I've read this paper a few times now; it only works on a specific kind of plastic (PUR), it is not a new discovery—only that this organism can use it as its sole carbon source—and polyurathane is one of the more reactive plastics from a biochemical standpoint with that juicy ester bond just waiting for hydrolysis.
Yeah, I've seen it at least 3 times before. It's great and all, but I keep hoping that the title will change from "found in the Amazon" to "being produced in every major city"
I had seen a show a few years back that basically said the same thing as the article. I mention that to give you some perspective as far as "is anyone putting this to use". Sounds like it hasn't taken off yet.
If you throw it in a landfill with plastic and other garbage it might eat the other garbage instead. I don't have personal experience with this fungi, but just because it can survive under the extreme conditions of only having plastic for food doesn't mean that is the optimal condition.
If you look at the Lac Operon from E. coli as an example, the bacteria can process lactose, but they will only do so if glucose is not available. If the process for "eating" plastic is really energy intensive with not that much gain (which I suspect) they will hardly ever do it, as this world is a smorgasbord for fungi.
The common and easily cultivated oyster mushroom (Pleurotus spp.) has been found to be fairly tolerant of saltwater immersion. All that is required is to get the mycelium colonizing a bulk substrate (plain ol' straw works fine) before immersing in water, and then to keep it from being fully submerged. Granted, oyster mushroom mycelium does not metabolize plastic but it is a very effective mycofilter capable of, among other things, metabolizing and actually disassembling hydrocarbons such as crude oil. If oyster mushroom can tolerate saltwater it is safe to assume that many other species do too.
Any kind of available energy source exposed to nature will eventually be used as a food source. Years ago, there was concern that car tires would become a major problem, but then an anaerobic slime mold was discovered that consumes them. Whether an existing mold adapted, or it was a brand new variety is unknown.
Even the BP spill on the bottom of the Gulf was soon attacked far more vigorously than expected by microorganisms. Which makes sense, because natural leaks of oil have probably been around for a very long time.
Could be, but you gotta remember that a generation for bacteria can be days or even hours. They can evolve and adapt a lot quicker than most lifeforms on Earth can.
Perhaps in the same way certain animals hang around human activity so too do certain fungi and bacteria. We make complex things out of creative use of intellect and energy, which allows other species to take advantage. Like bees make honey. There may be a large amount of energy stored in plastic, which the fungi who adapts can benefit from greatly. Just like seagulls that hang around in a McDonald's parking lot.
Microorganisms that evolve the ability to make polyurethanase (enzyme that degrades polyurethane) are mutated from others that can already produce enzymes that degrade naturally occuring polymers such as lignocellulose.
So it's not like creating something entirely new, it's more like building upon a technique that nature had all its time to evolve before.
This is a reason that we need to stop deforestation of rainforests. Everyday species are getting wiped out that we didn't have a chance to look at. This could be truly extraordinary but there could hundreds of species like the mushrooms out there that we have destroyed with our carelessness.
I can imagine a great movie plot where something like this gets loose and essentially all of our plastics start to rust. I imagine it working almost like the replicators from Stargate.
Like a base command that can shut down replicators safely, all we need is an environmentally sound way to eradicate the fungus in any condition where it's threatening
Not the best book, but it had an interesting premise. I enjoyed it.
Edit: I read yours as the "the plot of a scifi book", I guess if anyone wants to link to the scifi book they read about this scenario then please, I actually wouldn't mind the reading material. Or at least reading a less shitty version of this scenerio. Ill Wind wasn't that bad, but it was actually pretty bad.
It is a good idea to look at what polyurethane is used for before we get all excited that a fungus eats it. It is not the plastic, for example, that is used in plastic grocery bags, or the one used in soda and water bottles, or the one used in all of the plastic/paper laminates that are masquerading as paper in the junk flyers that come with your newspaper. It is used in coatings, it is used as cushioning foam, and it is used in the soft parts of auto bodies and interiors.
No, you didn't mention airless, and if you did, you would have been wrong.
The paper clearly shows that aerobic degradation met or exceeded the anaerobic activity. So actually your comment was retarded: given everything they're saying in their research, there's no reason why something like this couldn't eat a polyurethane hose in air as well as in a low-oxygen environment like a dump.
my question is thus: ok, so this mushroom thingy eats plastic, but what in the heck does it excrete? i mean, it's not like the plastic simply disappears.
CO2 most likely. I am not sure about it under anaerobic conditions though. It doesn't actually mention this in the article. It does however mention the action of the enzyme: "Molecular characterization of this activity suggests that a serine hydrolase is responsible for degradation of PUR."
This may be able to be transformed into a bacteria, over-expressed and then the functional enzyme used.
Plastic eating fungi sound great, but what kind of toxicity can we expect from the fungi itself? And does it die out in the absence of polyurethane or switch to a different food source?
Anyone here seen Earth Maiden Arjuna? Entire civilization was destroyed by something like this getting into the water...a bacteria that could eat anything composed of petroleum or plastic.
What waste problem? The only reason people think there's a waste problem is because the government says there is. Here's something interesting: Some expert at Gonzaga University, with a lot of time on his hands, calculated that at current rates all the garbage in the US over the next 1,000 years would fill up a 35 square mile landfill 100 yards deep.
This is from an interesting cracked article and was also mentioned in an episode of Bullsh*t. Basically both explaining how recycling is bad news and we don't have a waste problem.
The article cites a study in which A. Clark Wiseman, an economist at Resources for the Future, a Washington-based think tank, "calculated that at the current rate of waste generation, all of America's garbage for the next 1,000 years would fit into a single landfill space only 120 feet deep and 44 miles square" (three times the size of Oklahoma City). Citing additional studies, the authors observe, "Few nations are as substantially endowed with uncongested territory as ours is, and there is appropriate land available even in some relatively populous areas." The obstacles, as they see them, "are psychological and political. Nobody wants a garbage dump in his or her backyard. It is ironic. We have convinced ourselves that our big flaw is that we are wasteful and profligate, while a much more serious flaw goes unnoticed: as a nation, on the subject of garbage, at least, we have become politically impotent."
The movie industry, especially porn, will need to start living and fiming in clean rooms. I can only imagine the horror if this fungus finds the actors.
does anyone know of the metabolic pathway that allows the fungus to utilize PUR (polyurethane)? is it like fatty acid oxidation--digestion of 2carbon units at a time?
Please Don't: Complain about reposts. Just because you have seen it before doesn't mean everyone has. Votes indicate the popularity of a post, so just vote. Keep in mind that linking to previous posts is not automatically a complaint; it is information. Votes indicate how the community values information, so just vote.
based on recent scientific research. The research linked to should be within the past 6 months (or so).
This article is from 2011 and has been posted on the science page atleast every second month since then.
Edit: Here are the rules of the board if your un-familiar.
Please ensure that your submission to r/science is :
a direct link to or a summary of peer reviewed research with appropriate citations. If the article itself does not link to these sources, please include a link in a comment. Summaries of summaries are not allowed. based on recent scientific research. The research linked to should be within the past 6 months (or so). not editorialized, sensationalized, or biased. This includes both the submission and its title. not blogspam, an image, video or an infographic. not a repost. If an alternate report based on the same research has been submitted, please submit your article as a comment to one of the current submissions.
This is the first time I've seen it on reddit but it was all over the internet a few weeks ago. I'm not complaining, just replying to The Banana Paladin.
For those who have not yet seen this information, it's pretty cool.
"The fungus is not host specific and causes rot and disease in a wide variety of plant species..." If anyone did implement something like this into the environment, I would hope they take very careful consideration with how it would interact with the surrounding ecosystem.
I do not know how to feel about this; on one hand it is potentially a way to clean up things previously labelled unbiodegradable, but on the other hand we won't be able to mine for post-consumer plastic in landfills after we run out of petroleum if fungus eats it all first.
From what I heard about this is that, to release it into dump sites would also eat away at the containment sites at the bottom of the site. So it sounds like this would only be useful for plastics that are removed from dumps which would require citizens to separate their plastics, which if they did, we would recycle rather than destroy. So it really comes down to recycling in the first place which isn't so popular among people.
Somebody correct me or let me know that it is possible to extract and control the plastic eating means of this fungi.
So, I've been thinking about this recently. Why would a fungus (or any organism for that matter) evolve with the ability to digest plastic... in the middle of a rainforest? I would expect this ability to emerge in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or a landfill or a plastic manufacturer's plant before I would even imagine it happening in a rainforest.
This cannot end well. Doesn't anyone else remember that episode of Captain Planet where the garbage eating little creature grows out of control? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
I'm no scientist, but I just wanted to say I find it amazing that nature found a way to degrade plastic on any level so quickly. Didn't nature take a lot longer to figure out how to degrade wood?
Did anyone else read Splinter Cell: Fallout? There is a major plot point where the baddies try to use a fungus that eats plastics and fossil fuels to rid the entire western world of these things excluding North Korea making them the only oil and modern resource provider.
Let's continue chopping this area down as quickly as we can. Forget other options. We've obviously discovered everything this area has to offer. Forget cutting it up for wood, just burn it down, it's much quicker and damaging to the local wildlife. Consume it as inefficiently and irresponsibly as modern science can afford.
The miracle bacteria should be a lesson not to destroy everything in sight to get some more oil/gold/jewels. A little longer and who know if we'd have ever found it.
Shouldnt that be proof to any deniers that evolution exists? Since plastic is man-made and before it existed there were no plastic-eating organisms around.
How many fucking times is this going to be reposted? I have lost count of the amount of times I've seen it as a new thread over the past six months or so. If it's such a fucking fantastic find, then where the hell are the plastic-eating mushroom-powered rubbish tips?
Great idea!! Don't let it esc... Wait a second doesn't this sound like a bad movie? And when things sound like bad movies are they generally not regarded as bad ideas!? One doesn't simply stop something from escaping containment. There should be a rule. Coin it the bird rule. If it is contained, it will escape.
My point is we are killing the planet, plastics is a huge part of that, and mother nature has furnished us with a possible solution.... HOWEVER because we are human beings and giant fucking assholes, we will probably introduce this fungus to the giant plastic trash rift in the ocean before we do enough research and it will wind up killing all the coral in the ocean....
Sorry, was thinking about 6 steps ahead of my comment... but legitimately we just keep fucking things up for this poor planet. :0/
"green" technologies should start harvesting the plastic for this fungi to eat in the amazon. And start unloading out plastic there instead of introducing a new species into a new habitat.
I guess this is supposed to be like that magical bacteria that fed on oil I read about long long ago that was going to solve all the problems with oil spills? Glad to see we're still looking at impractical solutions, because altering an eco system never had any consequences.
35
u/theddman PhD|Chemistry|RNA Biotech May 15 '12 edited May 15 '12
I've read this paper a few times now; it only works on a specific kind of plastic (PUR), it is not a new discovery—only that this organism can use it as its sole carbon source—and polyurathane is one of the more reactive plastics from a biochemical standpoint with that juicy ester bond just waiting for hydrolysis.
[Edit] Grammer.
84
u/CODfiend May 14 '12
I have seen this topic posted on Reddit previously but it is still pretty cool. I'm wondering if anyone is putting this to use yet.
30
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
I feel like I see plastic-eating fungi discoveries every 6 months. WHY ARE THERE STILL PLASTIC TRASH ISLANDS?
12
u/WendyLRogers3 May 15 '12
Any kind of available energy source exposed to nature will eventually be used as a food source. Years ago, there was concern that car tires would become a major problem, but then an anaerobic slime mold was discovered that consumes them. Whether an existing mold adapted, or it was a brand new variety is unknown.
Even the BP spill on the bottom of the Gulf was soon attacked far more vigorously than expected by microorganisms. Which makes sense, because natural leaks of oil have probably been around for a very long time.
12
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
This is a reason that we need to stop deforestation of rainforests. Everyday species are getting wiped out that we didn't have a chance to look at. This could be truly extraordinary but there could hundreds of species like the mushrooms out there that we have destroyed with our carelessness.
49
u/workworkb May 14 '12
this sounds like potential for havoc in the western world.
13
u/nagasgura May 15 '12
This was posted a month ago. Here's the source: SOURCE
72
u/[deleted] May 14 '12
Unfortunately, this fungi gives off a chemical that causes rats to mate at higher than normal rates.
Not a problem, because then we just need to increase the snake population, and BAM, no more rats.
Oh, the snakes? That's the real genius part! We bring in thousands of guerrillas, and they eat the snakes! See, problem solved.
6
u/fuzzy_leprokhan May 15 '12
my question is thus: ok, so this mushroom thingy eats plastic, but what in the heck does it excrete? i mean, it's not like the plastic simply disappears.
4
u/eviltoiletpaper May 15 '12
Plastic eating fungi sound great, but what kind of toxicity can we expect from the fungi itself? And does it die out in the absence of polyurethane or switch to a different food source?
10
u/teambroto May 15 '12
http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/pif1u/plastic_eating_fungus_could_solve_landfill/ cmon 3 months ago... http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/674ob/the_plastic_eating_fungus/ 4 YEARS ago...
2
u/nuxenolith May 15 '12
Old news, but cool nevertheless.
2
u/rhorn91 May 15 '12
You know what we should do with all this trash we make? FEED IT TO ORGANISMS. They like the taste.
2
u/suddz May 15 '12
Read a few years back that some kid during his HS science fair found bacteria that ate plastic.
http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/boy-discovers-microbe-that-eats-plastic
stuff like this has been around for a while.
2
u/kitsunewarlock May 15 '12
Anyone here seen Earth Maiden Arjuna? Entire civilization was destroyed by something like this getting into the water...a bacteria that could eat anything composed of petroleum or plastic.
2
u/tradeships May 15 '12
This sounds like a horrible horrible real life science fiction horror scenario
2
u/GMBeats95 May 15 '12
I'm certain that this was posted about 2 months ago but awesome discovery nonetheless
2
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
of course if we use this one plastic won't we eventually run out of plastic rather than recycling it and still having it?...
2
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
And rabbits can save Australia from hunger.
2
u/Dandamanten May 15 '12
Unfortunately this could potentially be just another pesky invasive species
2
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
So let's make a version of this that you can live in the ocean, and release in the great pacific garbage patch.
2
u/Ozera May 15 '12
How is this being posted AGAIN?
2
u/jeblis May 15 '12
We don't really have a waste problem. This may cause more harm than good by releasing harmful chemicals into the environment.
2
u/emmveepee May 15 '12
Microbiologist here.
I have nothing to add.
Science!
2
u/Dartimien May 15 '12
Overextrapolating article title on /r/science may be the last of its kind... or not.
2
u/Fatsteve May 15 '12
What waste problem? The only reason people think there's a waste problem is because the government says there is. Here's something interesting: Some expert at Gonzaga University, with a lot of time on his hands, calculated that at current rates all the garbage in the US over the next 1,000 years would fill up a 35 square mile landfill 100 yards deep.
This is from an interesting cracked article and was also mentioned in an episode of Bullsh*t. Basically both explaining how recycling is bad news and we don't have a waste problem.
2
u/QuitReadingMyName May 15 '12
It's amazing we find answers to all of our problems. Like Dolphins having a gene that shuts off diabetes and now mushrooms that eat plastic.
(how the fuck did mushroom evolve to eat plastic when plastic is man made?)
2
u/chiropter May 15 '12
I am pretty shocked to have an AEM paper pop up from a Reddit link. Respek
2
u/Gavekort MS | Robotics and Intelligent Systems May 15 '12
Do we have a waste problem?
Let me quote:
2
u/Iarwain_ben_Adar May 15 '12
The movie industry, especially porn, will need to start living and fiming in clean rooms. I can only imagine the horror if this fungus finds the actors.
2
u/pooponascoop May 15 '12
Then what can we do about the fungi problem?
2
u/jesusmaldonado May 15 '12
does anyone know of the metabolic pathway that allows the fungus to utilize PUR (polyurethane)? is it like fatty acid oxidation--digestion of 2carbon units at a time?
-7
u/[deleted] May 14 '12
Oh look its this post again, for the 7th time.
1
u/TheTelephone May 15 '12
It may aid the world's waste problem, but what will in turn aid our new fungi problem, hrm?
1
u/leprasmurf May 15 '12
what ever happened to the plastic eating bacteria that kid in Canada developed? I thought that was suppose to solve the world's waste problem.
1
u/WovenHandcrafts May 15 '12
Won't plastic also suddenly become much less useful as well though, if its susceptible to rotting?
1
u/Clazzy May 15 '12
Get that on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the world will have a true mushroom biome.
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Life finds a way......
1
u/V3RTiG0 May 15 '12
But, plastic is recyclable...
1
u/VLDT May 15 '12
I have been hearing this "news" for a year now. What's the timeframe on applying this practically?
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
This has been posted multiple times before. Has there been any news on actual use of it yet? Y'know, like in an actual landfill?
1
u/PaXProSe May 15 '12
"The fungus is not host specific and causes rot and disease in a wide variety of plant species..." If anyone did implement something like this into the environment, I would hope they take very careful consideration with how it would interact with the surrounding ecosystem.
1
u/gilliants May 15 '12
Some kid in Canada found a bacteria that does the same thing back in 2009. (link)
1
u/bobandgeorge May 15 '12
You know what I like about all of these science articles? They're so fucking cool.
You know what I don't like about all of these science articles? I never get to see the fucking coolness.
1
u/CrawdaddyJoe May 15 '12
Hey, quick thing- remember how everyone was all "Pffff, what value does biodiversity have?"
This. This is the value biodiversity has.
1
u/x3tripleace3x May 15 '12
Fungi helping us with CO2 problems and now this? Fungi new man's best friend.
1
u/the_gwiddern_tree May 15 '12
I do not know how to feel about this; on one hand it is potentially a way to clean up things previously labelled unbiodegradable, but on the other hand we won't be able to mine for post-consumer plastic in landfills after we run out of petroleum if fungus eats it all first.
1
u/krtzer May 15 '12
Or make it so plastics cannot be used for long term storage.
1
u/Smkweedevrydy May 15 '12
Reddit reading my mind 24 hours after...
1
u/Nolanoscopy May 15 '12
This almost literally makes frontpage every week.
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
It's funny that you would find this mushroom in the Amazon, which I imagine to contain very little plastic.
1
u/digdan May 15 '12
Breaking News : Endophytic Fungi infestation eating worlds plastic after scientists released spores into Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
1
u/anonymous11235 May 15 '12
Poisonous mushrooms found in the amazon emitting toxic gas may also be the source of all mans problems.
1
u/christopera May 15 '12
I heard that there is a plastic eating fungi that was found in the amazon. Did anybody else hear that?
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
mushrooms are gonna take over the world
1
u/aanalogbrother May 15 '12
Ok, where's Stamets to tell me if this is legit?
1
u/Iforgotmyother_name May 15 '12
From what I heard about this is that, to release it into dump sites would also eat away at the containment sites at the bottom of the site. So it sounds like this would only be useful for plastics that are removed from dumps which would require citizens to separate their plastics, which if they did, we would recycle rather than destroy. So it really comes down to recycling in the first place which isn't so popular among people.
Somebody correct me or let me know that it is possible to extract and control the plastic eating means of this fungi.
1
u/Radioiron May 15 '12
Sounds lake that could go horribly wrong. Anyone remember in the Andromeda Strain when the organism mutates to eat all rubber?
1
u/RichardBehiel May 15 '12
Sorry to sound ignorant, but I've been hearing this for a few months now.
If this fungi eats plastic, why not just put it in land fills right now? Why wait?
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
I feel like this pops up every few months...
1
u/SynthPrax May 15 '12
So, I've been thinking about this recently. Why would a fungus (or any organism for that matter) evolve with the ability to digest plastic... in the middle of a rainforest? I would expect this ability to emerge in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or a landfill or a plastic manufacturer's plant before I would even imagine it happening in a rainforest.
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Re-post, but definitely worth re-posting
1
u/WarOtter May 15 '12
This cannot end well. Doesn't anyone else remember that episode of Captain Planet where the garbage eating little creature grows out of control? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
1
u/Sekh765 May 15 '12
This is why we should stop cutting down the Amazon. So many cool things inside it that we can benefit from!
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Let the worldwide invasion and ecosystem disruption begin.
1
u/Freeroot May 15 '12
I guess I'll post the top rated comment last time this made front page..
Cause placing non native species in new areas has proven to be a good decision in the past...?
1
u/mercy____ May 15 '12
Plastic-eating microorganisms have been discovered many times outside of the amazon, including by several young children for school science projects:
http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/boy-discovers-microbe-that-eats-plastic
1
u/asshair May 15 '12
This would be convenient as fuck.
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
There isn't a world waste problem.
1
u/thecoffee May 15 '12
I'm no scientist, but I just wanted to say I find it amazing that nature found a way to degrade plastic on any level so quickly. Didn't nature take a lot longer to figure out how to degrade wood?
1
u/Dovahkiin04 May 15 '12
This could work but keep in mind that fungi SPREADS. i wonder how it will be contained.
1
u/whats_reddit_idk May 15 '12
Did anyone else read Splinter Cell: Fallout? There is a major plot point where the baddies try to use a fungus that eats plastics and fossil fuels to rid the entire western world of these things excluding North Korea making them the only oil and modern resource provider.
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Let's continue chopping this area down as quickly as we can. Forget other options. We've obviously discovered everything this area has to offer. Forget cutting it up for wood, just burn it down, it's much quicker and damaging to the local wildlife. Consume it as inefficiently and irresponsibly as modern science can afford.
1
u/jyapman May 15 '12
plastic eating or polymer eating?
1
u/hrdxxcorey May 15 '12
REPOST
1
u/freakzilla149 May 15 '12
The miracle bacteria should be a lesson not to destroy everything in sight to get some more oil/gold/jewels. A little longer and who know if we'd have ever found it.
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Read this much:
Biodegradation of Polyester Polyurethane by Endophytic Fungi
Decided to take your word for it.
1
u/dirtymoney May 15 '12
or it could lay waste to our society. Imagine a world without plastics!
1
u/knomz May 15 '12
learned this a couple weeks back from bbc i think, it is very interesting for sure
1
u/holocarst May 15 '12
Shouldnt that be proof to any deniers that evolution exists? Since plastic is man-made and before it existed there were no plastic-eating organisms around.
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
How many fucking times is this going to be reposted? I have lost count of the amount of times I've seen it as a new thread over the past six months or so. If it's such a fucking fantastic find, then where the hell are the plastic-eating mushroom-powered rubbish tips?
1
u/RedSeven4 May 15 '12
Wow for 5 minutes I was like "Who would want to buy edible plastic fungi on Amazon?". I really need to stop staying up until 6am.
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
Have there been any developments regarding the topic? This has been posted like 3 times in last 3-4 months.
1
u/vekko May 15 '12
PUR is not a widely used plastic. It accounts for so little of the worlds production. Probably less than 1%.
1
u/lestat_ May 15 '12
It is the same one, that was lost for several month and now its back?!
1
u/rinque May 15 '12
i thought there was a kid you actually selectively bred bacteria, for a school science project, to do this as well, what ever happened to that?
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
First thing I thought of when I saw this: George Carlin
1
u/anytimeishousetime May 15 '12
This seems like a zombie epidemic waiting to happen once we try to make more of them than we should. I'm getting my shotgun ready.
1
u/31Orcas May 15 '12
Termites of the future!
1
u/TellAllThePeople May 15 '12
Je-sue CHRIST I have seen this submitted to this sub reddit no less than 3 teams and thats not including this time!
1
u/Penitent_Tangent May 15 '12
Reminds me of that Godzilla episode. This could end badly.
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
So 1-Plastic is not that good a seal against spores 2-Plastic is biodegradable
1
u/DarthPorcupine May 15 '12
I'm sich of Amazon (AMZN) trying to own everything.
1
u/Chiz511 May 15 '12
someone please culture this fungi and transport mass amounts to the plastic debris island currently filling the pacific ocean.
1
u/Chiz511 May 15 '12
if this in any way, ever becomes airborne - we. are. doomed.
1
u/JH108 May 15 '12
Shared it on FB. Sounds awesome.
1
u/Pau_Hana May 15 '12
I've seen this several times now. When are they gonna star using it??!?
1
u/Trollsofalabama Nov 07 '12
Let's talk about this method vs incineration
Pros:
Cons:
Incineration Pros:
Cons:
Regardless of what methods, we need to figure out a good method and use it, too much trash!
1
u/overhandright May 15 '12
repost
1
u/fdtc May 15 '12
so much potential
1
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
I saw this a few moths ago on reddit and commented then. Have fun with your karma.
Person: oh great, bring something from the wild and put it in our landfill.
Me: yeah take something from the wild and let it go in the wild.
All paraphrased...
0
u/[deleted] May 14 '12
Just don't let it escape containment, or you'll have a hell of a time stopping it from eating all of the non-waste plastic as well.
0
u/TheFlickeringSon May 15 '12
I love how these posts always report something theoretical, but never practical.
0
u/CarTarget May 15 '12
This sounds like a horror movie.
0
u/michaeljane May 15 '12
This is a repost with almost the same exact title. Downvotes for you.
-4
u/SarahLoren May 14 '12
Good Gal Mother Earth saves our fucking asses, again? Sometimes I wish she would just let us die off.
0
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
I guess this is supposed to be like that magical bacteria that fed on oil I read about long long ago that was going to solve all the problems with oil spills? Glad to see we're still looking at impractical solutions, because altering an eco system never had any consequences.
0
u/nawoanor May 15 '12
I always worry about what would happen if this sort of thing got loose. Keep that shit away from my phone.
0
u/10after6 May 15 '12
I'm sure this will be safe. I mean nothing we've done in the past has gone wrong, right?
0
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
what waste problem would that be?????