this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2024
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I see this every couple years (I think it's the same). The fungus can only degrade very few plastic types, like Styrofoam.
So are we disappointed it's not the perfect solution, so we don't bother?
Sounds like we're on the right track and someone can find a way to make money with this, or decide to dedicate their resources to it for society's benefit.
We don't bother because those few kinds of plastics aren't the ones that are causing most of the polution
If something costs millions and only works in a limited space, at specific conditions, and recycles 0.2% of all plastics, why would anyone want to invest in it?
Because 0.2% of all plastics is still a lot of plastic.
Okay, so go out and pay millions of dollars yourself and do it. If you can't, why do you expect anyone else to do that, with no hope of return, no hope of sustainability and such?
Because they should care about the future of the human race more than their current bank balance.
We're doomed as a species.
Then again - go out, sell your house and do it. It's great to be outraged when "nobody is doing it". Yet everything requires money to do. I have a company producing humanitarian supplies. Do you think I would be able to do it / should I do it for free?
You're preaching from the selfish soapbox of only caring about your own bank account, not humanity's best interests.
Expending my assets to make a difference wouldn't make a dent and I'd be completely left with nothing. Someone with massive wealth can expend 95% of their resources and still live a more comfortable existence than 99% of us.
Why are we protecting the dragons sitting on the piles of gold instead of taking the gold and investing in our species' future prosperity?
We're doomed.
Then again - go sell off your house and do it.
Ah, so it wouldn't make a difference if you sold your house. For me, it would make a difference if someone did that and donated all the money to me. It would let me produce way more humanitarian aid and send it out to people in need. It would let me hire more people, expand the business and ultimately save more lives.
We aren't protecting anyone. You are just saying empty buzzwords like "save the planet". Yet you aren't willing to stand by it yourself, and you imagine some billionaire doing it for you. It costs you nothing to want that from them. So they pay infinitely more for it than you, despite the solution not making sense in any capacity and scale.
So again, why should they invest into a fungus that eats 0.2% of all plastic, that needs a specific temperature, humidity, location etc to work, and can probably make as impactful of a change, as if you sold your house and paid people to handle litter better? It's a definition of wasting millions on nothing. It doesn't make sense to do it even with infinite funding since there are better ways to recycle.
It isn't absolute bullshit, it's in the interest of a country. We have private scrapyards, recyclers and landfills that do that over here and they keep on going. It's simply because this specific idea is so out of place, so hard to implement and just has "techbro" written all over it. It's impractical and useless, yet it sounds cool to people who don't know a thing about recycling.
I think I deleted that message because I was being bullshit. Sorry.
We already have the perfect solution. Stop producing plastic. But we sure as hell are not bothering with that either.
Its no exaggeration to say plastic is essential to modern society
I'm not sure why you are projecting disappointment on others. Best of luck mate
Fantastic. Styrofoam is not recyclable like Polypropylene or even the Polyethylenes. Styrofoam ends up in landfills. I want it in mushrooms.
It’s not the magic bullet but it’s a fucking howitzer. Yas kween.
Styrofoam is technically recyclable, it's just that there are very few facilities that handle it.
You're doing good thing, thank you
Thank you, but the better thing I did was to kick Amazon to the curb and lessened needless purchasing. Thus I have much less packing materials to recycle. That's the real win for me.
Lots of Styrofoam out there we need to get rid of
No my styrofoam monument I was hoping it would last forever
I mean tbh that seems like a pretty good start 🤷🏻♂️ styrofoam is a very common type of plastic produced in huge quantities…