So do you think enzymes like this are the key to solving our plastic problem? Get Surfshark VPN at surfshark.deals/undecided - Enter promo code UNDECIDED for 83% off and 3 extra months for FREE! If you liked this video, check out Is Aquaponics the Future of Agriculture? ukposts.info/have/v-deo/bWmcn2qGoYB0y2g.html

I’m currently commercializing a technology out of MIT where we are able to upcycle any type of PET & Polyester plastic waste to virgin grade quality PET. We are able to remove colors and other impurities in the process, and we can do this at an energy intensity of about 80% less compared to traditional means of plastic production. After seeing the last few videos you have made on plastic, I now have a new goal where I hope this venture I’m working on makes it to one your videos! Thanks for all you have done informing the world of the struggles of plastic recycling!

Scene two: We create a strain of bacteria that thrives on plastics, which then spreads, causing widespread catastrophic damage to our homes, vehicles, electronics, etc. (I am only half-joking.)

A fairly recent (2020+ I believe) study was looking for clean blood samples for a baseline, or control. They tested blood samples in the US, and found them contaminated with microplastics. Then they tested in the EU, China, and kept trying with smaller and smaller populations. *_ALL_* of the samples contained microplastics. They finally found a clean sample - from US military blood samples taken before plastics were invented. If I can find the author again I'll update this.

I would like to have seen a discussion of what is, exactly, the byproduct of this process, and have there been any studies of what happens when plants are grown in it. In other other words, are we ending up with something that’s beneficial, or just something that will, like the plastic, need to be disposed of?

You make a really good point at the end: algae and mycelium can replace plastic, we can't just focus our efforts on ways to break it down, and certainly not just continuing to make more plastic packaging from the current slew of waste we already created

Matt, I'm a little upset that the video title isn't 'Dew worms have a future in plastic recycling?'

Matt…you truly have a way with words,”have our plastics and eat them too”! The best words: “reduce my dependence on UKposts “. Brilliant! Love the topic, garbage has always bothered me.

I was always worried when my superworms ate the Styrofoam and bags, never thought they were actually digesting it, thought it was just boring through and making micro plastics. This is neat

I know I'm eager for the PLA enzyme to hit the open market. Being able to safely break down my 3d prints will be a huge help. The pile of shame could really use a helping cilia. xD

I'm excited about enzymes that can break down our existing plastic waste but the future needs to not involve the plastics we're using. I firmly believe that industrially compostable is functionally useless because it relies too much on the plastic finding its way into the right place.

You should look into an Australian company kelpie, they make “plastic” pellets that work in traditional plastic machines out of kelp. Best thing is they naturally degrade so if they end up in the sea no issues. Made fully out of kelp, very cool stuff.

Thanks for all that detail research on a big issue. Most impressive to me is the idea of being able to create a decent percentage of virgin material from this process. Issues at hand are of scale and any long term repercussions from the enzymes/worms/bacteria, etc. to the ecosystem and species health. It's a great start, imho. Hopefully something can get done before droughts, hurricanes, floods, fires, tornadoes and atmospheric rivers recycle it all back anyway in our own Hearse Song with enthalpic entropy. ;-P

Way back in 1995 I got involved with a project to recycle HDPE into plastic pallets. While we were able to complete all the test equipment and even scale the first extruder to make the pallets we could not find a end customer for the pallets. All do to government regulations...

Just because we think we have some solutions doesn't mean we can now ignore the huge problem we have with plastics.

I read a science fiction book back in the 1970s that predicted the discovery of an enzyme or bacteria of sorts that ate waste plastics. The problem was when the waste plastic supply was exhausted the enzymes went wild and started eating everything, everywhere, that was made of plastic. Turns out the enzymes became great hunters I sure wish I could remember the name of that book.

"How do we clean up our mess?" Don't let things get messed up in the first place, right? But that isn't PROFITABLE...... There you have it.

It really is sad how much plastic waste we go through, we need to change our ways.

I'm hoping that these work out well. I can envision a day when enzymes and other catalysts are used to "farm" old waste dumps for materials; imagine turning waste mountains back to mole hills, and maybe one day being able to use said land for food production again. From a far more practical standpoint, being able to turn these materials back into resources that can be sold to factories for production of new materials will drastically increase recycling.

As somebody who got a 3D printer for Christmas, this has been a topic of concern for me. Being able to compost PLA in a residential compost pile would be huge, as PLA is the top type of plastic used by 3D printing. Although "Evanesto" would have to endure temperatures of around 200°C for a short period of time, as that's the temperature 3D printing generally uses. Perhaps the emzyme can be made available separately if it can't be made compatible with 3D printing. I'm also wondering if the processes compatible with PET would also work with PETG - which is PET with a glycol modifier. Which is also a plastic commonly used in 3D printing. Would also like to know if there has been any progress made with ABS, PTU, and other materials used in 3D printing.

I have a Master's in Physical Chemistry and I found this video encouraging, especially that plastics may be made to biodegrade better. That was the take-home message I got. Keep on making these videos!

Technology that is underutilized and poorly developed, but has high chance of working is Plasma gasification - to remove the plastic permanently from the environment, get useful byproducts and recover energy, btnit has to be combined with a wholesale move to algae, mycelium and less packaging overall.

We will have to keep our houses very clean or else plastic containers might just fall apart before we have consumed their contents!

Plastics can be melted, filtered, turned into Diesel fuel. It’s crude diesel, but is already being done by lots of people who live off grid; they use it for generators and lawnmowers. It’s not expensive to do at all.

Thanks for the post, very interesting stuff and this could be the breakthrough we need to deal with existing plastics to an extent but even more for the future if we modify our plastics.

The trouble is, a lot of the reason why we prize plastics is for their inertness, that they don't break down and can seal food to keep it safe to consume for longer. And I think instead of just referring to "plastics" we should be differentiating disposable items from ones designed to last. Like you don't want the handle of your power tools, or an electrical plug from starting to break down over time. We want them to last for as long as possible to avoid having to replace them in the first place.

These breakthroughs seem promising. I'm hopeful that we can overcome the economic barrier to proper sustainable plastic. Plastic is so useful, which is why it is so ubiquitous, so it would be great if we can keep using it without destroying the environment.

We make synthetic rubber sheets from discarded single use plastic bags, shopping bags etc. More than two metric ton of plastic bags are recycled everyday in our factory for rubber sheets, which later used as raw materials for local footwear business. Our plant is located in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

I get that the enzymes need specific conditions to do their job, but what still concerns me is the impact of those enzymes on the environment itself. So for that reason I would prefer the development of eco friendly substitutes for plastic.

The 3d printing community would love all the free filament if it was affordable to get the equipment to process

I think any living thing feeding off of plastic is scary. There is so much “food” for them. 😅 I’m ok with the enzymes :D

Matt gives me great hope for the future. Not easy to convince me, but his videos about better car batteries, various grid scale batteries, and things like this. I have found the enzyme based drain cleaners better than the old standard lye based one. The ingredient list is a long list of "ases."

Nice job keeping your presentation style plastic and not recycling the same formula over and over again 😊 I like how you had some fun making this one ("it's super bug"), keep it up!

I mean if the enzymes exist, but they're more expensive than creating new plastics, it's the government's job to fix it with a "new plastics" tax or something, because if it isn't commercially viable, they won't switch.

promising as it all sounds, & as excited as I am for recycling stepping up. Maybe in the meantime, we should still work on ways to reduce how much plastic we dispose of, or at least find ways to pick back as much of the already disposed of plastic so it can be recycled later, just to make sure

so many details i want to know. how pricy / difficult to produce the enzyme, how many time it can be reused (i'ts a catalyst after all), how can you extract all the product in industrial scale, how pricy the whole process is, etc etc. But for now, it's nice to see that in 10000 yrs, future human(?) will not find a thick layer of plastic in the soil and wondering how it ends up there

I recall years ago that in Japan they were doing something very similar. Not necessarily plastic bottles but some source of waste.

Awesome... thanks for sharing Matt.. Agriculture and soil microbes (from worms too) makes the world go round... important stuff 👍

Would really appreciate an explanation of how/why these digesters would not become a problem. That is, why wouldnt they start digesting plastics we are still using, in cars, appliances, food storage etc. Is it the high temperatures needed? But cars run hot. Very interested in the answer, thanks.

Matt, I enjoy your play on words reporting, and find you such an easily digestable "Fun-Guy" to watch at work !

When I lived in Tennessee they had a plastic recycle program for type one and two at least. I usually had a 40lb dog food bag each month when I went to what they called a convenience station. They also had recycle bins for clear and colored glass, cardboard, appliance and aluminum. Nothing like that here in Arkansas

The one thing that concerns me about this is what happens when they manage to create a bunch of super bugs, and then they get loose and start going after plastics we don't want them to eat? Plastics are in just about everything everywhere. Just like in medicine, this could trade off one problem for another in the long run. Science is infamous for let's fix it now and let someone else deal with the consequences later.

5:25 this was very well made and funny, I hope to see more moments like this, been watching every one of your videos for a while now

Let's create things that not only eat plastic but are capable of self replication because as we all know things never escape labs or leak out of factory facilities....

Good on you Mat for bringing the enzymatic breakdown of non natural plastics ..perhaps if we had a law that forbid products like plastic from being manufactured in the first place ..because they “can’t be gotten rid of” ..we mightn’t be in this trouble with plastic garbage ..either the huge Pacific plastic patch, or the increasingly worrying micro fibre volumes present in washing machine water ..which carry’s it to water purifying plants ..sewerage farms or systems ..even household dust and the air we breathe is now laced with micro samples of what we wear ,sit on or sleep under ..Don’t make something you can’t get rid of..as a new law would serve to save us from unintended problems ..like those we are dealing with now ,with products made decades ,years ago and more recently ..it’s huge industry

Sounds like great news to me! It's a great feature, I'll definitely buy products that have compostable packaging if I have the option!

The idea of single-use plastic is an all-around bad idea. Recycling no matter how efficient will never 100% and it uses energy that we really cannot afford. I am old enough to remember a day when most containers were either wax-paper or glass. To be sure we live in a plastic age and there are some solutions that should remain, but recycling is a practice from the 20th century that we need to drop.

An immediate actoin would be to boycott plastic packaged products. I made a switch to laundry detergent strips packaged in a paper box. It's easier to store & transport than bulky,leaking plastic bottles. There's a potential market for products that are plastic free. Powdered milk if properly reconstituted and stored in glass bottle or pitcher is identical to milk in plastic containers. If you think about mainly unhealthy processed foods are packaged in plastics. Fresh fruits and vegetables have their own biodegradable/ compostable packaging. If you make it we will buy.

I have been waiting for a video to use this quote!! "Life, Ugh, Finds a way" ~ Dr. Ian Malcom (Jurassic Park)

if the enzyme is in the plastic wont that lead to the plastic braking down while in storage and would have you consume more micro plastics?

This is fantastic news! I'm a volunteer who cleans up lakes and rivers in my hometown. There are really lots of plastics there!

Matt, I'd love to see you do a segment on PHA plastics (polyhydroxylalkanoates). Seems like these may have a real chance as they are shelf-stable but degrade in soil or marine environment with ambient bacteria and temperatures. Sounds almost to good to be true! Would love to see your thoughtful analysis on this one.

Nice info, I think I want to grow earthworms and go fishing now.

I mean worms work for free seems really great if producing more worms are easy

Some of my peers did this with one of the new PET enzyme mutants. They were the first in the world to test it except their results were on the order of months to digest anything significant. Whatever the new research is doing, they’re probably s using a better mutant enzyme and are really blending it up small.

Matt . Your channel is going from strength to strength . Well done. Any videos on chatgbt and this technology and how it might effect other industries. My thinking is it will be possible to “ create a best friend “

Our economic system in a nutshell: All of humanity is going to die but fixing it would hurt some billionaires short term profits so our amazingly democratic government are like, naww lets now do the things that are good for literally everyone and everything. It is actually absurd and amazing how dumb society can be.

Great video. Will be forwarding to a friend of mine that works for a large Japanese plastics manufacturer; hopeful they are engaged in the research.

this is the sort of thing that actually makes me excited to get old. all this technology and science, i wanna see where it ends and how itll impact us.

It's a really compelling set of discoveries, but even if the bottles etc. are made of fully recycled plastics, microplastics can still be shed and accumulate in the various places that they are already. Unsure how to fix some dependencies on plastics (single-use lab consumables are basically essential), but overall reducing the plastic usage is probably going to be a big part of how we address this environmental and health challenge.

Thank You for this, I really needed. I recycle but in the back of my head, I always wonder if I am making an impact and if there ever will be improvements to current processes.

The translucent plastic shopping bags are polypropylene (PP) . Clear plastic bags are LDPE The foam food trays are expanded PE.

Well there goes the actively used household plastics like PEX plumbing (small leaks) , sandwich bags, etc because these microbes will eventually be everywhere eating all plastics waste or not

Another fantastic video thanks so much! Lots of exciting future tech solutions - it seems like we've been talking about it now for years but without regulation or penalties on current unsustainable plastic overuse practices we are still in a dire situation with plastic pollution. I'm in Japan and the situation seems to be getting worse with 99% of all vending machine drinks available only in PET bottles which are mostly incinerated in Japan but the public level of awareness is low, most people think it's recycled like aluminum and glass 😅 Good to see shift in more ethical brands like MUJI now having water refill stations in all stores (rare in Japan) and selling drinks only in aluminum cans, glass or paper. Unfortunately, CocaCola & the other major beverage companies not at all motivated to change.

Thing is you still have to get the plastics out of your rubbish. In Sydney we have 3 bins - Yellow (recyclable plastics, glass, aluminium, and paper), Green (garden waste) and Red (generic household waste and non-recyclable waste.) What if we could keep the Yellow bin for glass, aluminium and paper recycling - but move ALL the plastics into the RED bin in which everything was gasified? Gasifiers are expensive because of energy costs - but that's where Super-power comes in. Have you heard of SUPER-POWER? It’s all about solving the wind and solar power problem of power output dropping off in winter. We used to wonder how we were going to store power for a few months. But now that renewables are so cheap, instead of trying to store power for winter, the engineers plan to build extra renewables. If winter cuts output in half, then double the wind and solar! This simple concept can get the country through winter. Wind and solar are now so cheap, this trick is still cheaper than coal. And that’s without counting the health and climate costs of coal so it’s actually MUCH cheaper! But now that we’ve solved winter, we have another problem. What are we going to do with all the EXCESS power the other 10 months of the year? We could just turn those farms off to stop them frying the grid - but that seems wasteful. Yet all today’s regular power demands have been met. What are we going to do with truly huge excess super-cheap power? We can put this to any EXTRA task - as as long as we can shut down this service for winter. There are many extra jobs I can think of. Splitting water to make vast amounts of hydrogen for synthetic fuel for airlines. We can also use hydrogen to replace coking coal to make steel. We can use that power to run desal to fill fresh water reservoirs. Then there’s the miraculous technology of the Gasifier. These things rip municipal waste into molecules - with synthetic gas that shoots off the top to go to the petro-chemical and plastics industry - and lava like slag that can be turned into pavers, bricks, or rock-wool for insulation or fibreglass. The punchline? Gasifiers can turn household rubbish into half the stuff to build the next house! eclipsenow.wordpress.com/gasification/ Renewables are now so cheap that solving the ‘problem’ of winter becomes an opportunity to solve many other high-energy challenges we would not have been able to afford. No wonder Tony Seba calls it ‘Super-Power’. ukposts.info/have/v-deo/nqOfn4aDopxiwqM.html

As with many problems, using enzymes to recycle plastic is just one of the components of a greener plastic industry. I think that, like you said in the video, one key component is our plastic-manufacturing habits. Now this whole issue (enzyme degradation+manufacturing plastics that are easily de-gradated by enzymes) also has the potential to make plastic containers more fragile and prone to contamination. Like all complicated matters, this issue requires achieving a good balance between all the processes AND make it economically viable to boot.

I was in the high-density polyethylene film industry for 15 years starting in 89. If we had used a cornstarch method of biodegradable Plastics we would not have this problem. The petrochemical companies lobbied to have that stuff deemed inferior

Plastics really need to be limited exclusively to vital medical needs and chemical research. Maybe adding aerospace and military uses that can't be duplicated with other technologies. Consumer and industrial plastics need to be completely outlawed.

The thing is that we only use plastic for packaging because it doesn't degrade easily, if we create bacteria that can degrade plastics in mere hours with no special conditions, there will be no point in using plastic in packaging in the first place.

I'd be interested to know how these do in the wild. Pour them over landfills. Test them in conditions that mimic the oceanic garbage patch. See what effects they have on items we've already produced.

I used to watch your videos as they came live but UKposts decided to stop recomending your channel to me. Today I just felt saudade from your videos and am watching like 7 videos at once. Thanks, UKposts.

There's also a way to turn it into graphene, carbon nanotubes, activated carbon, etc as a quite cheap and interesting way to recycle almost all plastics.

So long as it's not used to maintain business as usual, it should be fine. But as you said, it'd be better to move along to something better. Plastics have their place, and it's not where we mostly use it. The main issue will be getting alternatives to emit less co2

Many plastics are used in construction and infrastructue projects because of their resistance to corrosion. A lot of PE and PVC is used in water mains and sewer systems. Plastic wraps and insulations are used in a lot of our homes and buildings. Is it a legitimate concern moving forward that these enzymes could attack our infrastructure?

I think the worm idea is fascinating, and I'm all for "all hands on deck" solutions to the plastic crisis, but it's not truly "recycling" because the plastic is just fed to worms... and then what? So much of the plastic pollution crisis is a matter of production, and while this worm idea does present an alternative way to dispose of plastic, it's not clear to me that it is scalable. If anything, when plastic is fed to worms (or burned or landfilled), it signals to the market that there's a demand for more plastics. In contrast, traditional recycling puts recycled plastics back into the supply chain and (in theory) displaces the need to produce virgin plastics. Virgin plastics are cheap because the raw material for plastics, oil and gas, have been massively subsidized by the federal government for decades. There's also the problem of collections. People love to cite that only 9% of all plastics ever made have been recycled but don't acknowledge that recycling collection infrastructure is vastly underdeveloped. What good are newer recycling technologies if plastics struggle to be conveniently captured for recycling? Many (perhaps most) types of plastics, such as the dashboard in your car, are not even designed to be recycled. EPR policies (Extended Producer Responsibility) will help with funding collection systems and incentivizing less plastic overall with more recyclable plastics. The solution to prevent more plastic pollution is to reduce production.

Matt - good piece. Some discussion of products of microbes' digestion of plastic (likely CO2, CO, CH4 and other hydrocarbons) would be worthwhile. If you deploy this tech at scale, how do you process the waste products and would these be considered "semi green" because you are displacing the consumption of virgin petroleum products? And, how to pay for this (Maybe beyond your scope, but interesting)?

Next in the news: Strange new bacteria is eating away people's things made of plastic. "I was watching TV when it just collapsed into a heap of electronic parts and half disintegrated plastic" said Joe Smith from California. People's cars, toys, cellphones, everything is just falling apart as people watch.

You're always so positive without boarding the hype train and your research is top-notch. Keep rockin'

You got me with that “must’ve been too green” pun, bravo 👏

Also some interesting work going on in flash production of Graphene from plastic

This is a great video / article! Looking forward to next steps and those companies that take the risks to commercialize this process. They WILL make $$ and be the leader in setting the example - ppl will follow.

Missed opportunity for American Beauty reference with floating plastic bag. But it’s great to see this moving forward. It’s going to take a combination of emerging alternative materials replacing plastics and creating recycling/upcycling processes.

On balance, I wish this video focused more on the lifecycle impact of plastic. Since virgin plastic is currently made from fossil fuels, we seem to be left with only bad options for disposing of it - let it break down naturally (our original approach, resulting in microplastics everywhere), accelerate a complete breakdown into CO2 which is effectively adding CO2 to the atmosphere as if we were burning fossil fuels, or accelerate the partial breakdown so it can be made into more plastics, which at the end of their life will pose the same problem of disposal options (what you discussed here). While it sounds promising that PETase could reduce the demand for new fossil fuel extraction to make more plastic, it sounds like its actual potential to turn plastic into a “green” material depends heavily on changing the source of our virgin plastics away from fossil fuel. I wish you’d covered this more heavily in the video - similar to how burning wood is considered “carbon neutral” because it relies entirely on recently sequestered carbon, sourcing plastics from recently sequestered carbon instead of fossil fuels would mean that research on accelerating plastic decomposition wouldn’t simply be contributing to global warming under the guise of being “green”.

Enzymes can be expensive to produce. The market for recycling generally won't support an expensive input. So we have to think of the entire system in order to come up with a scalable method for eliminating and/or sustainably using plastics.

There is a process already being used to degrade plastic in landfill sites. The company is based in the USA. The process, sheet of '-ve' plastic (to degrade the plastic)land fill to 1 meter, insert extraction pipes and cover with another sheet. This process continued until the site is capped. Residues = methane from biodegrading plastic and other contents. The Methane is piped to an onsite generator with site working life of around 10 years. After 10yrs the remaining site is degraded by 90% can have the metals remaining recovered and the landfill site can be reinstated. There are working sites in the UK, USA, Canada and Europe that I am aware of.

Please make a short of this video listing the manufacturers that plan to use biodegradable plastics.

Excellent coverage of a corner of human industry that is cause for optimism based on faith in technology. You hinted at an alternative perspective to one of technological solutionism, but your focus is on inventing our way out of a problem. That's OK, that's why I like this content. But the social and political side is equally important, IMO. I'm reminded of a line from the movie, The Graduate: "One word: Plastics." There it was broad philosophical commentary, but perhaps in hindsight that commentary/scene was not only critical of the aesthetic, but indeed, the vital parts of our civilization. Plastic is great, and I wouldn't want to live without it or some equivalents. But I believe the most important insight is that there is no invention or process or societal change that does not carry the unintended consequences, or environmental costs externalized by those driving the process - foreseen or not. What process doesn't have byproducts? is it OK to engineer organisms to ingest our plastic waste? Are the outputs really benign? Have we really considered the long-term implications with sufficient scrutiny and clarity? We vertainly were less aware of the plastic problem in 1967. Would it not be hubris to not be extremely cautious?

I heard the United States had previously been shipping most of our recyclables to China and I later heard that many of the ships containing those recyclables would sail into the middle of the ocean and dump the materials out there. If that is true, then that is one of the major sources for all of the plastic garbage floating around in the oceans. Either way, how do we get rid of so much plastic waste? I heard one scientist suggest that burning plastic to convert it into energy would be the likely best use for plastic waste, so long as you put scrubbers on the smoke stacks coming out of the incinerators. Apparently, modern scrubbers are very good and the burn residue would be a fraction of the volume of the actual plastic being burned, plus doing so would get the waste out of the oceans and landfills. I don't know what the solution is, but short of a revolution in material sciences, it is said that plastics are not going to go away as we depend on them too much and getting rid of them would force us to go back to old ways which pollute the environment even more. I hope scientists can find a great solution soon.

Depends on the plastic. Many are excellent to reform into filament which can be repurposed in 3D printing of needed objects. Others can be broken down as fuel, or reformed into a raw plastic again. Enzymes. Are safe to play with? Building blocks of life. Are these toyed with in biolabs with little scrutiny too?

The Great Pacific Garbage patch has also been a source of organisms capable of degrading plastics. If a similar approach was used to find enzymes to degrade cellulose (for example from bacteria in the stomach of thermites) sugar could be produced industrially from waste agricultural products such as sawdust, cut grass from city parks or coffee grinds & waste tea leaves.

I was in eighth grade in 1968. My friend made cookies from algae. What I want to say is, if research succeeds in decomposing plastics. Maybe we could even eat the decomposed plastic leavings. Like "Willie Wonka"; ...."you can even eat the dishes!"😊

Matt, absolutely love the content of your channel and the thorough topical reviews in each video. I’d love it even more if you slowed down a bit as having to stop and rewind the video several times to follow along new and complex technical information makes for a really ineffective and annoying viewing experience. Still, I keep coming back for the excellent content!

Key words in this, “they patented the technology” meaning they will calculate the maximum profits they can make out of this which always make throwing in the trash the go to method when recycling is expensive due to being a for profit business. As long as oil is cheap, new plastic is going to be cheaper than the costs necessary to overcome the patent holders profits.

The biggest problem we have with plastics (as well as many other current crises) is greed (especially on the industrial side) company's that make plastics honestly do not want to change any part of there processes unless they can save money to turn over to there stockholders. yes this is a hopeful partial solution to fix some of the issues we have out there, but until we can adjust the greed of the top 10% and especially the top 1%. companies who make damaging products to the environment and ourselves. I love your work and things like this prove that the world will evolve to fix the problems we create . . . but we may not survive until the world fixes our problems. I love your work and I am happy that there is so much work going into the problems that have been made by industrial greed. I am always annoyed when companies patent a process that is nature

Very interesting video, any thoughts on this with the vast usage of both PVC and PEX piping for utilities today, from electrical wire jacketing, both supply and waste water piping and even gas supply piping??

I would love to know more about what the end products are that the worms poop out? It’s important to make sure we also understand what they are turning the plastic into.

How do we reduce the #1 use of plastic: Medical Waste (sturdy single use sterile). Much cannot use compostable plastics (think: IV bags, tubing, surgical supplies, PPE). What solutions are there to replacing plastics that require longevity+tensile strength?

So one of the things that I've wondered about with these plastic eating germs... Does there exist the risk of like... diseased plastics? Are we moving toward a future where I have to get a new tv because it's case was eaten through by a bunch of bacteria, and distribution centers have to keep their warehouses below a certain temperature so that they don't get an e plasti outbreak? I'm guessing it's not very likely, since nobody seems concerned enough about it to even mention that we don't need to be concerned about it.

If plastics are broken down through natural means, won’t it lose it efficacy? It is the very resilient, it’s ability to not brake down that makes it so useful. I could imagine a naturally occurring enzyme in a supermarket causing all the pop bottles to start leaking or the seats in my care to fall apart. I dislike plastic in most forms, but it is truly ubiquitous. The effect of a naturally occurring process for decomposition, if it got out in the world could be interesting to say the least

I just had a who sci-fi suspense movie pop into my head. A modified enzyme that eats all kinds of plastics but it gets loose and spreads all over, all plastics on the earth are in real danger of being rapidly eaten by the new enzyme. Insulation for wires, parts of cell phones, medical equipment and more starts to dissolve and the world starts to panic.