Interesting, but I wonder what they break it down to. Is it completely broken down or do they shit nanoplastics?
this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
307 points (99.4% liked)
News
23284 readers
3490 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
At a quick glance they break it down into carbon dioxide at about a 50% consumption rate. The rest is excreted as biomass and degraded fragments (which I gather means shorter polymer chains and oxidation). Sounds really good if it’s true.
I agree this is probably overall a good thing, but I worry if this bacteria thrives due to the amount of plastic around what that would mean for the amount of CO2 produced.
It's funny, for years I've been downvoted or thought to be joking when I point out that putting non-biodegradable plastic into landfills is carbon sequestration. I seriously think it's a good idea, though. If people are concerned about carbon in the atmosphere then that's a good way to get it out for the long term.
That only works if the carbon in the plastic originally came from the atmosphere, but we use oil to make plastics. So increased demand for plastic = increased demand for oil, and that oil was already sequestered to begin with.
Yeah the oil was carbon sequestration we are just releasing it
Kind of, but frankly I think that's a self-defeating hair to split.
What ultimately matters in the end is simply "is more carbon going into the atmosphere, or less?" It doesn't matter where the carbon is coming from, all that matters is that less carbon ends up in the atmosphere.
If I have a plastic object and I send it for recycling or whatever, some of that carbon ends up in the atmosphere. Possibly all of it if it ends up being incinerated, since a lot of plastic "recycling" is not really recycling as you'd expect. If I put it in the landfill, on the other hand, the carbon is locked away effectively indefinitely.
It doesn't matter where that plastic object came from, I'm just faced with a choice of what to do with it.
...bacteria?
Whoops 😅
They turn into 3-D printers.
Wow just realised i’m technically a 3D printer. Aaand that’s enough internet for today.
And how much of the plastic remains in the food chain when animals eat the worms? This likely isn’t the good news that it appears to be on the surface. I know an old lady who swallowed a fly….
This is one of those stories that pops up every year and nothing is ever done with it.
Yep. This.
Same thing with reddit "hey there's a cure for cancer and these ragtag students discovered this which will change the world!"
5 years later
"............"
Mostly because it was found not to be effective in trials, or it had some side effect that made it a bad idea. See thalidomide for an example of what happens when you don't test properly.
Discovery gets bought for an obscene amount of money, NDA is signed, discovery is never spoken of again.
This is very rarely the case. Almost always they come across some draw back, that makes it completely impractical, and 5-10-15- whatever, years pass without anyone overcoming said drawback.
Cancer treatment also has had lots of improvements but they aren't newsworthy if they're not the Cure to Cancer™️
Yeah, lots of people do not realize it is not one disease, it is unregulated cell growth, of many kinds, caused by many diseases.
Something eats these insects and then we in turn eat those somethings.
This is not a way to save us from microplastics. Centuries from now that shit will still be in dirt particles all over the world.
The best thing to be done is go back in time 100 years and stop people from making millions of tons of plastic bullshit.
The second best thing is to stop making millions of tons of plastic bullshit.
That entirely depends if the insect or bacteria or fungi turn it into a different chemical.
It'll be exterminated for being "woke" and "caring about climate change"
That's Kentucky not Kenya
We're all plastic eating insects.
And here I’ve been eating plastic insects this whole time like a fool
While the ability to counteract styrofoam pollution is of course good, sadly this doesn't apply to other plastics in general. Some plastics are physically hard or chemically much harder to break than polystyrene (PP, PVC, ABS, anything that it fiber reinforced) .
So, while the worms are nice, one should not hope they can help with other plastics.
On the plus side, this does show that all the plastic we have put into the environment has been a niche energy source just waiting to be exploited.
Now think about all the plastic surface area in the oceans and stuff, I bet there are other things, bacteria and microfauna, which are actively adapting to consume it.
Instead of releasing a huge number of these insects into trash sites (which isn’t practical)
Try it anyway!
Hmmm...... How to create an invasive species in 3...2....1...
Finally, a clothes moth that can eat polyester
They're mealworms of a species already found on numerous continents, I think it'll be fine.
Goodbye built human world !
About time!
The kind of funny thing is that if this happened for real, the next big plastic product would just be pesticide impregnated plastics. And then we’d have pesticide microplastics everywhere!
Back to building with stone, metal, and wood.
As if housing wasn't expensive enough already.
I have had it with these motherfcking mealworm larvae that are capable of consuming polystyrene on this motherfcking plane!
Wow. A neat insect for sure.