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Grow Your Own Plastic
Quetzalcoatl sent in a link to a BBC story about new genetically modified plants from Monsanto that grow biodegradable plastic. Apparently the next step is to get the plants to produce enough plastic to be worth growing commercially, which may not be possible. But hey! You never know until you try, right?
The only way genetic engineering is possible is by taking some genes, sticking some other genes into it, and repeating until something interesting happens.
Although I like your idea, I think it's a dream for now. Maybe 10 or 20 years later...
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Monsanto is the last company I'd want producing plastic, oil, or any other product crucial to the US economy. Greenpeace crazies and eco terrorists are certainly right about one thing - dealing with Monsanto is dangerous for your long-term independence. Their clever mechanism for ensuring repeat buyers is to build infertility into the plants they sell. Farmers buy them because they are indeed very good crops for certain purposes, namely for surviving the popular but toxic herbicide RoundUp, which Monsanto also sells. Monsanto works vigorously to bankrupt competing seed sellers, so that only their perishable brand is available, thus locking farmers into their system for life. Prior to the development of these terminator genes, Monsanto would actually maraud around the countryside burning "illicitly stocked" seed.
k /upd/umar99/monsan/ecol1.htm#anc hor52768
http://www.mat.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprints/boo
A recent company tactic as been to push this "system" as a solution for hunger in third-world countries. Of course, what it would really entail would be a complete regional ownership by Monsanto of the food supply.
http://www.greenpeac e.org/~geneng/highlights/food/98_10_15.htm
Monsanto is also renowned for suing magazines and television stations when they are about to produce an article critical of the company. Most news providers can't fight them, so they buckle and the issues are never aired.
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/fox.html
And much like certain proprietary software companies, Monsanto patents its creations. We all are familiar with the stupidity of patenting ideas, and genetic engineering, especially of plants, is quite simply that. One plant can turn into two plants with only a negligable investment of soil, water, and sun. This means they are not a zero-sum game, and hence the arguments against patenting software apply to them.
Monsanto is one of the least palatable companies out there. They are easily the Microsoft of genetic science. I think I'd rather stick to the Sheiks for my gallon of gas and pound of shrink-wrap, thank you very much.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
...the plastic in question was to be made from corn...
Ooops. Should have said it was made from soybeans (the other major cash-crop around these parts).
That'll teach me to post late at night!
Its biodegrabable nature makes it very useful. Things like meat and dairy packaging are generally plastic, because it's light weight and provides a good barrier against bacteria. But you don't (or shouldn't) keep such products for more than a week or two at the outside. So our plastic containers need an effective lifespan of a month or so. Biodegradable is the perfect solution, especially if the plastic could somehow make a decent garden fertilizer. Just chop up your plastic containers, throw them in the compost heap, and use it next spring to grow more food.
Who cares what the motivation is? The thing about capitalism is that, basically, it works. Every other system of economics tries to appeal to altruism as the reason for doing the right thing. Capitalism appeals to greed to do approximately the right thing most of the time. This works a lot more reliably.
Coming back to the point, the GM companies have basically demonstrated that they can either produce "mule" seeds which won't reproduce or they can produce seeds which can copy themselves, at some risk of "contaminating" the local environment (whatever that means). Which would you prefer?
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Real plants made out of plastic? Cool!
Now if they can just genetically modify tigers to have acrylic fur!
I don't know about vested interests (especially since at the time I lived in Indiana where 10% alcohol fuel was strongly encouraged thanks to the agricultural economy) but one of the reasons gasahol went out of fashion is that the alcohol had a tendency to eat away at the fuel line hoses...
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I don't think many small-time businesses can compete with giants like Wal-Mart. A small business cannot afford to build a plant in southeast asia so they can pay workers 5 cents a day. Also, there are some people who just don't want to run a business -- why should they be financially punished for not pursuing a career in business administration? Different people have different talents. Why should a bad CEO be payed 200 times more than what a good salesperson or secretary earns?
(section about the UK cut-- I don't know anything about the history of Britain)
Thirdly, the author seems to ignore (unless I failed to notice it) the possibility that anyone has of gaining control of the "means of production" themselves. It is actually fairly easy to set up your own business with your own employees, or for a group of people to form exactly the kind of workers federation that the article proposes. Come up with a sensible plan and the capitalists happily lend you control of the means of production. Prove it effective and you get to keep control. On the other hand if you fail to make best use of the resources you are consuming then control will be taken off you and given to someone who can do better.
It is a common capitalist mistake to make efficiency equivalent to good. Leftists generally believe human life is more valuable than the dollar. Money is supposed to be a tool to serve us, we are not supposed to be serving money. This is not to say I believe we should give someone who does nothing the same pay as someone who works hard-- I just do not believe we should be slaves to production.
Considering this system from the point of view of the individual, I can't see any difference. Unless I want to be self-employed (with the same tradeoffs as today) I have to join one of these federations. Once in, I have to do what the currently appointed "managers" tell me to do. As an individual my vote will count for little, and if I am female a member of a minority then there is no reason to suppose that the other members of the collective will be any less bigoted towards me than a capitalist manager.
This is one of the (many) contradictions of "anarchism." Under a real socialist government minorities would be protected by law. Marx makes a number of good arguments against anarchism and "anarcho-socialism".. unfortunately most of these "anarcho-socialists" are too lazy to read Marx...
Somehow this thread seems more apporpriate to http://technocrat.net than to Slashdot. But I guess if this is where the story gets posted...
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
First, please do me a favor and don't assume that anybody who is a socialist is a Marxist or any other form of authoritarian.
:( Anyway, my beliefs do not lie in central planning, which conflict w/socialism, even if it's not authoritarian per se.
Yeah, that's a fair gripe. But "Socialist-sniper" sounded so good
Second, corporations are not leading us to more economically happy ideas and products. They are also not moving our society towards a more positive future.
I think they are. Quite simply, except for when we had a big green push about 10 years ago, environmental values have not been enough of a reason to pay an extra "fee" for an item. That is, most people would rather pay $5.50 for a ream of paper (regular) than $6.50 for post-consumer recycled paper. But some people are, and in most cases, all else equal (including price), people will buy the eco-freindly product.
So, while companies are looking out for their best interests, sometimes it makes sense to help out the environment too. Monsanto has been less than honest about this, but if these plastic plants work, they've done a lot of good too.
Argicultural selection does not promote mutation! It is about selective breeding.
When you cross two strains of tomotoes, or select for a specific quality from a crop, every gene in the resultant strain was already present in the tomato genome. Everything present in the new strain was present in one of the original ones. No new substances are added to the end product, and the change is incremental. These tomato genes have a proven track record for creating safe foods. There won't be anything in your new tomatoes that wasn't in tomatoes before, and the concentration of any harmful substances can only increase a limited amount. If you could eat the old tomatoes safely, you can eat the new ones.
GM foods introduce new genes (and therefore new substances) that were never present in that plant's genome - or perhaps even in that of any plant we use for food. These genes do not have a proven safety record for producing safe and healthy foods. Tell you what, I'll let you go on ahead and eat them for, say, twenty years or so, and see what happens, then maybe I'll give 'em a try. Meantime I like the old-school foods just fine, thank you very much. I just ask that a) you label 'em so I can tell the difference, and b) you contain the plants and their pollen with biohazard protocols so that their modified genomes don't contaminate the baseline.
GM is qualitatively different from agricultural selection. The argument by GM apologists that we're just "skipping the middle man" is bogosity incarnate.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
If I recall correctly, short chain hydrocarbons, like alcohol, contain less energy per unit volume & per unit weight than longer chain hydrocarbons, like kerosine. But the longer chain hydrocarbons are more difficult to get a clean burn with, so gasoline, and intermediate between kerosine and ethanol, is the best choice for cars. Diesels, however, use even longer chain hydrocarbons without too much trouble due to their more effective ignition system. And for a similar reason airplanes use kerosine (thin enought to flow easily, but they burn at a high enough temperature that getting a good burn isn't a problem).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the part of petroleum used to make fuel is not the same part of petroleum used to make plastic. If I remember correctly, crude is really a mixture of several different kinds of molecules. In the the refinement process the molecules are seperated out -- some are what we call gasoline, some are kerosene, some eventually are turned into plastic, etc. So we wouldn't really be "wasting" oil by turning it into plastic vs. fuel; the two happen in parallel whether we like it or not.
I am a man of const int sorrows
cool... quetzelcoatl is the mexican god of death if you didn't know. my friend kurt has a tattoo of the traditional quetzelcoatl on his right arm. it's really cool (neither of us are mexican)...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
No, you aren't. But you got there before I did.
Read it, and think.
Monsanto is in bed with the Fed bigtime - the US funds "basic research", Monsanto buys only the successful results - the patents on them - cheaply, Monsanto gets rich. The innovation isn't theirs.
It's called HEMP.
Rumor is Henry Ford built an entire vehicle, fueled it, and lubricated it from HEMP. Why do we need genetic tampering when we don't know how to use what we have already?
Idiots.
Plus ca change, plus c'est les memes choses.
Tom's theory of natural and artificial property: A human being naturally owns their own labor. They naturally own things that they make with that labor from materials and tools that they naturally own, if they don't destroy things they don't own in the process. They naturally own things that they trade their labor or goods for, providing that the other party naturally owns whatever is traded.
Anything beyond this - ownership of land, of ideas, of corporations, whatever - is an artifical construct that can only be justified if it increases human happiness and contentment. Ownership of capital resources falls into this category.
No. Capitalism isn't based on the free market, it's based on state creation of such artificial property as discussed above. If you think otherwise, try to envision a capitalist system without private ownership of land or mineral resourses, without intellectual property, without corporations, without the state enforcing artificial property rights.Capitalism is about deciding who owns what to start with; Tom's theory of natural and artificial property (which one might, if one were daring, call a sort of socialism) is another. Markets are about the rules for trading what you are defined to have; a free market works quite well with Tom's theory of natural and artificial property.
Anyway, back on topic...
So would I. IMNSHO everything we make should either biodegrade or recycle - I hate trash! I just don't want GM food, and I want strong protections against industrial-use GM plants escaping into the ecosystem. Natural plants that get into foreign ecosystems can do enough damage (kudzu, for example) - I sure as heck don't want nylon dandilions getting into my yard.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I agree, there may be problems. But thinking that natural mutation in the plant population doesn't happen is fairly ludicrous. Some of the most potent poisons known to man are produced by natural organisms which have been doing so for much longer than man has even KNOWN DNA was genetic material (or for that matter, before man even understood evolution). Just because an agriculturalist picks for a certain phenotype does NOT mean that other traits aren't passed along with it, of course the overwhelming majority of mutations which could occur in a plant genome would be of no harm to us but there ARE some substantial exceptions. Some of the natural deadly mutations may actually give the plant an adaptive advantage which would also be of advantage to an agriculturalist, such as improved resistance to a certain bacteria or insect. It is a known fact that many plants produce potent herbicides and insecticides, the vast majority of these have no direct effect on us but some could.
I realize your point, there ARE dangers associated with transgenic crops...but right now those dangers are fairly limited. Taking four genes out of a bacteria and copying them into a plant's genome WILL NOT cause that plant to produce vast quantities of air borne botulin or something. The biggest consequence would be that the genes would have some wierd adaptive advantage and the plants would breed with the wild type and seriously screw up some food crop. Right now most transgenic crops are made thoroughly sterile (and no, don't quote Jurassic Park or something...no one who has ever ran an Ames test would simply modify a simply biogenetic pathway like thymidine generation and assume that meant the population required vast quantities of thymidine and so was under complete control...) so this isn't much of a problem, but it IS the biggest worry I have with GM crops. As far as the crops being safe to eat, simple manipulation of a handful of genes will NOT make the plant a carcinogen or something unless that was the attempt in the first place. We are rapidly approaching the point where small labs will be able to map complete genomes of organisms very quickly. Oddly enough, many food crops have HUGE amounts of genetic material (due mostly to polyploidy, but that doesn't make it too much easier to deal with unless the polyploid events took place recently...) so they may be among the last things routinely mapped. Once we have this capability though, we will be able to spot check crops and stop random mutations before they are widespread enough to cause damage. This alone makes it worthwhile to develop the genetic techniques needed.
The infertility is there for a good reason and is propably the only thing that Monsanto is doing right. It prevents the genetically altered material in the crop from spreading into the environment through crossbreeding with other plants. As with animals it can occur that plants from different species crossbreed. There is at the moment a heated debate going on about how propable this crossbreeding is and whether the offsprings are fertile. AFAIK it has not been proven to be nonexistent or indeed safe for the environment so the best way to make sure is to make the crop infertile.
Monsanto is of course only interested in preventing the weeds from becoming immune to RoudUp but the real concern is that the effects of altered genetical material on the environment are extremely hard to anticipate from theory and even harder to prove conclusively in experiments. Random mutations make the problem even worse since there is presently no way of testing for all possible ways in which the altered stands of DNA could get f...ed up to become voratious superweeds, plant deseases etc.
Of course Monsanto remains the despicable Microsoft/Nestle/AnyBigCorp that it is for patenting, bullying etc. but it hardly forces you to repeat-buy (you can switch to another seedsupplier anytime) and it isn't this reason why the greens/ecologists abolish the company. The real reason is the danger that it's strategy presents to the environment. When you hear the word genetically altered food you think (at least I did when I heard about it the first time) about genes that make the tomatoes bigger and the apples sweeter etc. when the truth, in fact, is that those things are extremely hard to achieve through direct engineering of the genes and much easier done by the timeprooven methods of breeding and crossbreeding. What is much easier to do and what almost always is meant by genetically engineered plants is that they are made to respond (or not respond) to different chemical compounds. Engineered foodplants are designed to be able to withstand the most efficient and dangerous plant-toxins in vast amounts. When these toxins are subsequently used in vast amounts Natures own weeds will, given time, catch up and develope immunity and it's superweed time with weeds not only take over the cropfields but also the livingspace of other plants.
Monsanto is despisable for taking the easy way out and thus risking the futur of our environment by
getting into the ratrace of developing evermore powerfull pesticides and corresponding immune crops to keep ahead of mother natures own immunesystem. This cannot end well, imagine a future where you can throw acid on cropkilling weeds and they'll be able to withstand it! Granted I'm exaggerating but not much.
-timo
[Had to crack open the Organic book for this one...]
You are correct, crude oil is a mixture of different hydrocarbons, and the first step in purifying them is distilling. (Separating by boiling point.)
Cracking is the next step, where a large hydrocarbon like kerosene is introduced with water, under high pressure, temperature, and catalyst, to be broken into all kinds of low molecular weight parts. Some of these are recombined to make better burning gasoline.
Two raw materials for a number of large scale plastics are ethylene and propylene (45 billion pounds a year in 1988). They are made by cracking natural gas or straight run gasoline, so there is some tradeoff between plastics and fuel.
My feeling is that since oil is a finite resource, any substitution we can make with an infinite one is to our benefit. If, right now, we have a good substitute for plastic that is made from a renewable resource, (And doesn't require more fossil fuels to produce, convert into products, and dispose of than a traditional plastic. "Cradle to Grave" life cycle analysis is critical!) then we should save the oil for fuel. If we have a good energy substitute, ("Cradle to Grave", of course) then let's use fossil fuels for plastic. The best option, of course, would be to use a renewable energy resource to produce a renewable plastic, and either leave the oil in the ground or use it to bring up the standard of living of the rest of the world. (Who likely don't care much what Dreamcasts are made of.)Given the technology today, I think we're closer to a useful, economic plastic substitute than a fuel substitue. (Although Toyota's hybrid cars look very promising.)
Or is the whole "hemp can save the planet" agenda just a thinly veiled trick invented by stoners to legalize pot? Or (more likely), does the truth lie somewhere between the two extremes? Inquiring minds want to know!
--
Jake
We have hoards of bacteria in our intestines. Would it be possible to splice in the right genes and get a population producing insulin, with the production rate regulated by some kind of homeostatic mechanism, or however non-diabetics do it?
Bacteria have been investigated as a source of biodegradable plastics for quite a while now.
The species Alcaligenes eutrophes (probably haven't remembered it properly) can convert things like molasses waste into a short chain polymer called polyhydroxybutanoate (PHB). PHB accumulates inside the bacteria as solid granules called inclusion bodies...when you want to make plastic, you burst open your bugs, collect the PHB inclusion bodies, and then mould it into plastic (i think with heat...could be wrong).
This type of plastic was used to produce some test products in Europe a few years ago...shampoo bottles, disposable containers etc etc...they found that the containers were biodegraded within a several months when placed in conditions like the bottom of a lake, or in landfill.
Last i read about this sort of plastic was that the cost of the raw materials (molasses waste, glucose, ethanol) made PHB derived plastic too expensive compared to traditional oil-produced plastic. Scientists were messing around with regulatory genes, and moving the PHB synthesis pathway genes to other bacteria, to try an improved the efficiency of the process
Monsanto
Socialism
Monsanto
Socialism
Sometimes I think biodegradeability[1] is overrated. Things can and will degrade given suitable conditions. And given unsuitable conditions things that are normally degradeable take ages to do so.
;).
:).
Ever seen those reports of newspapers and erm sausages they dig up from landfills of the 1920s? Yeah those are biodegradeable (ok maybe not sausages), but not in a landfill.
Sometimes I wonder if we should just promote littering on open spaces. Just make sure that the junk doesn't get washed into the waterways.
Pros:
1) In feedback loop: EVERYBODY sees the junk build up.
2) The UV from the Ozone Hole will degrade plastics and stuff pretty well.
3) The sulphur dioxide (+ other pollutants) and oxygen in our air will cause plastics to crumble as well.
Believe me, normal plastics don't last forever. Leave them in the sun and they definite degrade- they get crumbly in just a few years (then bacteria will probably take care of em), that Nuclear Reactor in the sky is pretty potent. By the way, it's bad for your skin too.
Put all the plastics in the open with some bacteria friendly swill, I'm sure some bacteria will figure out how to eat em- there's enough useful energy in plastics. Heh it may even backfire - and then you've got to switch to glass
Cheerio,
Link.
[1] Wow I can't believe I typed that
There's a lot of hostility to GM foods (outside the US, anyway). I think Monsanto and the other users of GM techniques would have done a lot better to develop this plastics process first (ie producing something interesting and actively green since it cuts consumption of finite resources) than to wind up public opinion by pushing something which only benefits the producers.
If customers don't like it, they won't buy it.
--
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
Why don't they put in some trial crops of those plants you see in waiting rooms. Preliminary studies have shown that they also contain a high percentage of plastic. They don'y require water either so they could be used to revegetate desert areas too. Don't think it's biodegradable though!
...but then again, fuel cells seem more interesting to me as far as that goes: the only chemicals involved are hydrogen, oxygen, and water, and you get energy useful for electricity, propulsion, or however you care to harness it. Very clean & efficient too, at least on paper. I'm hoping someone can build a useful & affordable fuel cell system to address the fossil fuel shortage. But that's a tangent I won't pursue farther here...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
So its all true. Money really does grow on trees. Well, credit cards do... ;)
Anybody here from Brazil? Didn't I hear that you have cars running on 100% methanol? So the corrosion problem isn't insurmountable?
AFAIK, Celluloid was the first plastic ever used commercially, and it's made from wood fibers.
I never heard whether celluloid was bio-degradable, but I know it does tend to disintegrate under UV light.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Fuel from plants has been done since at least the 1930's. Diesel enginges can burn soybean oil, and cars can run on ethanol fermented from corn or pretty much any other grain.
What keeps this from happening on a large scale, is that petroleum is really, really cheap.
Keep in mind also, that petroleum is *very* plentiful. If the price of gasoline rises to even $3/gallon, then we'll see it getting steamed out of tar sands and cooked out of shale.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Capitalism appeals to greed to do approximately the right thing most of the time. That's more an issue of free markets for labor that of capitalism. The two are not the same. Free markets are about personal choice; capitalism is about control of others and profiting from their labor.
If they're growing food crops, I'll take neither, thank you very much. GM companies should not be allowed to fsck with the food supply. (At the very minimum, they should be required to inform consumers that their products contain GM crops, so that consumers can make a free informed choice.)If they're doing whiz-bang stuff like chemical production with GM plants, not only do I want them muled, I want them grown in sealed greenhouses with biohazard protections. Belt-and-suspenders.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Yeah, but a farmer sells every scrap of produce he grows anyway.
Let me climb up to my soapbox here:
2 (essentially) types of corn grown on the US side of the sea:
1. Corn grown to feed the varmits (cattle, horses, swine, etc). This is the majority of where the grain produced on US farms goes -- livestock, either domestically or internationally.
2. 'Sweet' corn. Not grown for the above, but actually used for human consumption. That's your canned cream corn, etc.
Now -- here's the part that is generally misconcieved:
Very few (under 1 percent) of farmers store grain for next years crop from what they planted. That hasn't really been done since the turn of the century. Why? They have bins with propane dryers on them to keep the seeds from getting moist (and going bad, or sprouting in storage). It costs too much to run that year round.
Essentially: If a farmer keeps grain he's guaranteeing that he's going to loose money on it.
Better to leave that to the people who are in the business of supplying seed yearly. They do it more efficiently (and cheaply) than any one farming corp could (unless its a very BIG farming corporation).
Also -- Monsanto IS satan in the agriculture business. Farmers have been bitching about that company for years (why, for instance, do they sell their product to Argentinan farmers for a third what they sell here? Nothing against Argentina, but the descrepency is annoying). It is essentially a monopoly (they are more or less the MS of agriculture).
Plants are different from mammals. They interchange genetic material freely even without pollenation.
Monsanto is definitely trying to lock its customers in, just like Microsoft, except Microsoft is only playing with software; Monsanto is playing with the world's food supply. Think about THAT, corporate apologist.
My opinion is yes, we need more ways to create plastic. Oil is too valuable as an energy source to waste it making Nintendo cartridges. It would be best to run off renewable sources, like solar or wind, but until they become (more) cost-effective, at least we'll be reducing the ammount of fossil fuels we use up.
As for how degradable it is, the biodegradable polymer council points out the following:
I would speculate that their product is compostable, and degrades under compost conditions in about 3-6 months. Most likely, if a cup made from this material degraded when you threw it on the side of the road, it would be useful commercially. Without knowing more about it, I can't guess any better.
the problem with that is twofold, first that collecting the hydrogen would be 'problomatic' in that it's a gas, and second that the storage requirements are difficult. I don't want to drive around with at 3,00 cubic foot tank to store fuel, and compressed hydrogen is extremely flammable
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
You are aware that GM foods have existed since the early 40's, right? They used to just bombard the seed with radiation until they got one that had the desired trait via mutation, then try to breed out the undesired ones. Now it is just done via genetic science.
Yeah, it turns out Rudolf Deisel produced an engine designed for vegetable oil originally.
Check out http://www.veggievan.org
I guess that in the day, veggie oil was too expensive (and petrolium was cheap). Not to be cynical, I'm sure the petrolium industry is doing their best to cause problems converting to biodeisel anyway, but....
Most likely, it is durable under "normal" conditions. (Room temperature and humidity) It'll probably melt at typical plastic processing temperatures, (>230 F) and degrade in compost or some other unusual condition. If it can't survive room temperature, it wouldn't be commercially viable. Other biodegradable polymers can be made into fibers for clothing, and films or containers for packaging. Monsanto's Biopol could be made into credit cards.
The plastic probably isn't a liquid in the canola seed. It is likely they'll use a solvent to dissolve the polymer from the seed meal, and then purify the plastic and recover the solvent.
So when do they start growing your dinner in its plastic packaging? ;)
Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?
What is your Slash Rating?
I'm probably going to come off sounding like a big time Socialist-sniper, but whatever. It happens. It's amazing that people (read: Sierra Clubbers, Greenpeace, et all) always assume that government will lead the way to more economically happy ideas and products.
Bzzt.
Look at this thing. A plastic making plant. Why? Because fossil fuels (which plastic is made from) is in finite supply--sooner or later, we are going to run out, and as supply gets lower, prices get higher. Also, having biodegradable plastic products means that there is no special dumping fees needed, and thereby lesser costs. Sure, I don't expect us to be using plant plastic anytime soon, nor do I expect the plastic to biodegrade overnight, but it's a step in the right direction.
And it's not because some politician said "make it so" (gratuitious Picard reference), but rather because it will sell. Let's just hope it works.
oh, yeah, first post (I think).
I can just see little advisory notes on my yogurt containers. "Eat within 48 hours of purchase, or your container risks rotting." :)
Monsanto is the company that makes Bovine Growth Hormone, isn't it? The stuff that caused a big stink but is still in use in the US...hmm. Hopefully they won't make speakers out of this plastic - or monitors.
You know how your hardware turns yellow after a long time? Now it will turn in to a pile of soil...
Hmm. Oh well. Its all in the name of progress, eh?
(doesn't roblimo _sleep_?)
OFTC: By the community, for the community
Yes, you are.
So it's biodegradable. How useful is it? One of the best things about plastic as a material is that it last a long time as well as being easy to work with and reasonably strong for its mass. Personally, the idea of my keyboard growing moss on it is not appealing...
vi is my shepard, I shall not font.
this unsung classic of 70's SF?
Most of the things we use today are biodegradable... We use them in the most important things in out life... Heard of wood? Unless you plan to keep your keyboard for 30+ years I wouldn't worry...
Yowza. And you thought AMD had bad yields in its yesteryears...
How does the plant produce the plastic, anyways? Does it supplement the cellulose in the cell walls? Is it present in the sap fluid? What kind of refining and purification processes does this sort of thing take?
You'd think that the biotech scientists would take this research one step further, and splice much more useful genes into the plants. Insulin production leaps to mind.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Biodegradable plastic is a wonderful breakthrough. Computer makers all over now have yet another argument to convince us to buy new computers every year... "Warning: This computer might or might now grow into a killer, sentient moss with the ability to process 600 000 000 000 multiply-accumulates per second".
Do we really need more ways to create plastic? Exactly how biodegradable is this stuff? (I'm assuming that it has a different molecular structure than the "usual" stuff produced by refining oil, since that isn't very biodegradable at all.)
:) Actually, it would be interesting if an INSECT found that it was edible, and then acquired a "taste" for regular plastic - would our civilization collapse?
Is it edible?
Is IS pretty cool that the plant is actually using carbon from the atmosphere to create the plastic. Could a plant be created which would create "fuel" (like ethanol or methanol or other hydrocarbon) in liquid form (rather than having to harvest the plant & go through some kind of refining process)? That would be cool - little "fuel bulbs" hanging from a tree like fruit. Just imagine what would happen if the tree caught fire though...
What would also be cool is if somebody came up with a plant which ATE plastic and turned it into some other useful form, or maybe back into a tree. You could plant a forest on top of each landfill, and harvest it on a regular basis.
Presumably, the latter is what allows it to be biodegradable. Doesn't sound like we'll have petrochemical-producing plants any time soon; but if all you want is fuel, let's just make more booze!
It's flexible enough, to be sure. But how durable is this stuff? Could it be used for all the purposes which any given type of plastic is used for today?
That's the thing: if this can't be used in many areas, then it will only delay the inevitable, rather than stopping it. Still, it's certainly a good start.
One thing, though. If the plastic can somehow be "extracted" from the plants, then I'm assuming it's in liquid form. If that is the case, why not skip cress and genetically engineer a tree? The plastic would probably have to be secreted into the sap. Then the tree could be tapped like maple trees are for syrup. You could gather the plastic without doing significant harm to the tree, thereby enabling you to get more plastic from it later.
That would certainly increase yields at least somewhat, since you wouldn't have to kill the plant to get the plastic.
And how soon before OPEC realizes that, buys the patent, and buries the technology along with the 100 mile per gallon carburator, the 5 year lightbulb and the honest politician?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Add a few rubber plant genes and you have a condom tree. (I thought I saw one of those at the beach once... halfway down a cliff as I recall)
So this is going to make plant-pots redundant, right?
And we'll have cabbages that wrap themselves in cling-wrap?
I'm getting an indoor biro-tree to put next to the phone.
Just think.. In some places you have recycle bins for everything from cans to paper and plastic.. This is all well and good. But imagine having a recycle bin to put say your grass after you cut it.. Or better yet, everyone has a service that comes by, cuts your grass, and then takes the grass and turns it into plastics.. Then we would not have fields and fields of this genetic plant, but people would be growing it without even thinking about it in their own back yards.. It would be going back to the good old days of living off of the fat of the land. Everyone would be providing for themselves, our parks would become "farms" for this plastic.
:)
Just think about the business you could start, you could run a processing plant for this new grass (I am calling it grass because I think once they figure this out they could make it for any type of plant, grass is very abundant and grows fast, and is very common), you could also go around having people pay you to replant this grass in their yards/ in all the local parks, you could then charge for triming the grass and carrying it away, and then you could make money selling this plastic.. Sounds like you make money at every turn, it just depends on how much you really want to own a landscaping business I guess
"I couldn't give him (Bill Gates) advice in business and he couldn't give me advice in technology." Linus Torvalds
"Monsanto, the US biotech corporation, has indicated that it is considering a major climbdown over genetically modified food in Britain. It has offered to use its vast gene databases to help plant breeders create new varieties of crops using traditional cross-breeding techniques."
The Guardian, Sunday September 26th 1999
"The Soil Association yesterday described as "hugely significant" indications from the US biotech company Monsanto that it might be prepared to rethink its commitment to genetically modified food in Britain."
The Guardian, Monday 27th September 1999
Now... what's going on here? I suspect that Monsanto is trying to regain shareholder confidence (after the Deutschbank recommended against investment in GM foods), or trying to bolster PR and associate their name with benevolence before they hit us with GM food again five or ten years from now. The less cynical side of me, however, is rather hoping that they've actually rethought the direction of their business due to public pressure. Power to the people!
Hamish
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
"The species Alcaligenes eutrophes (probably haven't remembered it properly) can convert things like molasses waste into a short chain polymer called polyhydroxybutanoate (PHB)."
Now that would be cool if we could convert all our PHB's (Pointy Haired Bosses) into fuel. That would be a (quite) infinite ressource given their number and that wouldn't be a big loss
;-)
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
My opinion is yes, we need more ways to create plastic. Oil is too valuable as an energy source to waste it making Nintendo cartridges. It would be best to run off renewable sources, like solar or wind, but until they become (more) cost-effective, at least we'll be reducing the ammount of fossil fuels we use up.
hmmm...I'd be more inclined to say that oil is too valuable to waste as a fuel source.
This is just PR. It has nothing to do with Monsanto's core business of selling GM food plants and pesticides. Monsanto has a terrible image in .uk at the moment ( although mostly for "eek! Frankenstein food" reasons, and not it's appalling business ethics); this is the second pro-Monsanto story that's made it into the uk press in the last week or so (search at the Guardian for "Monsanto hints at u-turn on GM food in Britain" for another); looks like they got themselves some new PR consultants.
***boggle***
Uh, I've been using stuff made from plants that been's biodegradeable for years -- cotton, paper, linen, wood -- you get the idea.
IMHO, plastic has been marketed as a replacement for metal & ceramics, in part because it's cheaper, in part because it doesn't have some of the drawbacks the other two have (e.g., being hit over the head with a plastic phone won't cause the same damage that being hit with a metal one would).
Talk about reinventing the wheel. And doing it poorly in order to charge consumers more. Sometimes I'm certain the marketroids *do* have too much power.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
subject says it all.
In Liberty, Rene
What would be MORE ideal is if we could get a plant to split a water molecule (via photosynthesis), and instead of building sugars, simply produce molecular hydrogen, and store the hydrogen somehow, raw, harvest that stored hydrogen, and you have power for all the fuel-cells that will be running the world in the next century.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
A similar story appeared in, IIRC, the Des Moines Register (the plastic in question was to be made from corn, and Des Moines is in corn country). It indicated that, while the biodegradability of the plant-derived plastic would make it a poor choice for some products (you don't want your vinyl siding to crumble and dissolve after a few seasons) it's an excellent choice for others.
The (U.S.) Navy, in particular, is interested in biodegradable food containers that can be safely tossed overboard rather than stored up (smelly, esp. on long voyages) and hauled ashore for disposal. Not that they do that now - they throw their waste overboard anyway. But biodegradable plastics would make it more acceptable.
This is all very interesting, but what I missed is the type of plastic that is made, and what products can be made with it. Some plastics can be turned to fibres that can be used to make clothes. Paper is made from rags, mostly cotton (I think). It would be wonderful to have a plastic with which you can make clothes, and then be able to make paper from these clothes. Just my 2 cts.
-- Cheers!
Ever seen the plants dependent on a fire-cycle for reproduction on a hot day?
They release flamable vapours into the air and wait for a spark.
a big forest of eucalypts can go up like a fuel air bomb.
i saw a discovery channel peice where a plant in the middle east does this trick and can be set off by the flint rocks in its environment rolling downhill (possible origin of the biblical burning bush)
as for the plastic... they have almost certainly put the genes together from other naturally occuring processes that could achieve their goals..
to my knowledge genome mapping is decades away from just making this stuff up on the fly...
regs,
Visa or Mastercard?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Look beyond the politics for a bit...What we have here is a way to produce plastics without needing to have to use more fossil fuels and expensive (and toxic) manufacturing processes. I love the idea of being able to grow my computer's case. :P
/dev/null
Flames to
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
Alcohol can be produced pretty easily using very simple technology, no genetic engineering at all, just vanilla agriculture, compost heaps, etc. Cars can be modified to run on alcohol. My brother was thinking about doing this with his own car in the early 80s. I believe it's also possible to run the car on a mix of alcohol and gasoline. Now that I think about it, I remember that you used to be able to buy such a mix, called "gasohol". But it has gone out of style. No doubt the machinations of vested interests.
Perhaps the moderators are fanatical (capitalist) libertarians too? Why else would a post that basically praises laisezz faire capitalism and slams every other system get extra points?
Basically they have business plans to control water supply...I guess they see it as a good business move as drinkable water will get scarcer in many areas of the world pretty soon.
http://www.infoshop.org/news4/monsanto. html.
I don't want to sound bitter, but I thought this was a worthy news story for Slashdot and submitted it a while ago (I think on the weekend too when there's less stories submitted and posted), and it wasn't posted. Perhaps plastic plants is more important than one corporation controlling the world's argiculture (seeds and pesticides) and water?
I recall a news item about 4 or 5 years ago about Michigan State Univ. (which is a big agricultural school) developing a potato which instead of producing starch like most potatos developed plastic. It too was readily biodegradible.
I wonder if this would constitute prior art?
BTW, I think the potato was also not digestable, which poses interesting prospects for diet food.
--McFly777 (the number is the answer)
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
So.... If the bees collect pollen from the plastic plants do we get plastic honey? If the larval bees eat the plastic honey do we get plastic bees?
Never Mind...
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
This is kind of interesting, not for the fact that it works, but *how* it was discovered. It seems like these people just took some random DNA known to produce plastics and stuck it in some plants.
One of the most interesting things about 'current' (I hesitate to say modern) Genetic engineering is the almost haphazard way in witch it is done. Were pretty lucky that Genetic structure is pretty forgiving, and we aren't just completely breaking the genetic code for these plants
If this kind of thing can be done with our current level of genetic-e knowledge, imagine what we will be able to do when we understand it all Also, I think the real benefit from work like this isn't producing plastics, but producing fuels Currently plastic waist can be broken down into the smaller polymers octane and pentane and be used for gasoline. If the same process could be used for this stuff, we could have a limitless supply of "fossil" fuels!
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Monsatan in being-good-rather-than-evil shock!
Well, maybe. I'd really really like to believe that this story is true and Monsanto have decided they can make a profit from providing a product that people actually want and that benefits the world in general, as opposed to their normal tactic of trying to accrue wealth through control (cf. Terminator) and corporate bullying. But it all sounds too good to be true.
Certainly, Monsanto could really do with some good publicity about now, and this sort of "Look! Genetic engineering is a Good Thing after all!" story is exactly that.
Just a little note from cynicsville. Personally most of my problems with GM are social rather than strictly scientific. And I'd love to see Monsanto doing something useful for a change.
--
Dude, I love your sig, but... s/am here/am I here/ --AC
I would think that they probably *are* made of hydrocarbons, since most biological stuff on earth already is.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n