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Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution

phys.org

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Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution

#211

Post by freeflight »

philipkglass wrote: post #148

This is scientifically very interesting but pretty much orthogonal to solving problems with plastic pollution. The worms can't live in landfills. If you could separate the plastic before landfilling to feed it to worms, then you could just burn whatever separated plastic can't be recycled. (Yes, that releases CO2, but so does having worms and bacteria eat the plastic.) The problem with plastic as waste isn't that it…

>The problem is that it's mixed in with a lot of other kinds of waste. We don't need new ways to destroy polyethylene. We need ways to separate it from mingled waste streams or prevent mingling in the first place.

We already have these ways, they are called waste separation and recycling. As a German, I've been separating my garbage for as long as I can think back: Plastics, paper, organic waste and whatever remains as residual waste. In addition to that, we have separate bins for glass bottles, if there's no bottle deposit on them.

Residual waste bins are usually the smallest ones, so people are pretty much forced to separate their waste if they don't want their residual waste bin full after just one week.

It's always weird to me when I'm in another country and everybody just throws everything into the same bin, bottles included, just feels so wrong to me at this point.

Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution

#212

Post by orthecreedence »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #206
orthecreedence wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you argument is that it's fine to not care for insects because there are a lot of them, and because their lives are short and brutal. I would say the opposite. Animals whose lives are rife with pain and misfortune can use all the help anyone is willing to offer. Granted, I will not seek out every fly and try to "save" it. But if I come across one I can help, I will do so. I think you're making the argument "either…

> it's fine to not care for insects Well no it's not exactly 'fine'. Maybe we will figure out some day that insects are a little bit conscious and it may turn out we have collectively been literally worse than Hitler for not caring. In the meantime I choose not to care, not as a fully logical decision, but for my own sanity and well-being. I'm a dumb ape who tries (and even maybe succeeds) to be logical sometimes, my…

> What's the logic behind that distinction? If a child stumbles into a pond and drown, or is mauled by a wild coyote, will you let them die on the basis of non-interference?

Great point, you got me there. All life forms being equal, then yes if I adhered to my own system I suppose I would have to silently watch a child get mauled by a coyote. Obviously, I wouldn't take it that far, so perhaps there's more criteria to the decisions than I'm admitting or able to even dig out of my psyche at the moment. I'll think about this.

Your other points about utilitarian math are well-taken, and perhaps I misunderstood you there.

> If I follow that logic and extend my caring to insects, I should care about all insects.

So if you care about starving children, and apply the same rules you apply to children to insects, you'd be donating a lot to charity, basically. Makes sense =]. So once again, my live-and-let-die attitude towards insects is at odds with my "help unfortunate members of humanity" "morality." Another good point (granted, I don't donate much to charity, but if I did, I would probably donate to poor/starving people as opposed to insect charities).

> I'm a dumb ape who tries (and even maybe succeeds) to be logical sometimes, my moral 'system' is a hodge-podge of intuition, rule-based and consequentialist thinking, I don't claim I have found a fully logical moral system.

This is probably the most coherent, self-aware moral system I've heard. Most people try to ascribe their beliefs to some overarching theme that they pretend to follow in all circumstances, when in reality most of our actions are governed by a tiny fraction of what we believe to be morality, and the rest is knee-jerk reactions to situations that affect us emotionally one way or the other. Not only that, but our beliefs (as you pointed out in my case), are a "hodge-podge" of rules, emotions, and hardwiring.

All that said, I still try to be nice to all animals, and will continue to do so until I find the next mishmash set of rules to figure out why I believe what I believe.

EDIT: relevant: http://wondermark.com/c/2015-06-25-1135earn.png

Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution

#213

Post by [deleted] »

jschwartzi wrote: post #143
notpresident wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At home it was my Dad who told me to be nice to spiders. :-)

Mine too! He would tell me that the spiders are helpful because they kill other bugs, and to leave them alone or put them outside. The more I think about these things, the more connected even the small things in our world are.

[deleted]

Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution

#214

Post by coldtea »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #111
aw3c2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever killed a fly because it annoyed you? This is not much different. In fact, this was done for science.

I try not to kill flies, no. The only exception is for multiple flies that won't go away. Ditto for ants. It's a bit strange that violence toward insects is fine, but violence towards dogs is not. Ever killed a dog because it annoyed you? That said, doing it for science at least has a justification.

>It's a bit strange that violence toward insects is fine, but violence towards dogs is not.

I don't find it strange at all. I find it strange that the notion of "violence toward insects" is even a thing.

Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution

#215

Post by freeflight »

pc2g4d wrote: post #99

One day, landfills are vibrant ecosystems that completely break down whatever is placed inside them. As a compost pile today is to plant waste, a landfill one day could be to plastic, glass, metal, styrofoam, etc. We just need to save the planet long enough that evolution can run its course and some lifeforms start taking advantage of all the energy locked inside our "waste".

> We just need to save the planet long enough that evolution can run its course and some lifeforms start taking advantage of all the energy locked inside our "waste".

You realize evolution works in timeframes that are like really really long? On an evolutional timescale 2000 years is pretty much nothing, to us humans it's pretty much our whole modern history of massively polluting this planet.

The pace with which we are changing this planet is way too fast for evolution to keep up with it. If changes to the environment are so fast and so radical then no living thing has time to adapt, they will be extinct before having any chance at adaption.

Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution

#216

Post by Zancarius »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #188
greenshackle2 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a fully-coherent, logical system for deciding which lives to care about, and how much? I'd be interested to hear. 'Animals' is not a natural kind. There's no logical reason to care about all animals just because they are animals. I care about dogs, pigs, other people, etc. not because they're 'animals', but because I think they are plausibly conscious (to varying degrees) and they can experience joy and s…

The utilitarian in me chooses to attach value to insects according to how I perceive their value in the ecosystem. Bees, bumblebees, spiders etc. are useful, so I don't kill those. Houseflies, gnats, ticks, mosquitoes on the other hand, I have zero problems killing when they annoy me.

Same here. I avoid killing certain invertebrates on a pragmatic basis rather than one of morality. I'll happily ignore or relocate certain species of spiders simply because they'll keep the things I don't like in check while killing others that present a danger to myself or pets around the house (black widows). On the other hand, if you live in an area that's bordered by vast swaths of forest, it quickly becomes impractical to avoid having the occasional creepy-crawly get inside somewhere, and you soon learn that it's best to live and let live. That's how I was taught, at any rate.

Now, humorously, having had "pet" mantids before is a great way to eliminate nuisance insects around the house somewhat autonomously. Although it doesn't always quite work the way you may intend (they'll self-relocate or sometimes lose interest in prey items). ;)

Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution

#217

Post by coldtea »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #161
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try not to kill flies, no. The only exception is for multiple flies that won't go away. Ditto for ants. It's a bit strange that violence toward insects is fine, but violence towards dogs is not. Ever killed a dog because it annoyed you? That said, doing it for science at least has a justification.

Do you eat animal products? I find it much stranger that violence towards farm animals is ok but not pets. At least there are principled reasons to care less about insects (much less complex nervous system), I can find no principled reason to care more for dogs than pigs.

>I find it much stranger that violence towards farm animals is ok but not pets.

Pets are a recent phenomenon (last 100 or so years, and urban). [edit: recent, not common phenomenon]

In rural places animals like cats and dogs where actually useful: guarding, helping with the sheep, killing mice and snakes, and such.

The bonding came from having them around (and having them be useful), not because there was some bizarro artificial distinction between e.g. cows and sheep and cats and dogs.

And in many cultures and/or periods things we now call pets were/are eaten as casually as we eat cows or kale.

Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution

#218

Post by Houshalter »

jacquesm wrote: post #18
Clanan wrote: post #16

"A chance discovery occurred when one of the scientific team, Federica Bertocchini, an amateur beekeeper, was removing the parasitic pests from the honeycombs in her hives. The worms were temporarily kept in a typical plastic shopping bag that became riddled with holes." What a great accident.

The history of science is full of such accidents, the discovery Penicillin being one of the most famous. http://www.kidsdiscover.com/quick-reads/penicillin-found-fun...

I love the stories of how various artificial sweeteners were discovered. Every single one was found by someone accidentally (or intentionally...) tasting some random chemical from a lab. This leads to some interesting questions:

How many random chemicals did scientists accidentally ingest for every artificial sweetener discovered? It must be quite a lot, and many of those must have been quite dangerous.

Would we have artificial sweeteners at all if people practiced decent lab safety?

Could we massively speed up the discovery of future sweeteners and similar things, by intentionally exposing people to as may random chemicals as possible? Ideally after verifying they are at least probably safe in a very small quantity for tasting. I'm guessing that wouldn't be legal.

Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution

#219

Post by [deleted] »

notpresident wrote: post #127
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a bad one. I agree that killing insects is fine if there's a reason. But I was reacting to "I kill things because they annoy me." Which is valid, but always frustrating. My parents used to flip out and kill caterpillars, spiders, etc whenever they saw them. More than once I'd notice one and corral them outside while my parents weren't looking. There's just no point in killing something because it simply exis…

At home it was my Dad who told me to be nice to spiders. :-)

[deleted]

Re: Caterpillar found to eat shopping bags, suggesting solution to plastic pollution

#220

Post by adventist »

jakeogh wrote: post #89
aw3c2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever killed a fly because it annoyed you? This is not much different. In fact, this was done for science.

Do we really need the /s tag on something so obvious?

I didn't think it was sarcasm. Its a bit sad that they had to squash up the bugs just to run that test.
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