Link: https://futurism.com/future-society/plastic-waste-edible-cookies

Are we eating enough plastic already?

They haven’t capitalized on feeding us our own shit… until now!

They haven’t actually eaten one of their µBites yet

Wait they haven’t even tasted it? If I was a scientist turning plastic into food I would be at least licking it.

Probably concerned about worst case scenarios. This is a bioengineered yeast that eats PET. What if it populates your gut and fucks up your gut fauna and hurts you?

What if you shit it out and it gets into some waste area with lots of plastic and starts multiplying uncontrollably?

What if it evolved to eat other plastic and now all our current plastic starts literally molding?

There's a lot of weird shit that you can be concerned about. Might be low risk but low risk of extreme new scenario.

Wait... that's could have been a NileRed video!

Those are mental images that I didn't want

It's possible they did taste it but can't say it because they didn't get permissions to do it.

This is basically the plot of the the body horror movie "Crimes of the Future" where humans modify themselves to be able to eat the "new food" that is readily available, plastic waste. It is not meant to be hopeful.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14549466/

Sounds great! The world will recover, without the scourge of plastics!

Ice-9 but for plastic!

I thought that was about a subset of people who had mutated to digest plastic, not that they modified themselves to do so.

The whole opening scene has a small child too young for surgery, just going ham on his trash can.

Can’t be any worse than fast food!

I didn't want to give away everything but yes, the other plastic eaters had modified themselves and somehow a surgical modification changed a live birth to be able to be the first human to be able to eat plastic. Hence the kid.

"We produce 400 million tons a year of plastic waste. You’re not going to turn it all into cookies."

That's quitter talk. Have you seen the shit Americans eat? We could do 400 million tons of cookies and a large diet coke without flinching.

Yeah, unintended consequences can be devastating.

Acceptable damage.

Has anyone read Diamond Age? I'd suggest you give it a try, even with the weird Stephenson jumps near the end, it explores molecular level production of products, including food.

I feel this work is a huge deal for NASA and other space flight tech dev. Instead of trying to pack a ship with cookies, pack it with plastic and convert as needed.

Before the yeast can start feasting, the PET plastics are subjected to a process called oxidative hydrothermal dissolution to break them down into smaller bits that the microbes can digest.

Sensationalism aside, this could actually be a big deal. We use a lot of PET (polyethylene). Plastic drink bottles, plastic bags, plastic wrap, tape, fabrics, even some car parts. PET is a huge market segment of consumer products that are difficult to replace with environmentally friendly alternatives.

If we can boil it and then feed it to a vat of yeast to break down, that would be fantastic. Even better, it could remove some of the difficulty of plastic sorting which is a major part of the recycling problem. Basically, if you dump some plastic into the vat that the yeast can't eat, well it just won't eat it, so just sift it out of the vat later for a different disposal process, no big deal.

Even if humans can't directly consume the byproduct, I'm sure we can use it for something else.

My biggest question is how long this takes, which they don't address in the article. How long do you have to boil the material (how much energy, how much water, how much oxygen, how big a facility to process X volume of waste), and how long does it take the yeast to break it down? If it can be done in hours or days that's well worth spending some resources to build a processing center. If it takes months or years it will require more planning and analysis.

This should be the diet of oil oligarchs and politicians who continue to suppress efforts to reduce fossil fuel use

What if it evolved to eat other plastic and now all our current plastic starts literally molding?

Side plot point in Niven's Ringworld/Protector series, only with superconductors.

“We produce 400 million tons a year of plastic waste. You’re not going to turn it all into cookies,”

So they'll also make it into hamburgers and hotdogs??

It is a wonderful stealth sequel to Snow Crash as well. Good callout!

Thanks for being the only useful comment here

My biggest question is how long this takes, which they don't address in the article. How long do you have to boil the material (how much energy, how much water, how much oxygen, how big a facility to process X volume of waste), and how long does it take the yeast to break it down? If it can be done in hours or days that's well worth spending some resources to build a processing center. If it takes months or years it will require more planning and analysis.

They don't put in a direct answer, but there is an indirect one: $60 per kilo. That needs to come down A LOT before there is a real future for this. I heard of projects that try and turn plastics into fuels. Sooner or later somebody will figure it out.

Yes, I'm assuming that this is being done in a lab environment without purpose-built equipment, and also that developing the specialized yeast strain was part of the cost.

Assuming that the genetic change is stable and that the yeast is self-propagating like normal yeast, then engineering the rest of it into an assembly line shouldn't be too difficult and should bring the cost down by orders of magnitude.

Plus, if we can turn the output hydrocarbons into a viable market product then the recycler can offset the operating cost, which would make this even more interesting. Right now plastic recycling is just losses.

should bring the cost down by orders of magnitude.

Sure is what I hope for.

I do remember it is an awesome book, but it's been probably 20 years since I read it

oh, microbites. microbe-bites

Bingo. They 100% ate it, but the university lawyers don’t want to be liable for poisoning a bunch of grad students.

So everyone’s going to pretend the students didn’t eat the plastic cookies.

Niche reference but I'm here for it

I’d absolutely eat plastic cookies if they have enough fiber

Introducing picoplastics to a cookie near you (hopefully not)

And also in The Andromeda Strain.

Get NileBlue on the case!

It'll end up being the diet of everyone but them.

Don't we eat enough plastic already?

Aren’t twinkies basically plastic?

Assuming that the genetic change is stable and that the yeast is self-propagating like normal yeast, then…

…we will have to stop using so much plastic, because it won’t be reliable shelf stable packaging one the yeast that eats it is loose.

Aren’t they just hydrocarbons at some point?

Like burnt toast?

Burnt toast doesn't accumulate in the body

Are we sure about that? Hasn’t charred food been added to the probable carcinogen list sort of recently?

Yeah, but it can be degraded and cleared

First it was bugs as protein .

Then it was poo burgers .

Now it's trash cookies.

What's next?

The yeast breaks down the components of plastic compounds and agricultural byproducts like discarded plant stalks into proteins, fats, acids, and flavorings that we can eat.

While this could be good, I think about this much older article that talks about somewhat similar things, specifically

turkey offal, tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores

but they ended up only doing (what I remember being) the turkey offal. The article mentioned here says

plastic compounds and agricultural byproducts like discarded plant stalks into proteins, fats, acids, and flavorings

and while it has been 20+ years, my concern is that it will end up doing much less than promised. But I can hope for more.

Possibly, but:

Before the yeast can start feasting, the PET plastics are subjected to a process called oxidative hydrothermal dissolution to break them down into smaller bits that the microbes can digest.

"Oxidative hydrothermal dissolution" - basically they boil the plastic and oxidize it, I think at the same time. Maybe hydrogen peroxide + water? Essentially this is kind of an accelerated aging.

Anyway, the yeast can't eat the plastic without some processing first, which is probably good because it means existing plastic packages won't just start falling apart. On the other hand if this does get loose, it might be able to eat any PET litter that has started breaking down in the environment due to exposure to sun, rain, ocean water, etc. The absolute easiest waste for this to eat would be any PET that has broken down into microplastic particles and ended up in soil or water, which would be kind of an ideal situation.

From the sounds of it, some kind of genetic treatment to turn everyone into raccoons?

So that's why he cut off and took the roadkill penis....

Polyethylene Terephthalate and Polyethylene are not the same.

Evolution finds a way.

But seriously I thought the article implied the oxidation process just made the particle smaller so they’d have more surface area and get consumed quicker. Even if it’s slow, won’t the yeast that have a taste for PET still want to grow on it, like they do with bread.