by silasdavis
4 subcomments
- I've often wondered about this. Does the chemistry imply the energetics of this would be less favourable than other organic decomposition?
This could be bad too I suppose? Pipes and other chemical containment vessels might come under attack.
by 1970-01-01
2 subcomments
- If life found a way to eat wood, surely it will find one of our plastics appetizing? Turns out, yes.
https://medium.com/@datavector/why-plastic-eating-bacteria-e...
- It's no surprise that microorganisms evolve quicker to adapt to environmental changes. (At least for evolutionary / genetic changes).
That makes me wonder if we'll soon see mammals with gut microbiomes that can digest microplastics.
by pinkmuffinere
2 subcomments
- This is fascinating! Is this on-net good or bad for humans? On one hand, bacteria that consume plastics can help clean up the mess humans have produced, keeping the world somewhat more balanced. On the other, plastics are very useful to humans, so if they start "rotting" away this could cause lots of problems for society.
My guess is that this is on-net good for humanity. Curious what more qualified folks think.
- So we could end up in a situation where we do ecological harm if we stop using plastics.
by keepamovin
0 subcomment
- the prophecy is true - https://youtu.be/rld0KDcan_w?si=WZkF45Ct-wsVCUWq&t=188
- Life finds a way. Add a potentially usable food source in big enough numbers and the ones that take advantage of that will thrive.
- I'm guessing evolution of these is driven more by microfibers from polyester cloth (which is also PET) rather than plastic bottles. The fibers have much higher surface area for bacteria to attack.
by dukeofdoom
2 subcomments
- This implies in the future plastic will rot like wood.
by vatsachak
3 subcomments
- Okay bacteria now do nuclear waste
- Devastated there's a possible future where my game boy rots.
- algae eats jet fuel, fast enough that there are algasides added to discourage them.
plastcics are more or less like liquid hydrocarbons, with there lack of porosity as the thing that keeps them from bieng eaten, so that unlike most things plastics present a 2 dimensional surface where engulfing single or small groups of molecules is impossible, so other sort of feedingmechanism* must be at play to eat plastics.*
*off the cuff conjecture from a non specialist
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