https://newatlas.com/environment/plastic-embedded-bacteria-spores-degradable-tougher/
Scientists have demonstrated a creative solution to plastic pollution, one of our most pressing environmental problems. Plastic was embedded with spores of plastic-eating bacteria that are activated when dumped in landfill, biodegrading 90% of the material in five months. Weirder still, this actually made the plastic tougher and stronger during use.
Plastic is a strong, versatile material, but the same properties that make it useful also make it hard to dispose of. It famously takes decades or centuries to degrade, so huge amounts of plastic waste are clogging up landfill and oceans.
Intriguingly, it seems like nature is adapting, as it so often does. In recent years scientists discovered bacteria that have evolved the ability to break down plastic, isolated the enzymes that do it, and even ramped up their efficiency. This could potentially make for more efficient recycling centers where plastic is treated with enzymes and bacteria. But what about plastic that doesn't make it to these facilities? Thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) is a tough type of plastic commonly used to make things like shoes, sporting goods, phone cases and car parts, but can't currently be recycled.
So for the new study, the team investigated a new potential method to dispose of TPU – embedding spores of the plastic-eating bacteria Bacillus subtilis right into the plastic itself. Ideally, you'd be able to use the plastic products as normal, without them breaking down too early, and only when they were dumped in landfill or natural environments would they start biodegrading.
The first problem to overcome is that the high heat used to produce plastic would kill off most bacterial spores. So the researchers genetically engineered the microbes to withstand that heat, and found that 96 to 100% of the edited bacteria survived at the plastic processing temperature of 135 °C (275 °F), compared to just 20% of unedited bugs.
Next, they tested how well the bacteria would break down the plastic, a process that's triggered by nutrients and moisture in the soil. At concentrations of up to 1% of the plastic's weight, the bacteria broke down over 90% of the material within five months of being buried in compost.
It's easy to assume that giving plastic its own Achille's heel will only make it weaker during use, but it turns out the opposite is true. Plastic made with the spores was found to be up to 37% tougher and had up to 30% higher tensile strength than regular TPU, with the team hypothesizing that the spores act as a reinforcing filler.
Journal Reference:
Kim, H.S., Noh, M.H., White, E.M. et al. Biocomposite thermoplastic polyurethanes containing evolved bacterial spores as living fillers to facilitate polymer disintegration. Nat Commun 15, 3338 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47132-8
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RamiK on Thursday May 09 2024, @09:58AM
Can't wait until people start complaining all their plastic appliances got infected by the new fungus variant and are falling apart...
compiling...
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by Dr Spin on Thursday May 09 2024, @11:42AM (1 child)
Iphones that eat themselves!
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Thursday May 09 2024, @01:32PM
Corporations will be all for this, a self-obsoleting device!
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JustNiz on Thursday May 09 2024, @12:24PM (9 children)
My fear is that this will be used in plastics that come into contact with food/drink, not least because food packaging is one of the largest sources of plastic waste.
Despite knowing for decades that plastic releases health-damaging microplastics, phthalates and BPA, at least here in the US much of our food/drink still comes in plastic packaging, so clearly the FDA isn't working on the consumers or planets behalf.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday May 09 2024, @12:40PM (5 children)
All of the hyperprocessed "food" but most "real food" does not come in plastic containers.
Waxed cardboard boxes for plants, butcher paper for meat, water comes from the tap...
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday May 09 2024, @03:40PM (2 children)
You sure that waxed cardboard doesnt contain PFAS?
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-avoid-household-products-that-contain-toxic-pfas-chemicals-2021-7 [businessinsider.com]
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday May 09 2024, @04:56PM (1 child)
Ah hyperprocessed junk food. I was thinking of cardboard crates of lettuce in the produce aisle.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday May 09 2024, @06:12PM
Last time I was at the butcher shop a lot of the meat was in plastic trays with clear plastic film sealing them.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JustNiz on Thursday May 09 2024, @06:15PM
>> All of the hyperprocessed "food"
Agreed but guess what most Americans eat.
If you ever buy water or a whole lot of other drinks (including supposedly healthy ones) they almost always come in plastic. So do drinks such as all cold starbucks and those that come when you eat-out meals i.e. soda bottles or soda cups.
Also don't forget about how almost everywhere gives you plastic utensils. That all adds up to a shiltoad of chemicals and microplastics getting into most peoples food. Now add onto that some wierd spores.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 09 2024, @07:25PM
Water comes from plastic bottles. Or in one gallon or five gallon plastic jugs.
Some people need assistants to hire some assistance.
Other people need assistance to hire some assistants.
(Score: 2) by Username on Thursday May 09 2024, @01:45PM (2 children)
"Health damaging," yet those in plastic heavy use communities live longer than those living natural, organic ways of life.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Thursday May 09 2024, @05:49PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by JustNiz on Thursday May 16 2024, @08:29PM
>> yet those in plastic heavy use communities live longer than those living natural, organic ways of life.
So wrong. https://www.worlddata.info/life-expectancy.php [worlddata.info]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday May 09 2024, @12:35PM (2 children)
Its an amazing mixture of greenwashing and magic dirt theory.
The magic dirt theory is car parts will magically know if they're in the boundaries of a compost pile in which case they'll break in six months whereas outside the magic dirt boundaries the plastic will know to operate successfully for 25+ years.
The greenwashing is we can now train customers to expect parts to break in a year to "save the planet" despite having to replace your thermostat housing 15 times in the life of the car causing infinite more environmental degradation than having one hose last the life of the car. PURE COINCIDENTALLY this greenwashing that ruins the planet is also going to be highly profitable.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday May 09 2024, @06:14PM (1 child)
I suspect that what it is is the spores only mature in the presence of water. Possibly with a certain range of pH-s. No magic required, but also not a universal use case.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2024, @01:46PM
So convenient, then, that automobile parts, thermostat housings especially, never come into contact with water...
</sarc>
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2024, @01:22PM (1 child)
Whereas if it's stuck in a landfill and doesn't break down we can call it carbon sequestration. If you landfill the stuff properly, future generations might mine the sites just like people mine coal today.
As for plastic in the oceans - stop littering and go do those sanctions and boycotts on the top ocean plastic polluters (go look them up).
I actually don't want most of my plastic stuff to breakdown. It's when they breakdown that's when I need to throw them away.
I've got 1970s plastic stuff that's still around and doing OK for their age. But some modern plastics don't even last a few years and I have to throw them away.
The ocean plastic problem that's hard to avoid is the vehicle tyre stuff. As they wear they generate tiny particles much of which washes into the oceans.
Regarding laundry generating plastic micro particles - that's just the clothing industry making clothes that don't last! Think about it - if your clothes were made to last for decades - they would be shedding a lot fewer plastic particles unless they're breaking the laws of physics.
Also if the first wash sheds a lot, the manufacturer could do the first wash as part of the process and trap the bulk of the microplastics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2024, @01:52AM
The issue with those edible cassava/corn plastic bags is that they weaken/dissolve in water. And that makes them a bad option for most "disposable plastic bag" usage - lots of groceries might be/become damp or even wet. Condensation etc. Bin liners or trash bags - are what you really don't want to break unexpectedly.
If they don't weaken/dissolve in water, they might still harm those turtles...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anotherblackhat on Thursday May 09 2024, @02:45PM (1 child)
When I was a kid we had these things we called “folding tables” that had metal legs and a surface made of particle board covered with wall paper.
Rain ruined them. Even without rain, moisture and wear meant they were only good for about a decade.
Folding tables still have metal legs, but the top is made of PVC.
They survive rain, and are good for decades, maybe centuries and that's what we want them to do.
The problem isn't the parts of a car that last forever, it's the parts that don't.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday May 09 2024, @06:17PM
You could have solved the moisture problem by sealing them with wax when they were dry. The problem I always encountered was that they weren't strong enough for the loads that were put on them. (Or sometimes joint wear.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday May 09 2024, @04:31PM (2 children)
I wonder if a century or two from now, plastic will be much less useful because microorganisms that can eat it have evolved and spread. Anything made of plastic will be afflicted with "plastic rot" within its first year. No more plastic keyboards, mice, laptop and monitor cases, bottles, appliance parts, Tupperware, and so on.
This does not appear to have happened (yet) with much older substances humanity has introduced to the environment. For instance, iron, which prior to human metallurgy, did not exist in any significant quantity in an elemental state in the environment. However, plastics are organic polymers, composed of elements that life uses in much greater quantity. Another caveat is that perhaps life needs more time to evolve land based iron eating microbes. There already are such microbes in the ocean, judging from reports that the Titanic shipwreck is deteriorating rather rapidly.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2024, @06:05PM (1 child)
What might happen to plastic is what happened with wood. Wood wasn't that digestible long ago. Then stuff like termites, fungi and other organisms evolved to eat wood. This and other reasons is why we need to use specially treated wood for certain scenarios.
But you don't normally have to worry about your wooden desk breaking down that fast while it's indoors. So similarly your plastic keyboard is not likely to rot away unless you regularly soak it in water or have high humidity.
It's not so easy to "eat stuff" under common environmental conditions. That's why the "gray goo" scenario seems unlikely to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo [wikipedia.org] those nanobots have to deal with the same problems and restrictions fungi etc have, when trying to "eat" stuff. Existing fungi and other organisms might even eat wannabe gray goo nanobots if they're made out of organic stuff... Life is the original gray goo.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday May 09 2024, @09:31PM
Yes, and I have formed a probably inaccurate notion of wood decay. Plants evolved wood sometime around the start of the Carboniferious, about 360 million years ago, and the ability to eat wood didn't evolve and spread until much later, maybe as much as 60 million years later when the Carboniferous ended. The reason for the name "Carboniferous" is that dead wood just piled up and up and up, eventually to be buried and turned into the coal deposits we have today.