This is why I get scared when I see articles about people developing plastic eating bacteria. Sure it is great for reducing waste but it’s a dangerous game to be playing for sure.
These probably aren't going to occur anywhere outside of a bioreactor, so our action figures are likely safe...for now!
Should be ° U+00B0 DEGREE SIGN, not ˚ U+02DA RING ABOVE.
Option-zero has a tiny underbar for me, which I think is in Bulgarian(?) abbreviations.
But wood and paper are also readily biodegrade, and yet by simply by controlling the amount of moisture present we manage to make those last a long, long time. In addition we have treatment options to delay decomposition even in wet conditions.
If you don't use plastic you need to switch to solutions requiring more maintenance and offering less protection like vegetable oil or pine tar.
Even if hypothetical rogue bacteria can't dissolve plastic parts to goo or cause structural damage, or there's still potential harm in the form of surface changes. Discoloration, flaking, etc.
Imagine a product nobody wants to buy because it looks damaged, or a medical device that can't be as easily/thoroughly sterilized anymore.
This article, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/14/bugs-acr..., posted here a while back describes evidence that real world evolution is happening. "for now!" indeed.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29579337
> The study is the first large-scale global assessment of the plastic-degrading potential of bacteria and found that one in four of the organisms analysed carried a suitable enzyme. The researchers found that the number and type of enzymes they discovered matched the amount and type of plastic pollution in different locations.
Plastic is indispensable just like electricity.
Plastic is a huge pollutant, with breakdown stats that make you cry once you start thinking in terms of tons of absolutely indestructible stuff that makes it into our environment every day. Only a very small fraction of that stuff really needed to be made from plastic. Mostly it is just done because it is cheap and mechanically well understood. And because - tadaaaa - it lasts longer than most other materials. But the result is that the plastic invariably outlasts everything else, and it is super hard to recycle it efficiently unless it was expressly made to be recycled, which it rarely is.
Electricity is a highly fungible form of energy, in every way that matters unlike plastic and for which we do not have any alternatives that come close to having the same kind of properties for everyday use.