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Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of landfill waste

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Re: Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of landfill waste

#201

Post by Auracle »

TameAntelope wrote: post #198
Auracle wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sperm counts have been dropping for a long time (50%-60% over the past 50 years) without stopping, and plasticizers are the suspected culprit. It's incredible how many people need to do IVF now. I would argue that might be the most imminent threat but nobody seems to care.

People should have fewer kids anyway, I see this as an absolute win.

Speaking as someone that had to go through IVF, that's a bit like celebrating cancer for reducing the population. Infertility is devastating for you and your relationship when you want to have children.

Re: Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of landfill waste

#202

Post by azertykeys »

justapassenger wrote: post #193
RajT88 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50% of the plastic problem in the ocean is discarded fishing nets (generally accepted to be discarded from Asian fishing vessels).

Source?

looks more like 10% [0]. but it depends on where in the ocean you're talking about - they float more easily than a lot of plastic, and so are caught the pacific gyre.

[0] https://www.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/publication/ghost-gear-t...

Re: Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of landfill waste

#203

Post by ncmncm »

lkbm wrote: post #58
not2b wrote: post #44

Depends on what the waste products are and how they are captured, otherwise you trade one problem for another. The plastic takes up space but if it's in a landfill you have carbon capture, best not to release that carbon into the air as CH4 or CO2.

The article talks about using it for environmental cleanup, but the paper seems more focused on recycling back into fresh PET[0]: > ...and a circular carbon economy for PET is theoretically attainable through rapid enzymatic depolymerization followed by repolymerization or conversion/valorization into other products > Finally, we demonstrate a closed-loop PET recycling process by using FAST-PETase and resynthesizing…

I used to think burying plastic in landfills for carbon sequestration was a good idea. Then I found out that making plastic releases an enormous amount of CO2.

Thus, successful recycling of plastic would mean less new plastic being made, and less emission. Before renewables, petroleum not made into plastic would instead be burned as fuel. But now, or soon, maybe it will be left in the ground, instead, as not worth pumping out. It is better to leave carbon sequestered where it is than to extract and then sequester it.

Re: Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of landfill waste

#204

Post by doomrobo »

justapassenger wrote: post #193
RajT88 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50% of the plastic problem in the ocean is discarded fishing nets (generally accepted to be discarded from Asian fishing vessels).

Source?

A more accurate claim: 46% of the mass of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is fishing nets.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w

Re: Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of landfill waste

#205

Post by ncmncm »

peyton wrote: post #126
paulryanrogers wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear fuel must first be mined, correct? That's not renewable and could offset the benefits somewhat. That said I imagine it may be better as a base load than dirty coal.

Breeder reactors produce more fuel than they consume.

But we don't build breeder reactors. For reasons.

Re: Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of landfill waste

#206

Post by BiteCode_dev »

BurningFrog wrote: post #52
not2b wrote: post #44

Depends on what the waste products are and how they are captured, otherwise you trade one problem for another. The plastic takes up space but if it's in a landfill you have carbon capture, best not to release that carbon into the air as CH4 or CO2.

Yeah, landfills are not major environmental problems, AFAIK, but they offend the neat freak within all of us. And, as you say, they're pretty good carbon deposits, which is supposed to be The Most Important Thing.

Well, it's easy to say if you don't live near one.

But if you do, the smell, view, and fact that ground water becomes undrinkable will convern you. Not to mention the space they take, where little life can live on.

In the USA, you have a huge space, including deserts, so a landfill may be out of most human reach. But in France, landfills can't be far, and take the place of either a forest, or accomodations.

We don't have a better way to deal with the huge amount of trash than landfills for now. But reducing the number or size of them would be a nice to have.

I don't mean it should be a priority compared to most urging issues like climate change, but let's not get too comfy with it either.

Re: Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of landfill waste

#207

Post by formerly_proven »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #196
rawoke083600 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not renewable and could offset the benefits somewhat I don't think you realise the VAST amount of energy density in one 1kg of coal vs 1 kg nuclear fuel. "Somewhat" is not nearly the correct comparison ! "8 kWh of heat (energy) from 1kg of coal vs 24,000,000 kWh from 1 kg of uranium-235" [0] [0] https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/fuel-comparison/

Does that mean 1 tonne is enough to power the world for a year?

As far as I know that's pretty much exactly the amount of fissile material used annually world-wide.

The caveat is of course that for 1 kg of coal you have to dig up a lot less material than you have to for 1 kg of fissile material - U235 is around 1 % of natural Uranium, and Uranium is around 1 % of the ore.

Re: Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of landfill waste

#208

Post by formerly_proven »

hajile wrote: post #147
snek_case wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main problem is that the average Joe/Jane confuses all types of pollution as equally bad. The real, most imminent threat is really CO2. That's what we have to spend the most money/energy on, because it could have absolutely catastrophic consequences in the next few decades. Plastic in a landfill is just... Stuck there. It's unnatural, sure, but it's not immensely harmful, not nearly on the same scale as C…

The real threat is the nearly 1 trillion tons of toxic waste we're racking up PER YEAR. It's the most lethal stuff this planet has ever encountered. If the CO2 levels spike, life on the planet (including many or maybe even most humans) will survive. If you look at historic levels, they were hundreds of times higher and the planet was the greenest it has ever been. If/when that toxic waste leaks out and starts killing…

In a way radioactivity is one of the easiest contaminants to deal with: Instant, contact-free testing for levels is trivial with cheap, handheld devices, compared to virtually all other toxic substances which usually require taking samples and analyzing them in a lab. Decay is very well understood and easy to characterize.

Re: Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of landfill waste

#209

Post by choeger »

Auracle wrote: post #201
TameAntelope wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People should have fewer kids anyway, I see this as an absolute win.

Speaking as someone that had to go through IVF, that's a bit like celebrating cancer for reducing the population. Infertility is devastating for you and your relationship when you want to have children.

Don't expect empathy from someone who has found the Rightful Cause(TM).

You have my sympathies for going through a this procedure even though I never had to do that.

Re: Plastic-eating enzyme could eliminate billions of tons of landfill waste

#210

Post by formerly_proven »

TylerE wrote: post #199
stjohnswarts wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People love to "what if" landfills. Best to not bother arguing with them. We have tons of problems with emissions, plastics pollution, industrial dumping. However landfills ain't one of them, but people won't give up. I've learned to not bother discussing anything with them if they don't know a few basics of how modern landfills are run (at least in western nations).

Landfills were demonized for a long time because they were easy targets.

It's usually just disguised NIMBY-ism :)
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