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Comment by ThrowITout4321 | Hacker News Reader

This is BS "could" does not mean "will". We get these types of articles every so often but I've yet to see any of it come to anything. My suspicion is that this research gets amplified by PR firms that service the plastic industry with the idea that the public will feel better about all the plastic that is being thrown into the environment and landfills.

Right now the only solution is to minimize plastic use as much as possible. Please keep this in mind.

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It is truly bonkers how much stuff comes wrapped in plastic (especially where paper would do just as good a job).

I very much hope none of it will "come to anything" --- if plastic-eating organisms start becoming widespread, and there is definitely plenty for them to feed on, we'll face a much bigger problem.

with the idea that the public will feel better about all the plastic that is being thrown into the environment and landfills.

Personally, I don't think it's anywhere as much of a problem as the environmentalists claim it is either. Much like the biomass from long ago which has become the oil of today, I'm pretty sure the plastic waste of today will simply become the oil of the future.

> Much like the biomass from long ago which has become the oil of today, I'm pretty sure the plastic waste of today will simply become the oil of the future.

OK, but on that timescale virtually nothing about climate change or environmental issues matters. On the scale of millions of years, life on Earth will continue in some way or another. But what's important is how much suffering will be endured in the potentially cataclysmic coming 100 years, and plastics hold great potential for harm on that timescale.

Eh, there's stuff that eats wood but we still build our houses out of it. Paper disintegrates pretty gosh darn easy if you leave it outside but we still use plenty of it. Most steel rusts in the right conditions, including the stuff in infrastructure.

I don't think plastic eating bacteria would be as much of a problem as people make it out to be.

We might even form a symbiotic relationship with it. It feeds on the micro-plastic in our blood and we get to live long enough to make the next man-made horror beyond our current comprehension.

Just for the record enzyme does not mean organism. Enzymes are non-self replicating so the "grey goo" scenario isn't a problem until we introduce them into organisms but then the energy they derive from the plastic must be greater than the rest of the machinery used to turn it into energy/nutrients. And I would be skeptical of that any time soon.

The chemical industry have has a much more lengthy history of bad chemicals: PFOA, asbestos, leaded gas, HCFCs... how can we be sure that plastic is not one of these ?

What’s to stop eco-terrorists from releasing these bacteria and letting them propagate out of control consuming plastic?

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