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Pantry Pests Harbor Plastic-Chomping Bacteria
MTorrice writes In the U.S. alone, consumers discard over 32 million tons of plastic each year, only 9% of which is recycled. Polyethylene is one of the most popular and, unfortunately, persistent types of plastics. Bags, bottles, and packaging made from the polymer accumulate in landfills and oceans across the globe. Scientists have lamented that the material isn't biodegradable because microbes can't chew up the plastic to render it harmless. However, a new study reports the first definitive molecular evidence that two species of bacteria, found in the guts of a common pantry pest, can thrive on polyethylene and break it apart.
It's about time.
So, you couldn't enumerate WHICH "pantry pest" or which species of bacteria to which the articles refer? The URLs for the links are also in shortened form, so you can't even tell what the article is about due to the URL.
I really wish that we, as an internet, could move on from such terrible tactics to scrape viewership, though I will give the writers points for not starting the title of the article with the word "These" or for not putting a number in the title. I think. I didn't click the links.
Wiggly Woodworms Want Wayward Waste, While We Wonder Why Woodless Worms Won't.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
I would have guessed it was this critter (and now I know its name).
Great idea. This will allow the plastic to be chewed up into smaller pieces so it can be more easily digested by marine organisms and so many other things. A plastic water bottle is a bit too large to enter the food chain so I am glad that researchers are finding to ways to make sure all plastics can be broken into small enough pieces that they can be easily ingested by marine creatures who mistake them for sea life. *Hits hand on forehead*. Remember the success already achieved with "biodegradable" plastics which have assured that the mid oceanic garbage patch is heavily populated with small fragments of plastic just the right size for ingestion.
Nature WILL find a way to eat it. This should have been obvious.
A new study reports
molecular evidence
Because fuck using URL shorteners when they're unnecessary. It's better to know at least the domain that a link will take you to.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
What could possibly go wrong? Does anyone remember "Mutant 59: The plastic Eaters", by Kit Pedlar and Gerry Davis? "Ice Nine" comes to mind as well.
Indeed polyethylene is persistent, but at least this one is not an endocrine disruptor. I just wonder why we do not recycle it more. It looks stupid to spend money cracking crude oil when you can start with already clean polyethylene.
The electrical wires in your house are insulated in plastic. Fortunately it's PVC, not PE, but if the bacteria mutates again, things could get way too interesting.
The Fall of Cities in the Ringworld books comes to mind. At least ours are not levitating on superconductors.
So there was an old SF book "Mutant 59 the plastic eaters" where considering the amount of plastic in modern society things went wrong similar concept....
This is pretty close to that original plot (from the 70's)
Came here to say the same.
It doesn't turn into small pieces of plastic, it turns it into ~starch.
Polyethelene is (C2H4)nH2, where n is large. In other words, it's a long chain of carbon-hydrogen units.
Sugar and starch, on the other hand, are chains of carbon-hydrogen-OXYGEN units. If the chain is short, it is called a sugar, long chains made are called starches. All animals get their energy from these starches and sugars. Short chains (sugars) are easier to digest than long chains (starches).
So the frustrating thing is that the big differences between plastic and starch (food) is the oxygen atom, and the length - polyethene molecules are even longer than starch. If you add oxygen to plastic and cut the molecules apart, you'd end up with food, except the plastic doesn't allow the oxygen molecule in.
This bacteria does that difficult trick, it forces oxygen atoms in, splitting the molecular chain in the process. After the bacteria does its thing, the result is more like starch than plastic.
At this very early stage, initial testing with this exact microbe didn't immediately dispose of large amounts. That would take more time, more of the bacteria, or a better version of the bacteria.
Semi Hard SF for the win... again. Read this when I was very young.
http://quillandkeyboard.blogsp...
Quote:
Mutant 59 is an excellent example of the British specialty; the quiet catastrophe. By altering one small part of the normal world, removing plastic, Pedler and Davis set into motion a series of events that wreck ever-expanding circles of devastation. As plastic insulation vanishes, wires spark and fires break out. Airliners crash or explode in midair. Submarines vanish. Gas leaks from sealless lines. The entire infrastructure of London literally decays. It's a truly frightening scenario that makes one realise just how the failure of something we take for granted can imperil our entire civilisation.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Pantry Pests Harbor Plastic-Chomping Bacteria
Okay, admit it. Who else misread the first word?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I see a solution coming up for the plastic soup in our oceans. What could possibly go wrong?
't used to be LawnMOWER, really...
PVC is pretty nasty stuff, you don't want to set it on fire and breathe the fumes, or eat it.
This reminds me of a cautionary tale in the form of an SF novel titled Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters.
I read it back in 1972, while in high school, but remembered the "lesson" it taught about cultivating and developing "Scavenger" bacteria.
Before you applaud this discovery, you might give that book a read...
Jus' Sayin'...