[palijer]

It's incredible that we designed a material for robustness that takes hundreds of years to break down, and it is the default material for designing single use everyday items, and then rely on all the efforts of an ineffective recycling program to maybe get a couple more uses out of it.

[gruez]

It's not really "incredible" when you consider that material properties like "robustness" and "years to break down" aren't sliders you can adjust willy nilly. It just turns out stuff that can break down, break down really fast (eg. cardboard), and the ones that can last at least a year or two, last for centuries.

[unobatbayar]

We should maintain Earth as best as we can, but put more efforts into progress, expansion and technology.

[simulate-me]

The material you’re taking about, plastic, is made from carbon stored inside of the Earth. If we can reliably get it back in the Earth, e.g. via landfill, then I don’t see a huge issue with it. Also, wood was a forever material prior to the evolution of white rot.

[aldebran]

Human manufactured Wooden objects are not found in remote places on earth. Tiny specs of wood are definitely not found in bodies/blood of humans including infants.

Single use wooden items don’t cause flooding and damage wildlife.

These are not the same. They don’t have the same problems.

[b112]

This is true, however:

Burying is not the same as being thrown in the ocean, or ripped into little pieces and thrown on the ground.

Burying would likely keep plastic in the immediate vicinity, and we have another tool to add. Bacteria.

There are bacteria which eat plastic. If we could find some anaerobic ones, burying might work quite well.

Of course I guess that leaves the carbon free again, unless...

We find or engineer bacteria which produce a great precursor, to make plastic!

It would be a strange outcome, if plastic became fully renewable.

[thetinguy]

Tetra Pak is primarily paper.

[ornornor]

So much so that it has to be recycled using a separate process that many places refuse to adopt in Switzerland. I believe it’s either because it’s too complicated or because you have to license it from tetrapak and it’s too costly.

AFAIK its paper, sure but laminated with aluminum and plastic so good luck separating the layers into recyclable stuff.

Not that recycling is a panacea in the first place… more like a gimmick to make us feel good about wasting so much instead of questioning the methods of the industries producing all the waste in the first place.

[colordrops]

To be blunt your argument for polluting our environment doesn't feel like it's in good faith when you blame wood for being a pollutant until a fungus showed up hundreds of millions of years ago. I absolutely loathe the term "whataboutism" but this seems like a real example - "what about the fact that wood was a pollutant hundreds of millions of years ago? We should be able to dump plastic now".

[darawk]

His point is that nature adapts to these things and learns to consume them eventually. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with storing plastic in the earth, as long as it isn't disrupting ecosystems.

[ephbit]

Nature is a complex dynamic system. Yes, it can adapt to new influences without becoming instable.

But needlessly bombarding it with artificial chemicals surely has some kind of threshold over which adaptation mostly fails, equilibria get destroyed and the system becomes indeed instable.

> ... as long as it isn't disrupting ecosystems.

Problem is, who can reliably tell when it'll be too much?

IMO not worth risking "everything" for some added convenience of "ingenious" food packaging.

[colordrops]

"Nature" is arbitrarly defined. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with anything. "Wrong" is a human definition. "Nature" is perfectly fine with wood and plastic piling up for eternity without decomposition if no organism happens to evolve to do so. "Nature" is fine with human genocide. "Nature" is fine with a nearby supernova or asteroid destroying all life on earth.

The point is that from a human perspective, and from the perspective of most multicellular organisms, plastics discarded into the environment are a really bad thing for our health.

[hallway_monitor]

It would be somewhat ironic if a bacteria were to evolve to eat plastic and be invasive. An organism like that would have quite an effect on humanity's habits.

[ephbit]

Specific species of bacteria have indeed been found that can catabolize specific types of plastics. In some niches they will definitely evolve to decompose plastics.

Since all life forms on earth rely heavily on water as solvent (being present ideally all the time), those 'invasive' bacteria won't have that much of an effect on humanity's habits IMHO, since regularly removing the water easily keeps their impact low.

Fungi might play an important role in decomposition of plastics as well, since they have advantages over bacteria that may be relevant for decomposition of plastics in the same way in which they are for decomposing wood. (Which is difficult for bacteria)

[ASalazarMX]

Corporations: Behold our new duraplastic with embedded antibiotics! Don't thank us, just give us money!

[8ytecoder]

... and pray that a fungus that can eat plastic shows up in another millennia