
Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made [pdf] - luu
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/3/7/e1700782.full.pdf
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ArtWomb
I was literally just thinking about this problem. At some point in the future,
as alternatives such as hemp-based composite bioplastics become available. The
entire environment will have to be "de-polymerized" manually. Rather than
simply releasing an engineered enzyme into the wild and allowing degradation
to occur in situ. What would be the drawback of simply creating a global fund
for actual human cleanup at scale? With some set incentivizing price for
retrieval, say $0.01 per gram?

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adriand
> What would be the drawback of simply creating a global fund for actual human
> cleanup at scale? With some set incentivizing price for retrieval, say $0.01
> per gram?

I'm imagining huge machines trawling the landscape, chewing up beaches and
scouring forest floors, controlled by bots that automatically guide them to
the nearest plastic recycling depot where they disgorge their contents and
then move on. They'll be powered by burning plastic and will thus be self-
sufficient, albeit enveloped in toxic clouds of pollution. Occasionally one
will lose Internet connectivity and rampage through a small village in the
developing country in which it operates (deployment in Western countries will
be prohibited), obliterating shanties and the occasional elderly person, baby,
or otherwise slow-moving human being.

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ripsawridge
"To clean the village we had to destroy it!" he said, wiping his brow. Nods of
agreement and approval all around.

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mrhappyunhappy
You mean “cleanse the village”?

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skookumchuck
Non-degradable plastic should be taxed to the point where alternatives are
preferred for single uses, such as bubble wrap and straws.

60 Minutes last week ran a segment on a biodegradable plastic, but no mention
of whether it was catching on or not.

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CoolGuySteve
How expensive does oil have to get before it becomes economical to dig up
landfill to recover and crack hydrocarbons from old plastic?

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temp231239
Life would end on earth before that happens :(

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temp231239
Food for thought- crude oil extracted from earth is being spread all over the
earth in the form of plastic and air particle, and is the cause of all forms
of pollution that we know of today.

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schoen
_All_ forms? What? What about mining, refining, manufacturing, combustion of
everything other than oil, littering, runoff from landfills, discharge of
sewage?

