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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

#321

Post by coolaliasbro »

mirimir wrote: post #247
komali2 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, that's a cheap strike to go straight for hypocrisy as a means to win this argument. Whether or not the person posting the argument "animal testing is bad" eats meat doesn't change the question - "should we fatally test on animals." I'm a bit disappointed that nobody is really engaging this non-sarcastically. A couple are talking about "drawing a line" somewhere but nobody is being allowed to say "all life…

Well, if "all life should fall on the safe side of the line", what would you eat? Perhaps only organisms that have died without human intervention. Scavenging, I mean. But that wouldn't support very large populations.

Makes me think of this: https://youtu.be/N_Yaa_LMDcs

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

#322

Post by leoreeves »

adventist wrote: post #220
jakeogh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, it wasn't sarcasm.

http://reducing-suffering.org/do-bugs-feel-pain/

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

#323

Post by tripzilch »

3131s wrote: post #272
lexicality wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She was going to kill them anyway, they're a virulent pest.

> virulent pest Humans are also by any measure really.

And we'll get to them eventually.

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

#324

Post by literallycancer »

freeflight wrote: post #276
literallycancer wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, since you can't put food stained plastics in the plastic bin (or do you guys do it?), it has to go into the residual waste, and it's that way with many things.

>Well, since you can't put food stained plastics in the plastic bin. Why couldn't you? If it's just stained it's not much of an issue after all the food is biodegradable and will just rot on its own from bacteria and insects. There are some people actually washing out their plastic garbage to prevent bad smells coming from their plastic garbage bag. Imho that's a massive waste of water, just put the garbage bag somew…

Lipids are an issue for the recycling process. Some people wash them yes, but then you spend more energy on washing than is saved by the recycling so it's kind of pointless.

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

#325

Post by frostymarvelous »

mikeash wrote: post #162
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.

It's because insects have such a primitive nervous system that we don't see them as being aware in the same way that a dog is. You draw the line somewhere , right? Drawing the line at a certain complexity of the nervous system is more sensible than drawing it at "animals" in general, IMO.

The fact that I just erased my comment out of fear that it would be misunderstood and downvoted to hell scares me.

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

#326

Post by frostymarvelous »

matz1 wrote: post #223
mikeash wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because insects have such a primitive nervous system that we don't see them as being aware in the same way that a dog is. You draw the line somewhere , right? Drawing the line at a certain complexity of the nervous system is more sensible than drawing it at "animals" in general, IMO.

I draw the line at Human and Not Human.

Especially if we're adrift and starving. In that situation, the more complex the nervous system, the better.

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

#327

Post by greggyb »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #314
Godel_unicode wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or alternatively, beautifully efficient.

Efficient at what? Efficiency is always relative to a particular goal, what did you have in mind?

Propagation of a species.

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

#328

Post by greggyb »

vanderZwan wrote: post #152
ismail wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that a study was reported on the exact same site, but in 2014. https://m.phys.org/news/2014-12-gut-bacteria-worm-degrade-pl...

Could be the same bacteria mentioned in the Caterpillar article here: > Scientists say that the degradation rate is extremely fast compared to other recent discoveries, such as bacteria reported last year to biodegrade some plastics at a rate of just 0.13mg a day.

.13mg of plastic per day per _____? How many bacteria, or what weight or volume of bacteria?

.13mg of plastic per day per bacterium would be incredible; per kg of bacteria would be not so amazing.

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

#329

Post by chicob »

Isn't this a terrible idea in the large scale? By allowing animals to eat plastic, won't their metabolism release CO2 to the atmosphere through respiration? Plastic has lots of carbon.

Isn't this the same as burning some plastic and saying 'plants can eat it now', just without the direct emissions?

In the small scale, it can solve some local problems. But in the larger scale, shouldn't we just bury plastic deep underground? Of convert it to fuel in substitution of further fossil fuel extraction?

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