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Scientists Turn Plastic Waste Into Edible Cookies Because That’s the Future We Deserve (futurism.com)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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Are we eating enough plastic already?

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[–] 33 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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.

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  • [–] 2 points 20 hours ago*

    $60 per kilo

    That's not bad for a prototype! With lab-growth meat, the initial cost was $2.3 million / kg. It's come down since then because of process and scale improvements, but when it starts off that high, it's going to be a while for it to become affordable.

    A quick non-AI figure is $0.60 per kilo to recycle plastic... so we just need improvement by a factor of 100 which is quite realistic.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 days ago* (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago* (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago

    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.

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