Makes me wonder if we're building towards another extinction/oxygen catastrophe type of event. Not one where the microplastics themselves are the primary driver, but because microplastics are not renewable in the environment without humans. With solar energy transitions, greater pollution awareness, and a population that's shrinking or leveling off, what will happen to all of the microorganisms which spent a great deal of energy evolving ways to metabolize plastics that suddenly lose that source of energy? They're suddenly less fit for their niche.
Or in a different area of concern, what happens to the plastic economy when plastics are no longer useful because they'll be decomposed too quickly? Sanitary packaging for medical supplies come to mind.
That seems very far away. My understanding is that these PETases digest plastic VERY slowly and need human engineering efforts to digest it in any appreciable amount of time (hours to days rather than years). And human bioengineering of these enzymes is still not to the point where it's actually usable at industrial scale. The paper just says they've discovered the variants, not "oh no all animal life on earth is now dependent on microplastics" :D
> What happens to the plastic economy when plastics are no longer useful because they'll be decomposed too quickly?
We already use lots of biodegradable things for crucial applications, such as the wood used in framing houses. Just because wood can rot in a damp forest doesn't mean that the wood inside your walls will rot away just because. There are conditions where it can start rotting, and we're aware of those conditions and how to prevent them, at least enough for a house to last for decades.
This feels absolutely insane for today's standards. And not just in the gaming world. Somehow with all the advancement of libraries, frameworks, coding tools, and even AI these days, development speeds seem so much slower and it seems like too much time is spent on eye candy, monetization and dark patterns and too few times on things people actually like to see - that's what made us buy games and software in the old days.
(But also in the gaming world, especially the past few years when almost no game studio develops its own engine, assets don't look more detailed than what was used 3 years ago, stories seem hastily written and it feels like 80% of developer's time is spent on making cosmetic items for purchase which often cost more than the base game price)
Also somehow we spend lots of times researching UX and developing tutorials (remember when software had the "?" button next to the close button and no software "tutorials" were needed?) and yet all the games and software are harder to learn than what we had in the 90s and 00s.