Someone needs to figure out how to convert mineral oil into food.
If it could be done, we solve world hunger overnight.
Oddly many countries explicitly have a law that such a thing is forbidden. I wonder it it was preemptively protecting farmers?
manyatoms 2 minutes ago [-]
is there a lot of mineral oil out there? what motivates the suggestion of this particular precursor?
spockz 6 hours ago [-]
Maybe the only thing more worrisome than microplastics everywhere is unstoppable plastics eating organisms everywhere, eating through all plastics everywhere.
ch4s3 5 hours ago [-]
Usually these bioengineered yeasts need pretty specific growth conditions in order to eat in this case ethylene glycol, not raw finished plastic. In this case they say "plastic-derived substrates" which means they're pre-processing the waste plastic.
cortesoft 4 hours ago [-]
Good thing microorganisms are famous for their slow rate of change in dynamic environments…
ch4s3 4 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure what this adds. The yeast here is chomping ethylene glycol for carbon, and tons of soil bacteria can already do that. And I should add that highly specialized industrial/lab yeasts have existed for a long time and aren't prevalent in the environment, they just don't like to grow outside of narrow(ish) conditions. Highly prevalent wild yeasts tend to eat a variety of sugars, not glycol.
4 hours ago [-]
tantalor 2 hours ago [-]
Of course, the lysine contingency.
shevy-java 43 minutes ago [-]
> bioengineered yeasts need pretty specific growth conditions
In a natural environment this will not hold. Organisms are unstable; they change all the time, simpler ones even more so. Mutants with a faster growth rate will, up to a certain maximum, take over from slower growing or growth-deficient mutants. There isn't really a compelling growth advantage for plastic-degrading organisms, which is one reason why plastic stays so long in the environment.
All pre-processing steps further add to the cost, so we will year after year hear about it - and then wonder why nothing happens and plastics keep compounding in the ocean. And this is not new either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Chakrabarty
ryanisnan 5 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of the Taumoeba escaping the Xenonite enclosures.
phoronixrly 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, that was for plot reasons...
24 minutes ago [-]
fc417fc802 4 hours ago [-]
Perhaps soon you'll be needing to apply stains or sealants to your outdoor plastic items. Maybe even purchase treated plastic products that we worry leach toxic chemicals into their surroundings.
4 hours ago [-]
masklinn 4 hours ago [-]
Timescale is the important bit. If organisms degrade plastics in a few hundred years then what plastics are uniquely valuable for will be quite fine indeed.
simmerup 4 hours ago [-]
Why is that worrisome? Might give the fish a chance whose bellies are filling up with plastic rubbish
serf 4 hours ago [-]
for all the reasons in the book/movie/television show 'The Andromeda Strain'.
piloto_ciego 6 hours ago [-]
There’s a fantastically silly but fun book about this the name of which eludes me.
stevekemp 4 hours ago [-]
Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters, a 1971 British sci-fi environmental disaster novel written by medical scientist Kit Pedler and television screenwriter Gerry Davis.
That wasn’t it; I just found it, it’s called Ill Wind by Kevin J Anderson
mocheeze 5 hours ago [-]
Not plastic, but 'Cats Cradle' by Kurt Vonnegut has something kind of like that.
righthand 4 hours ago [-]
Such as in The Andromeda Strain?
weaksauce 4 hours ago [-]
there was a time in history before fungus came along and ate trees so there were just a huge amount of trees around that couldn't decay. (which is why we have coal actually) this could be something akin to that.
patwolf 2 hours ago [-]
I've heard that the prevailing theory now is that it wasn't the lack of fungus that made coal. Instead, the earth was covered in tropical wetlands, and trees couldn't decay in the anoxic water.
nstents 20 minutes ago [-]
It will be interesting to see how much carbon dioxide is also created through this process.
mbil 5 hours ago [-]
If you don't eat your biomass compound goo, you can't have any PlastiYum bacterial sludge
autoexec 2 hours ago [-]
> The researchers took PET plastic, discarded corn plant stalks and leaves, and other biomass and put it through a proprietary process called oxidative hydrothermal dissolution. Created by SIU Carbondale Geology Professor Ken Anderson, this method uses water and oxygen at high temperatures and pressures to break down tough material into microbe-accessible pieces. Then, those pieces are fed to the programmed yeasts, which transform them into a variety of new food ingredients, including proteins, fats and acids. Finally, the researchers add fiber, starch and sweetener to the mix and extrude it through a 3D printer, forming protein-rich cookies dubbed µBites (pronounced "microbites"). [https://phys.org/news/2026-08-yeasts-pet-plastic-crop-protei...]
It kind of sounds like they made food out of corn plant stalks and leaves and "other biomass", added fiber, starch, and sweetener, but then just polluted the product with processed waste plastic as an additive. If this really is just using trash as a filler in actual food that's pretty dystopian. I'm sure companies would happily line up to sell their industrial waste products to food companies as an additive, but I'm not seeing the appeal in this for consumers.
Sha1rholder 20 minutes ago [-]
Vegetables grown in shit, garbage, and pesticides are fine as long as the levels of harmful residues are low enough by the time they reach people's mouths. Not appealing, but also not that "dystopian"
waschl 6 hours ago [-]
Is there any of this ”bacteria converting plastic to fuel/food/neutral stuff“ actually applied anywhere at scale under economically reasonably conditions?
shevy-java 45 minutes ago [-]
This keeps on re-emerging every year.
The primary issue that has consistently been a problem, is the cost.
ninalanyon 6 hours ago [-]
There was a Doomwatch episode on his subject with airliners falling out of the sky bcause all the plastic had been eaten away.
Didn't that happen in Andromeda Strain? The de-polymerized polymer?
thisisauserid 5 hours ago [-]
In 2011 researchers identified a fungus named pestalotiopsis microspora. It gained widespread attention because it can digest polyurethane plastic and survive entirely in anaerobic conditions, making it a prime candidate for deployment at the bottom of landfills.
I for one look forward to serving this underground deity.
metalman 3 hours ago [-]
soilent goo, again!
you, yes you, area "biomass compound", well maybe not quite yet, but soon, as these things go, but most definitly every last putrid smelly horrible thing is a "biomass compound", and when you add in plastic we are talking about most of the stuff found in millions of dumpsters, and most of the stuff actualy in dumps, or sewers.
This then solves the whole issue of what is allowed to go in which can or bin, which is anything you cant get money for or find someone who will hall it away for free.
I am very very sure that volunteers will soon show up wishing to "return to the great nutrient cycle"
but there is nothing to worry about as I am positive that everything will be tested and cynicly proven to be safe for human consumption
hkt 5 hours ago [-]
Honestly at this point I think the way to go may be to stop using plastics where they're not absolutely required, and to subsequently burn what goes into landfill while producing electricity and reclaiming heat. Better that than this.
fc417fc802 4 hours ago [-]
Burn it? With all the talk of carbon capture? Recall that plastic literally consists of a mass of hydrocarbons. Why not bury it?
axus 3 hours ago [-]
I think the legitimate answer was groundwater contamination, but that should be solved for other things we bury. I'm on board for non-biodegradable plastic trash sequestration
hkt 2 hours ago [-]
I'd argue that if we are burning plastics we get to dodge microplastics, and we get a second use of hydrocarbons. Burn enough plastic, maybe we can displace some gas. Optimistic, I realise.
Loughla 3 hours ago [-]
How do you define 'not absolutely required'?
hkt 2 hours ago [-]
Easy cases might be single use plastics outside of a medical environment and anything where there isn't a substitute with adequate properties (I'd ignore economics here and let the market solve)
Ultimately a tricky thing to define though, no argument.
BigTTYGothGF 14 minutes ago [-]
> let the market solve
That's how we got here in the first place.
itsrobreally 5 hours ago [-]
And here I thought we were going to be fed insects when we hit final-stage capitalism
Jaauthor 5 hours ago [-]
you are ... plastic insects.
Rendered at 22:25:36 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
If it could be done, we solve world hunger overnight.
Oddly many countries explicitly have a law that such a thing is forbidden. I wonder it it was preemptively protecting farmers?
In a natural environment this will not hold. Organisms are unstable; they change all the time, simpler ones even more so. Mutants with a faster growth rate will, up to a certain maximum, take over from slower growing or growth-deficient mutants. There isn't really a compelling growth advantage for plastic-degrading organisms, which is one reason why plastic stays so long in the environment.
All pre-processing steps further add to the cost, so we will year after year hear about it - and then wonder why nothing happens and plastics keep compounding in the ocean. And this is not new either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Chakrabarty
No wikipedia page, but goodreads has it here:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99852816-mutant-59
It kind of sounds like they made food out of corn plant stalks and leaves and "other biomass", added fiber, starch, and sweetener, but then just polluted the product with processed waste plastic as an additive. If this really is just using trash as a filler in actual food that's pretty dystopian. I'm sure companies would happily line up to sell their industrial waste products to food companies as an additive, but I'm not seeing the appeal in this for consumers.
The primary issue that has consistently been a problem, is the cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomwatch#Series_One
I for one look forward to serving this underground deity.
you, yes you, area "biomass compound", well maybe not quite yet, but soon, as these things go, but most definitly every last putrid smelly horrible thing is a "biomass compound", and when you add in plastic we are talking about most of the stuff found in millions of dumpsters, and most of the stuff actualy in dumps, or sewers.
This then solves the whole issue of what is allowed to go in which can or bin, which is anything you cant get money for or find someone who will hall it away for free.
I am very very sure that volunteers will soon show up wishing to "return to the great nutrient cycle"
but there is nothing to worry about as I am positive that everything will be tested and cynicly proven to be safe for human consumption
Ultimately a tricky thing to define though, no argument.
That's how we got here in the first place.