I was hoping for LEGO bricks.
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Sure, that too is part of the whole “reduce, reuse, recycle” approach to the problem. Porque no los tres?
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As much as I like the idea of an enzyme that eats plastic, this gives me a small sense of unease. Maybe it’s because I read Slow Apocalypse by John Varley. It’s about a man bent on revenge that develops a slow acting virus that is supposed to turn the Saudi oil reserves into a solid. It spreads beyond the intended target with unexpected results.
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Maybe if we’re lucky it could develop a new industry of ocean garbage patch mining?
More likely somebody would get the great idea of spraying the garbage patch with the enzyme then we’ll discover it also breaks down fish scales or something.
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I keep thinking of Ice 9. Something gets introduced out in the world and, uh oh!, no un-ringing that bell.
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All 3 are useful, and I wasn’t saying we shouldn’t recycle. Its just a recognition of the scope of the problem and what each can effectively contribute. Ultimately the potential impact of recycling (even with new tech breakthroughs) is completely trivial with the current levels of plastic production. Reduction and reuse are the only ways to have a meaningful impact.
The over-emphasis on recycling is not happenstance. Recycling frames the problem as one of consumer responsibility, while reduction and reuse can only be addressed at the corporate level. Which is why companies that produce single-use plastic products or the oil they’re made from love to push recycling – it shifts focus away from their responsibility and makes it look like its the consumers’ fault.
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Or we get large predatory inedible plastifish dominating our oceans!
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Scary thought! Would It eat synthetic fibers in clothing as well?
(Clip is from the Red Dwarf episode where the characters use a programmable virus to speed up their potato-peeling duty)
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Unfortunately, I actually do. Because this is the kind of thing that works only under very controlled conditions, and the only way this would actually help is if it is spreading throughout the environment and breaks down ubiquitous plastic waste. As it is, this is a mechanism that just supports continuing to do things as they are now - which involves tons of plastic going into the environment. Better recycling does nothing to impact plastic that’s not being collected in the first place. At best it just means less oil is getting made into plastic.
I think that’s probably overblown. It sounds like they just bred a bacteria that was better at producing the enzyme that breaks down this (particular) plastic than the one they originally found. It’s probably less fit to survive in environment, like most domesticated crops compared to their wild cousins.
I was reading about research that created genetically modified poplar trees for bioremediation - they draw out certain toxic solvents contaminating groundwater and convert them into harmless chemicals. Eventually the reseachers realized that the enhanced bioremediation effect they were seeing had nothing to do with the changes they had made to the tree and were entirely due to some natural bacteria that inhabited the trees. They just ended up identifying the bacteria involved and now use regular popular trees inoculated with healthy does of those bacteria.
In this case, the problem I see is that this does nothing to address plastic pollution.
But the problem is that plastic in the environment is there precisely because there wasn’t a system to even collect, much less recycle it. In some cases, it’s not even possible - e.g. microfibers, shed when washing synthetic fiber clothing, are now ubiquitous in air and water. At best what this does is potentially eases the economic cost of recycling plastic; the problem is, there’s a strong economic disincentive working against recycling plastics right now, even for those that are being collected for that purpose.
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little did they know that, upon releasing this enzyme into the wild, it got in our bodies and devoured the plastic in there we’ve ingested over time, and killed us all.
FRIENDS how about this? Stop using so much damn plastic? You know your coke can has plastic? everything has plastic. If we can fully recycle plastic with clean energy, then maybe, but other than that, why keep raping the black blood of the earth for a fucking meat wrapper? I can’t wait for matter synthesis, that’s the scientific breakthrough i was hoping for under those dead leaves.
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Good news: We found an enzyme that eats plastic
Bad news: The enzyme then excretes the plastic as nuclear waste
Better news: This other bacteria breaks down the nuclear waste
It’s over: The nuclear waste gets broken down into antimatter
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Won’t be long:
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Just look at it! 
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You can’t say you “created” an enzyme that was “discovered” in nature.
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Speaking of Archer:
Do you want Andromeda Strain? Because this is how you get Andromeda Strain.
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Oh man, this is Zodiac all over again…
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I read that, and had completely forgotten the story…
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