This might be a stupid question but hear me out: If the carbon in plastics became bioavailable, wouldn’t that mean potentionally more CO2 in the atmosphere? Wouldn’t it be preferable for plastics to stay tough to break down? Instead of burning them of throwing them into the ocean, we could deposit them underground - bury them. That way, the carbon we took from the ground as oil would return back to the ground without worsening our climate problem even more.
There’s also a danger that if a microbe that can destroy plastic evolved or was engineered, it might destroy plastic parts we don’t want destroyed in the actual environment.
When trees originally evolved, there was nothing on the planet that could consume them. The result was massive forests that never rotted. In the geological record, this is called the carboniferous period because many of those dead forests were driven underground and became coal beds. The carboniferous period ended when microorganisms evolved a method to rot and consume cellulose. For this reason, many people who think that the coal beds will reestablish themselves are just wrong. The amount of coal that we have on the planet Earth is basically the amount that we’re going to have.
Now the other side of the coin is that plastics don’t actually represent a huge amount of carbon, and they do represent a lot of potentially toxic substances floating around in the environment that could have a longer term impact. If we can biodegrade those toxins, then the environment would be that much healthier in general.
This might be a stupid question but hear me out: If the carbon in plastics became bioavailable, wouldn’t that mean potentionally more CO2 in the atmosphere? Wouldn’t it be preferable for plastics to stay tough to break down? Instead of burning them of throwing them into the ocean, we could deposit them underground - bury them. That way, the carbon we took from the ground as oil would return back to the ground without worsening our climate problem even more.
You’re absolutely correct, it would.
There’s also a danger that if a microbe that can destroy plastic evolved or was engineered, it might destroy plastic parts we don’t want destroyed in the actual environment.
When trees originally evolved, there was nothing on the planet that could consume them. The result was massive forests that never rotted. In the geological record, this is called the carboniferous period because many of those dead forests were driven underground and became coal beds. The carboniferous period ended when microorganisms evolved a method to rot and consume cellulose. For this reason, many people who think that the coal beds will reestablish themselves are just wrong. The amount of coal that we have on the planet Earth is basically the amount that we’re going to have.
Now the other side of the coin is that plastics don’t actually represent a huge amount of carbon, and they do represent a lot of potentially toxic substances floating around in the environment that could have a longer term impact. If we can biodegrade those toxins, then the environment would be that much healthier in general.