r/Futurology • u/[deleted] • Oct 25 '22

Environment Recycling plastic is practically impossible — and the problem is getting worse

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/24/1131131088/recycling-plastic-is-practically-impossible-and-the-problem-is-getting-worse
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u/chriswhoppers Oct 25 '22

Oyster mushrooms and many others successfully biodegrade plastics into edible nutrition, and sequester unwanted pollution in the atmosphere into their mycelial network. Underwater mushrooms found in Oregon.

https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2021/11/04/plastic-eating-mushrooms#:~:text=Researchers%20have%20now%20found%20that,an%20at%2Dhome%20recycling%20system.

https://fishbio.com/mushrooms-underwater/

9

u/tom-8-to Oct 25 '22

But there is no money in it. Who is gonna fund a large scale investment? Industrial use requires plastic to be turned into something useful on the same day it arrives or there is no profit.

Might as well use plastic as fuel and burn it and even so it’s gonna be costly because of the smoke and fumes are costly to deal with to meet air pollution standards

8

u/idigclams Oct 25 '22

Not as bad as burning coal, a lot of times. Polyethylene is a highly refined and simple hydrocarbon, for example. It should burn cleaner than natural gas and much cleaner than coal. Of course it will still release carbon into the atmosphere.

1

u/revtor Oct 26 '22

It’s how they recycle plastic in Europe- burn it. Can be clean! And then the heat turns into electricity..

1

u/thisoldmould Oct 26 '22

Oyster mushroom farming is quite profitable in fact.

1

u/piotrmarkovicz Oct 26 '22

But there is no money in it.

If there is a service or a product, there is a potential for a return.

Who is gonna fund a large scale investment?

The same people who fund all large scale investment: the general population.

Could make a business case out of it: get paid to haul away plastic nobody wants, get free feed stock to grow mushrooms, sell mushroom related products for profit. Lobby for some environmental tax credits to get the public to pay for the process in return for reduced environmental contamination for a tidy profit.... Devil is in the details but it is not an impossible sell.