Absolutely. There no reason we should still be using molecular-scale manufacturing process that starts at petroleum and ends with whatever our designer materials happen to turn into in a landfill or the ocean when exposed to heat, light, and bacteria for decades. We can build cradle-to-grave considerations into the design of these materials, making them not just for the properties they have while they’re useful but also for the ease with which we can unbuild them again when we don’t need them any longer, and prevent those molecules from ever getting out into the environment in the first place.
I think this will become especially important once 3D printing takes over – once you’re done with your 3D printed widget you should just be able the throw it back into hopper and decompose it back to precursor monomers. Building better enzymes to do that kind of thing quickly and cheaply seems like a great starting point, and bacteria are much better chemists than we are, so we can gain a lot by stealing their tricks.
At one time film producers were looking at doing up Bear’s Darwin series (about damn time), but he backed out after he got a load of their treatment: The children would be something along the lines of bug-eyed lizards or whatever. Hollywood is brilliant at mucking up great stories.
Just got this from Bear’s website; nice to see this influential writer take a political stance:
“The powerful, motivated students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida are truly amazing. Once again I am proud to be an American. Republican legislators and NRA administrators should see this passion, this strength in youth soon to vote, as a real sign from God that they have to change their ways—or become extinct.”
I’m a fan of the cautionary principle. I’m not a fan of fear-mongering. Reminds me of the people who protested the LHC because they thought movie physics were real. Plastic waste is a certain and immediate threat to the global ecosystem, not some imaginary danger based on wild misconceptions about the capabilities of bioprocessing.
By all means, oversight an ethics boards to the max. But talking about bacteria that’s going to eat all the plastic in the world is rank science fantasy.
The next great extinction will be The Great Plastic Famine, as the life that’s evolved to utilize all that spare plastic finally runs out. (Imagine dinosaurs with plastic armor rather than bone.)
