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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?
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!
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.
So its all true. Money really does grow on trees. Well, credit cards do... ;)
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).
So when do they start growing your dinner in its plastic packaging? ;)
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Where is the chocolate?
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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).
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.
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!
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