plot element of The Andromeda Strain by Crichton.

Yeah, it is kind of funny that plastic crap we make functions as a decent long-term carbon sink. Stable, resistant to degradationIf only we could properly bury it without it getting everywhere, including in our internal organs.

I have apocalyptic dreams of plastic-eating plagues swarming our civilization out of nowhere.

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