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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

#91

Post by DANK_YACHT »

mschuster91 wrote: post #87
DANK_YACHT wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would cause them to be an environmental issue? As far as I know they can be built in a safe manner and there is plenty of space for them.

In the Western world maybe, but outside of it... hell even in the Western world we have regular reports of mismanagement and corruption, just look at Italy. We need to reduce the amount of trash we produce, not hope for a miracle technology.

Landfills are not a miracle technology. They exist already and are technologically sound. It’d be way more of a miracle if we somehow managed to greatly reduce waste.

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

#92

Post by Baeocystin »

drew-y wrote: post #86
BurningFrog wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn't go that far. > Per the most recent Inventory Report, U.S. landfills released an estimated 109.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) of methane into the atmosphere in 2020; this represents 16.8 percent of the total U.S. anthropogenic methane emissions across all sectors. https://www.epa.gov/lmop/frequent-questions-about-landfill-g... .

Sure. That's almost all due to food waste, though. FWIW.

https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/sustainable-...

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

#93

Post by Supermancho »

ars wrote: post #71
wang_li wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we want to put the plastic's carbon into the atmosphere instead of back into the ground where it came from?

Because then we can avoid pumping oil out of the ground and burning that. The hydrocarbons are going to get burned one way or another, you can just trade one type for another types.

> you can just trade one type for another types

You cannot replace most oil-based fuel with incinerators. So I'll disagree there.

The utility of oil-based fuels is the energy density in combustion. Burning plastic doesn't come close to the same exchange.

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

#94

Post by candiddevmike »

DANK_YACHT wrote: post #79
noja wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, landfills are not major environmental problems ... yet?

What would cause them to be an environmental issue? As far as I know they can be built in a safe manner and there is plenty of space for them.

Most landfills contain icky things like heavy metals or arsenic. Having that leak into an aquifer Would Be Bad.

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

#95

Post by nomel »

faitswulff wrote: post #75
rootusrootus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this process still assume that the plastic is collected and heated (not super hot, the claim seems to be "less than 50C")? In the case of the ocean, it doesn't seem like this technology would be useful until after we collect all the little bits of plastic. And at that point we could just put it in a landfill anyway.

Yeah, good point. Theoretically, a more optimized enzyme might be able to do it at ambient temperatures, which they mention in the article as a target. Assuming the search space for enzyme mutations isn't already exhausted.

> a more optimized enzyme might be able to do it at ambient temperatures

Releasing this into the ocean, in any appreciable amount, seems like a very bad idea. I think collection from plastic "hot spots", and then separate processing, would make more sense. I think it's best to reduce the number of foreign chemicals in the environment.

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

#96

Post by jimmySixDOF »

DeepMind's AlphaFold capabilities to model protein-folding is going to accelerate this kind of discovery at a quantum leap order of magnitude. The featured article notes a custom CNN was used here - but AlphaFold is a game changer in synthetic biology in general even though the first goals were human medical application focused.

BBC Science in Action [1] interviewed Prof John McGeehan of the Centre for Enzyme Innovation at Portsmouth University working on Bacteria breaking down Plastic in landfills. He explained his workflow of maybe selecting one candidate very carefully and occasionally out of many due to the cost/time involved & how DeepMind gave him more results in a single weekend (for free) than he had expected to see over his entire reasearch career.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct1l3y

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

#97

Post by thfuran »

ars wrote: post #69
williamtwild wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part is false? There is at least one part of that statement that is absolutely true.

The only part that is true is that burning is the most common method, with recycling being a close third. > which is costly Burning is not costly it is cheaper than all other methods. It's so cheap it's actually profitable. > energy intensive It actually provides extra energy, and reduces energy waste (because now we have to pump less oil.) > and spews noxious gas into the air. It spews nothing except water and CO2.

I wouldn't exactly call it noxious, but C02 isn't exactly something we want to be spewing more of. Isn't a landfill full of plastic pretty much just a big pile of captured carbon?

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

#98

Post by BurningFrog »

xxr wrote: post #67
noja wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, landfills are not major environmental problems ... yet?

Is there enough raw material on earth for landfills to become major environmental problems? (genuinely curious)

Maybe this makes me sounds like a jerk, but:

All material that can end up in landfills is already on Earth.

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

#99

Post by zackees »

snek_case wrote: post #62
BurningFrog wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#100

Post by [deleted] »

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.

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