Yale Discovers a Fungus That Eats Plastic
pcworld.com
pcworld.com
Would be possible that such a fungus proliferated into a sort of "termite for plastic", feeding on plastic piping (in houses or cars maybe) and the like.
Of course house owners already deal with mold so I suppose this would just be another one.
The article suggests introducing it into landfills to eat the plastic. Kudzu was introduced to America to control soil erosion. The invasive vine now spreads at a rate of 150,000 acres a year, so it certainly accomplished goal A.
Polyurethane is mainly used for foams, coatings and sealants.
It's common to lump all plastic together, but they are actually VERY different and things that will destroy one type will have no effect on another.
In europe we have a similar problem with japanese knotweed. In the UK it's classed as "controlled waste" and has to be disposed of using chemicals. It's illegal to wilfully spread it.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Japanese_knot...
150K acres [per year]? or per what metric.
If not for plastic we would have to use wood or metal, and both would take FAR more energy to work with and ship.
I wish more professors would actively engage their students in "real" research projects, i.e. beyond the usual cookie-cutter laboratory lessons or follow-a-grad-student internships. Sure, it's more work for everyone involved, but experiences like this are the best way to convert bright students into real scientists, IMO.
Hopefully these guys know what they are doing :)
Plastics burn really well, they are not actually that hard to destroy safely - their decomposition products are very clean if the fire is hot enough.
In short, "not actually that hard to destroy safely" is wildly off the mark.
Your other statement is wildly off the mark, too. Metabolic byproducts are incredibly diverse, including all of the chemical compounds produced in the course of an organism's life cycle. One of the organisms studied in this paper was Aspergillus niger, whose metabolism produces, among other things, aflatoxin. EDIT: Oops, WRONG. It's other Aspergillus species that produce aflatoxin, sorry. A. niger is mostly notable for producing 99% of the citric acid in your food.
The chlorine makes salt, and the fluoride can be sold to be added to city drinking water.
And aflatoxin (and others) are not byproducts, they are deliberately made by the organism, regardless of what it eats. A byproduct is waste that depends on the food source.
1. Bacteria:
- Can they adapt to the climate and the ecology of their target environment?
- Can they adapt, in particular, to oceanic salt water to dissolve dumped plastic waste?
- Overpopulation: what are the consequences? Do natural predators of this bacteria exist?
- Underpopulation: can the bacteria be genetically modified to survive in landfills or oceans? Must they be isolated in a controlled environment with plastic?
- If the enzyme/manufacturing process is controlled by a profit-seeking corporation, would this mean unequal pollution capabilities between the developed and developing worlds? I suspect more plastic waste is improperly disposed by developing countries - thus further exacerbating the problem.
- Must the bacteria manufacture the enzyme necessary, or can an enzyme be chemically manufactured?
- Does the enzyme have an optimal/useful operating temperature? The Amazon rainforest is not only a freshwater environment, but also a relatively warm climate. Our waste may be captured by cold ocean currents or be present in countries simply far too distant from the equator for this to be a feasible option.
-What are the products of plastic dissolution by this bacteria?
-If the process is performed inefficiently/incompletely due to some environmental factors (water salinity, pH, temperature), are there any harmful byproducts?
-If the process produces simple chemicals - do these harm other organisms in the environment surrounding the bacteria?
-Would the accumulation of the products (CO2 gas for example) further global warming or pollution?
There is another fungus which is capable of turning cellulose from wood into diesel. A fungus which could digest plastic into fuel would be great. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2008/2008-11-04-02.asp
Of course this fungus should not be injected into the dump sites. Better dig up the plastic and have it converted into fuel in a chemical plant.
Possible selection and confirmation bias as I design plastic products.
On top of that, the polypropylene film itself is likely a multilayer structure of different copolymers and crystallinities, and it all turns a crappy little thing like a chip bag in to something damn hard to recycle.
The discovery here is an endophytic (living in a plant) fungus that can grow anaerobically, using polyurethane as its sole carbon source.
The authors suggest fungi that digest polyurethane have been known for decades. ("""Enzymatic degradation of PUR has been demonstrated by both fungi (4, 5, 6, 19) and bacteria (14, 17, 23).""")
They cite one reference from 1968, which itself implies polyurethane-degrading fungi had been known long before then:
"Fungal susceptibility of polyurethanes." Darby, R.T, and A.T. Kaplan. 1968. Appl. Microbiol. 16:900–905. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16349806
It would be great to have something eating all the plastic in the oceans other than the fish. And we really REALLY need to start doing something about the trash gyres in the seas.
The pageturn navigation is in the upper left hand corner.
Scientists cannot find a way to degrade plastic does not necessarily mean plastic is not bio-degradable.
I have found time and time again, that stand-up comedians are the ones who make the most serious points.
EDIT: Found it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw
As a kid that book seemed captivating(scenes of disintegrating airplane, sewage exploding etc.), upon rereading it some years later the plotting and characters seem hackneyed.
When all those carbon-based life forms died all those years ago, there was nothing to break them down. So they persisted, and the result is oil and coal.
I've often wondered whether a similar thing would happen to all this plastic lying around. I suppose it's still sort of a toss-up, but now I'm at least sort of convinced that it's vaguely possible.
There was nothing to break them down not because such a thing did not exist but because they were protected from those organisms: they were buried under anoxic conditions (complete lack of oxygen) or beneath acidic waters, shielding the organic matter from that which would normally degrade it by feeding on it.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/01/06/18/1317218/cd-eating...
The plastic waste that isn't on landfills is.
One of the most important things we learned from early 20th century conservationist movement was that to "preserve" something the best thing you can do is leave it alone. Every time they tried to correct something in a ecosystem something else would break. They messed up a lot of Stuff in yellowstone until they learned to just let it be.