A ubiquitous plastic and a bacterium walk into a bar...

And no one knows what happens next because no one seems to have thought it through

I am curious to hear your thoughts on this. My main thought is that the devil is always in the detail, and it’s good to watch out. We are stuck with the peasant mode of protecting our health and well-being because the poisoning-based business model is in full swing, while the “checks and balances”—superficial as they were before—are no longer there, so…

So this story got my child-like curiosity.

In the name of poking fingers into the easily marketable unknown, the scientists mixed up a ubiquitous toxic yummy plastic and a bacterium that breaks that plastic down—and came up with a new material, “plastic that digests itself.”

The plastic in question is TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane). If you google it, you will find a truckload of reassurances that it’s super safe. You will learn that it’s so safe and attractive that you’ll almost want to eat it whole. However, multiple rows of raving Google results make me more than a little suspicious. And of course, if a substance is safe in an inert environment, doesn’t mean it can be actually safe in real life, so…

TPU has many applications, including automotive instrument panels, caster wheels, power tools, sporting goods, medical devices, drive belts, footwear, inflatable rafts, fire hoses, and a variety of extruded film, sheet and profile uses. TPU is also a popular material found in flexible outer cases of devices like mobile phones and keyboard protectors. TPU is well known for its applications in wire and cable jacketing, hose and tube, in adhesive and textile coating applications, and as an impact modifier of other polymers. (SOURCE)

Now the bacterium. The bacterium they used is Bacillus subtilis, a microbe that is nearly as ubiquitous in industrial use, generally considered beneficial to human gut but also used in animal feed for weight gain and in bioweapon research.

Here’s what happened to plastic:

To assess the material’s biodegradability, the strips were placed in both microbially active and sterile compost environments. The compost setups were maintained at 37 degrees Celsius with a relative humidity ranging from 44 to 55%. Water and other nutrients in the compost triggered germination of the spores within the plastic strips, which reached 90% degradation within five months.

“What’s remarkable is that our material breaks down even without the presence of additional microbes,” said Pokorski. “Chances are, most of these plastics will likely not end up in microbially rich composting facilities. So this ability to self-degrade in a microbe-free environment makes our technology more versatile.” (SOURCE)

They say that it starts decomposing when “hitting compost” but allegedly, it also decomposes in “sterile,” “microbe-free” compost. Wait, what is sterile compost? Where on Earth, in real life outside of the lab, is there anything sterile?

My inner five-year-old is full of questions. Is that toxic safe and sustainable plastic going to start digesting itself while doing its job as a part of somebody’s shoe? A material used in medical device? How good is it to insert a bacteria-laden material into the body where insertion would bypass the natural immune response? What are the products of its breakdown, and how toxic would they be once they get into soil or leak into groundwater? And how long until the scientists announce that a totally unpredictable mutant version of this bacterium that is now in every piece of plastic is causing a global pandemic, and the plastic gloves are no rescue, not to mention the plastic bag used by Homer Simpson to “isolate” the potentially contagious cat on Marge’s lap? I am being facetious but hey, I am thinking long-term here…

Here is a report on the same scientific development from Ecowatch:

A team led by researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a type of biodegradable plastic that can begin digesting itself when it makes contact with soil or compost. 

The soft plastic material is a type of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), commonly found in memory foam products and soft products like cushions, floormats and even shoes. The updated TPU that researchers created includes spores of Bacillus subtilis. The bacteria remains dormant in the plastic until it reaches compost, where it interacts with nutrients and begins to break down the plastic.

“It’s an inherent property of these bacteria,” Jon Pokorski, co-author of the study and a nanoengineering professor at Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, said in a statement. “We took a few strains and evaluated their ability to use TPUs as a sole carbon source, then picked the one that grew the best.”

The research team combined the bacteria and the TPU in a plastic extruder, where the materials were melted and mixed together to create the pieces of biodegradable plastic.

Then, researchers tested the plastic by placing strips of it in compost. The team set up two compost areas with the same temperature, 37 degrees Celsius, and similar humidity levels of 44% to 55%. One area was sterile while the other was microbially active. 

The results showed that the plastic reached over 90% biodegradation in a 5-month timeframe in both compost types. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

“What’s remarkable is that our material breaks down even without the presence of additional microbes,” Pokorski said. “Chances are, most of these plastics will likely not end up in microbially rich composting facilities. So this ability to self-degrade in a microbe-free environment makes our technology more versatile.”

By the way, I am not saying that we don’t have a plastic problem, we do have a plastic problem, a very big plastic problem, in fact, and I am very much in favor of degradable materials…. it’s just that I have zero trust for the establishment things that are marketed as sustainable because without the tower we are in in wobbly, and I am suspicious of wobbly towers.

Thoughts?

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