> Biodegradable or not means much less than it sounds like
Long-term stability of plastics means that the problems from microplastics today could still be problems in a million years. It's worse than nuclear waste in that regard: at least the hottest isotopes degrade quickly and the less hot still halve on a predictable schedule. Currently, for a lot of plastics, all you've got removing them from circultion are UV degradation and weathering processes, along with processes burying them in sediments for unknown periods.
But the microbial environment could at least confine this to be a very bad problem for our time, instead of forever.
The problem is the system. You can expect one or two persons to act rational, but at the scale of 100s, 1000s, millions, it's just crowd dynamics following statistical processes, just as the market itself is.
If we want anything to change, we need systemic changes to what behavior is incentivized by the world we live in - and I can not think of anything that would do the job other than abolishing or at least heavily restraining capitalism.
Biodegrade does not mean "chew up into tiny pieces" it means chemically break down. Biodegraded plastic would end up being much simpler molecules, probably CO2 and methane mostly.
Single celled organisms don't have endocrine systems, if they are able to break plastics down and metabolize them, then that's the end of those big thorny molecules.
It is with complete ignorance that I'm asking this, but isn't it the case that, at a molecular level, plastics are just like any other material? That they can be broken down to such a point that their molecular composition no longer matters, and they are, once again, "raw" molecules by which other things (even living things) can be composed? What does "accumulation" even mean in that context?
Anything can be broken down, but many things are effectively stable in the environment-- including in organisms-- for nearly forever, because nothing breaks them down or the rate of degradation is low enough that it doesn't matter.
What I believe he's saying is: even if it looks like bacteria may eventually begin to chip away at the microplastics problem, we still face the prospect of having them accumulate for decades or longer in bigger lifeforms and cause problems.
(But at least today's plastic releases wouldn't be a problem forever).
That is, this improves the situation greatly but doesn't remove any of the nearer term suck.
> That's not really accurate - if an organism can breakdown (digest) plastic to any extent, it can do so all the way to water and CO2.
I can't breakdown most plastic to any significant extent.
If I ate small pieces of plastic, some would be excreted in poop and some would accumulate in my body.
If I ate animals that have eaten small pieces of plastic, being high up the foodchain, this may be exacerbated (biomagnification).
If bacteria learn to degrade plastic--- that may improve the situation for my grandchildren but it probably doesn't reduce how much is accumulating in marine life now that much.
> I can't breakdown most plastic to any significant extent.
Actually you can't break down plastic at all. You can just grind it with your teeth.
> If bacteria learn to degrade plastic--- that may improve the situation for my grandchildren but it probably doesn't reduce how much is accumulating in marine life now that much.
This is where your mistake lies - if you can degrade plastic at all, then you can degrade it all the way to water and CO2. There is no partial degrading here, you either can, or you can't.
(Note: I am speaking of degrading plastic for its energy content, which is what bacteria would do. Mechanically breaking plastic into small pieces is not the same thing. Nor is de-polymerizing the plastic.)
> Actually you can't break down plastic at all. You can just grind it with your teeth.
I said most plastics. Some plastics have a ton of starch bonds or are vulnerable to HCl, and can be broken down by mammalian digestive tracts. I have good enzymes to break starch bonds, and I have HCl in my stomach, so I can digest e.g. TPS to a great extent or PLA to a lesser extent.
> This is where your mistake lies - if you can degrade plastic at all, then you can degrade it all the way to water and CO2. There is no partial degrading here, you either can, or you can't.
I think you're not understanding me. One species of bacteria beginning to digest plastic all the way to water and CO2 doesn't instantly remove all the plastic floating in the ocean, let alone removing it from the marine food web where it has accumulated. It doesn't even guarantee the amount of plastic in the ocean goes down: it's easy to imagine situations where the rate at which bacteria remove plastic from the oceans is lower than the rate than it is introduced.
Therefore, even after some bacteria begin to break down some plastic, plastic can still accumulate in other organisms in the ocean. The long term prognosis is greatly improved, but things are not guaranteed to improve much at all in the near to intermediate term.
Bacteria can do pretty much any chemistry that's within their energy reach. E.g. making sugars out of plastics. Or ethanol. Or anything else. There's no law that says it has to be all water and co2. I see no argument why it can't be partial - enzymes do partial degrading alk the time.
that's entirely dependent on whether the bacteria can exist within the gut of the aforementioned marine life. If they're eating plastic, and ingest that bacteria, and it starts to act on all of the plastic that's been stuck in their system for years, that would improve the situation.
> If they're eating plastic, and ingest that bacteria, and it starts to act on all of the plastic that's been stuck in their system for years, that would improve the situation.
That's a lot of ifs. Right now significant biodegradation of plastic by marine bacteria is still pretty unlikely. Further presuming that the bacteria capable of this will also evolve to exist within the gut of higher marine line is a bit of a leap: guts are a pretty harsh competitive environment and "random" bacteria you ingest don't go live there. And, it further presumes that all the accumulated plastic resides within the gut (it doesn't).
Most plastics are just water and CO2 in various combinations. A few (PVC) have some chlorine, but the vast majority could be burned, or digested by a bacteria, and emit just water and CO2.
Long-term stability of plastics means that the problems from microplastics today could still be problems in a million years. It's worse than nuclear waste in that regard: at least the hottest isotopes degrade quickly and the less hot still halve on a predictable schedule. Currently, for a lot of plastics, all you've got removing them from circultion are UV degradation and weathering processes, along with processes burying them in sediments for unknown periods.
But the microbial environment could at least confine this to be a very bad problem for our time, instead of forever.