• WeeSheep@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I see this every couple years (I think it’s the same). The fungus can only degrade very few plastic types, like Styrofoam.

      • Szymon@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        So are we disappointed it’s not the perfect solution, so we don’t bother?

        Sounds like we’re on the right track and someone can find a way to make money with this, or decide to dedicate their resources to it for society’s benefit.

        • Maalus@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          We don’t bother because those few kinds of plastics aren’t the ones that are causing most of the polution

          If something costs millions and only works in a limited space, at specific conditions, and recycles 0.2% of all plastics, why would anyone want to invest in it?

            • Maalus@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              Okay, so go out and pay millions of dollars yourself and do it. If you can’t, why do you expect anyone else to do that, with no hope of return, no hope of sustainability and such?

              • Szymon@lemmy.ca
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                11 months ago

                Because they should care about the future of the human race more than their current bank balance.

                We’re doomed as a species.

                • Maalus@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  Then again - go out, sell your house and do it. It’s great to be outraged when “nobody is doing it”. Yet everything requires money to do. I have a company producing humanitarian supplies. Do you think I would be able to do it / should I do it for free?

                  • Szymon@lemmy.ca
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                    11 months ago

                    You’re preaching from the selfish soapbox of only caring about your own bank account, not humanity’s best interests.

                    Expending my assets to make a difference wouldn’t make a dent and I’d be completely left with nothing. Someone with massive wealth can expend 95% of their resources and still live a more comfortable existence than 99% of us.

                    Why are we protecting the dragons sitting on the piles of gold instead of taking the gold and investing in our species’ future prosperity?

                    We’re doomed.

            • Maalus@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              It isn’t absolute bullshit, it’s in the interest of a country. We have private scrapyards, recyclers and landfills that do that over here and they keep on going. It’s simply because this specific idea is so out of place, so hard to implement and just has “techbro” written all over it. It’s impractical and useless, yet it sounds cool to people who don’t know a thing about recycling.

        • BruceTwarzen@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          We already have the perfect solution. Stop producing plastic. But we sure as hell are not bothering with that either.

      • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        Fantastic. Styrofoam is not recyclable like Polypropylene or even the Polyethylenes. Styrofoam ends up in landfills. I want it in mushrooms.

        It’s not the magic bullet but it’s a fucking howitzer. Yas kween.

      • casmael@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        I mean tbh that seems like a pretty good start 🤷🏻‍♂️ styrofoam is a very common type of plastic produced in huge quantities…

    • zout@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      From other times something like this came up:

      1. The rate of conversion is too low
      2. It will only eat plastic if other carbon sources aren’t available
        Probably more, this is from the top of my head. Also, this will still cause the plastic to eventually be converted into CO2 which is released in the atmosphere.
      • xkforce@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Having it actually break down into CO2, water and a few other things would be way better than it permanently contaminating our food, water and ecosystems.

        • zout@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          I agree, and it will probably break down anyway giving enough time. But it would be even better to take it out of the environment completely. The best would be not to even produce it for trivial stuff, so it doesn’t get to pollute the environment.

          • xkforce@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            While it would be great to phase them out, we have to work with the world we have. One that wont switch off plastic production overnight and one that is already thoroughly contaminated. Something is going to be needed to break down what is already out there and minimize the damage of what continues to be produced.

        • Caveman@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          You get a similar result by burning it for electricity and that removes coal/gas from the grid.

        • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺@feddit.de
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          11 months ago

          It is not a matter of conversion. most plastics can be recycled or burnt cleanly. It is a matter of collection, sorting and operationg the recycling facilities at an economic rate. The last thing can be done easily. Just introducing a high enough tax on non recycled plastics would do the trick.

          As always in capitalism plastic waste is not an issue that lacks technological means. What lacks is the economic and political will to deal with it.

          • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Most plastics cannot be recycled, and produce disproportionately high levels of greenhouse gasses and toxic fumes when burned. Burying plastic in an encased landfill is the best way to dispose of it, otherwise it will end up in the water cycle. If we can feed it to mushrooms or bacteria, the world will get cleaner over time.

            • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺@feddit.de
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              11 months ago

              Landfills regularly leak. As the plastics are not decomposing by themselves, you end up with infrastructure that needs to be maintained forever. Otherwise you just move the problem into the future. And for plastics that do decompose somewhat in a landfill it is less controlled than in a dedicated recycling or disposal facility.

              At the same time burning plastics at a high enough temperature and washing the exhaust gas, can effectively remove them from existence. The most common plastics like PET, PE, PP, and many more can be burnt cleanly, e.g. the only product will be CO2. Plastics like PVC need more dedicated facilities, but it is perfectly possible.

              Landfills are always the worst option of waste treatment, except for just tossing stuff into the environment directly. We shouldn’t hope for some mushroom to eventually deal with the problem. The first step is to reduce the production of plastic wastes. The second is to deal with collection and recycling/disposal properly. Neither steps are taken properly in the current capitalist economy with externalized costs.

              • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Landfills do leak, and that’s a problem. They aren’t a good solution, it’s just the best one we have at the moment. That’s why the mushrooms are a promising step.

                Washing the gas and smoke from burning plastics is a myth sold by the plastic industry. You cannot eliminate polys and heavy metals from the exhaust, and few waste burning facilities bother to even pretend to try. The process is expensive, requires complex facilities, and you’re still left with the waste water full of caustic and toxic effluent.

                I agree that reducing, or eliminating, plastic use is the best path forward. I disagree that recycling plastic is a technology that will save us from ourselves, though. I see it as a form of greenwashing the plastic industry, when only 35% of plastic going to recycling facilities actually gets recycled. Don’t get me wrong, something is better than nothing, but how many people don’t think twice about their plastic use because all of it goes in the special blue bin? Recycling led to an increase in the amount of plastic produced, which far outweighs the benefit of having recycled some of it.

                I’m with you that creating an expensive, permanent facility to store waste seems like a bad idea. But pretending that we can avoid it without reducing our consumption is why we’re never going to stop.

                • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺@feddit.de
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                  11 months ago

                  I have to disagree heavily there. Thermic plastic disposal is standard in many developed countries and cleaning of combustion exhaust gases is an established and reliable technology.

                  It just costs money and requires regulatory oversight, that some countries like to cut on.

                  You gave heavy metals as an example. No mushroom can clean away heavy metals. They can only break down molecular components. Heavy metals are one of the compounds why thermal disposal is necessary. You can wash the heavy metals out of the exhaust gas, concentrate them and then store them in more dedicated facilities, e.g. old salt mines.

      • xkforce@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Yes. That’d be way better than having it kill animals and contaminate our food and water to the point where you basically cant avoid it. We literally want plastic to biodegrade. Just as long as it biodegrades after we are done using it. Which would be a wonderful problem to have compared to the current state of things.

    • athos77@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Well, everytime I see an article saying “we’ve found a [mushroom | bacteria | whatever] that eats plastic, yay!”, I always think: well, yeah, that’s great, but what about all the plastic we don’t want eaten just yet?

    • OpenStars@startrek.website
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      11 months ago

      The amount of micro-plastics in everyone’s blood - even in tiny remote villages that have had next to no contact with the outside world - might make human beings look like an attractive meal to them? Surely nothing bad could happen if instead of micro-plastics we all have fungus in our blood?

    • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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      11 months ago

      My prediction: Edible mushrooms are gonna turn out to be not that edible when they’re grown on plastics.