This is why I get scared when I see articles about people developing plastic eating bacteria. Sure it is great for reducing waste but it’s a dangerous game to be playing for sure.
Those microbes require very specific conditions: precise pH and osmolarity, high temperature (50-70˚C), long contact times, feedstock that's been literally pulverized, etc.
These probably aren't going to occur anywhere outside of a bioreactor, so our action figures are likely safe...for now!
> The study is the first large-scale global assessment of the plastic-degrading potential of bacteria and found that one in four of the organisms analysed carried a suitable enzyme. The researchers found that the number and type of enzymes they discovered matched the amount and type of plastic pollution in different locations.
With time evolution will widen the conditions, with how much plastic is in the environment.
But wood and paper are also readily biodegrade, and yet by simply by controlling the amount of moisture present we manage to make those last a long, long time. In addition we have treatment options to delay decomposition even in wet conditions.
Wood is often protected by plastics. Acrylic wood finish and paint are plastic. Particle boards such as those in many Ikea furniture are covered with a plastic sheet.
If you don't use plastic you need to switch to solutions requiring more maintenance and offering less protection like vegetable oil or pine tar.
Hmmmm...it's whatever Option+k does on macOS. I thought it was the degree sign because it doesn't actually combine, but apparently degree is option+shift+8 instead.
An acquaintance just about had a nervous breakdown recently because they somehow used ˆ (option+i, used for e.g. î) in a regex instead of ^ and couldn't figure out why such a basic thing was failing.
Ha! I had been thinking Option-K like Kelvin (also a unit of temperature--but ironically one that isn't properly a "degree". Maybe that should have been a hint!)
Option-zero has a tiny underbar for me, which I think is in Bulgarian(?) abbreviations.
> feedstock that's been literally pulverized, etc.
Even if hypothetical rogue bacteria can't dissolve plastic parts to goo or cause structural damage, or there's still potential harm in the form of surface changes. Discoloration, flaking, etc.
Imagine a product nobody wants to buy because it looks damaged, or a medical device that can't be as easily/thoroughly sterilized anymore.
I wouldn't worry. Lignin (in wood) is a bit more reactive than polyolefins. It was effectively indigestible for eons until fungi figured out how to break it down, and even then, wood only breaks down in certain conditions.
No, plastic was the mistake. That was the dangerous game, those plastic eating bacteria are one way to restore some of the natural order and hopefully at some point they'd run out of food.
Plastic is indispensable completely unlike electricity is indispensable.
Plastic is a huge pollutant, with breakdown stats that make you cry once you start thinking in terms of tons of absolutely indestructible stuff that makes it into our environment every day. Only a very small fraction of that stuff really needed to be made from plastic. Mostly it is just done because it is cheap and mechanically well understood. And because - tadaaaa - it lasts longer than most other materials. But the result is that the plastic invariably outlasts everything else, and it is super hard to recycle it efficiently unless it was expressly made to be recycled, which it rarely is.
Electricity is a highly fungible form of energy, in every way that matters unlike plastic and for which we do not have any alternatives that come close to having the same kind of properties for everyday use.
In many applications glass or treated paper was used prior to plastic and it usually worked well enough to give a reasonable service life. Lots - and I mean really lots - of applications where plastic is used today it could still be replaced by either paper, glass or sometimes wood. Using plastic for the remaining use cases would be fine by me. But plastics for 'economics' reasons is just a temporal form of externalization.
These probably aren't going to occur anywhere outside of a bioreactor, so our action figures are likely safe...for now!