There's some beauty on it. Nature incorporates our garbage, and it becomes part of nature.
It might kill us, but then new creatures will evolve and grow, with plastic being part of their ecosystem, perhaps even desirable. In million years the future civilization of these creatures might have "plastic preservation programs" because the old plastic rocks are a finite resource upon witch their culture was built.
They might even gaze upon their plastic-filled oceans in awe, with some quasi-religious gratitude for the ancient race that gracefully filled the world with plastic that they might thrive.
We are not the first species to trash the biosphere. When trees came up with lignin it took Earth life some millions of years to adapt to this new invention and still it was left with a layer of biological trash currently known as coal.
Another example is oxygen. Highly corrosive gas that early on in Earth's existance was rare, but some organisms excreted it as a wastproduct of their metabolism. It got so bad that high concentration of oxygen in atmosphere wiped nearly all life on earth until the life adapted.
And now came humans, who utilize the heaps and volumes of trash and waste left by other species. And produce their own that will stay on Earth for many millenia, long after humans in modern sense are gone.
Edit: Those are homes for the animals while they're alive, of course, but after the animal dies you could view the remaining coral as a form of waste. Certainly that's how we'd view a big pile of abandoned mobile homes.
I've been in a huge magnesite mine, tens of km of underground corridors, with big cathedral like spaces bored in a mountain. The biggest use for all this rocks is feeding meat producing cows with supplement minerals. So, yes, we all eat rocks.
There are already bacteria that eat (some) plastics. Plastics, unlike rocks, are basically just hydrocarbons, not that different from sugars and starches and quite digestible if you have the right enzymes. Whether or not animals could evolve to do it is another story, though.
For something to be consumed it needs to have energy surplus. Plastics have plenty, you could just set fire to them to combine them with oxygen to get it.
They only obstacle is to figure out set of enzymes that can do the burning in controleed manners. Life is very good at figuring that stuff out, it just takes time.
Rocks pretty much don't burn. Although I wouldn't be surprised if in water environments there are some organisms that can utilize some rocks in their metabolism. It's just that rocks are pretty much useless on the surface that's why nothing eats them here.
Similarly with coal underground. In airless environment coal is just rock. If there was plenty of it on the surface something would metabolise it for energy. I think coal from burnt forest doesn't just remain on the ground. Something probably eats it.
> Is that possible? As far as I know nothing consumes rocks and they've been around forever.
Can you burn rocks? No. Can you burn plastics? Generally yes. Therefor there is useful energy to be extracted from plastics.
NB, the quote was " part of their ecosystem" not "consumes". Molluscs, corals and diatoms construct out of rock-like materials, so making minerals part of their ecosystem is a thing.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the "this is fine" comments here, but I am. Geological changes happen in geological time (outside of massive disruptive events). This change happened in 100 years. Also, comparing this to clay pots is simply not understanding the scale of modern production and waste. It's like saying a forest fire doesn't pose any problem to my house because I lit a match one time.
I guess I neither feel that "this is fine" or "this is terrifying".
The truth is we ultimately don't know what the consequences will be. To your analogy, this really could be more of a match than a forest fire. We just don't know.
I'm not trying to be dismissive though... It's concerning for sure, but I don't think we know enough to be terrified. Although, I'm happy to be corrected.
I almost get that, but the more I think about it the more unreasonable it sounds.
If I put 1 bullet in a revolver and spun the chamber, would I feel afraid to pull the trigger with the gun to my head? I wouldn't really know that I was in danger, just that there was a chance... Yet I would be afraid, and really should be.
Maybe the difference is that other people wouldn't put the risk of ruin at 1/6. Or perhaps it's just the "black swan effect" (the human tendency to treat improbable events as impossible).
Say we have the same revolver with a single bullet. But this bullet doesn't kill. If you pull the trigger and the bullet fires, everyone's life may or may not be negatively impacted by an unknown degree sometime in the coming decades.
I may feel hesitation, but I would not feel fear.
It's not because it's a rare event, it's because it's a slow, "invisible", and uncertain event.
I think this counts against the Silurian Hypothesis. If a previous technical civilization existed on earth millions of years ago, by now we would have already found its plastic rocks. Those appears ours.
On a long enough timescale, any trace of a precursor civilization would be taken into the earth's crust through tectonic shifts; still curious to think about though.
Closer to today would be Atlantis, if it was an island then it might still be somewhere under the sea / sediment.
Well, maybe. To name one example, the Canadian Shield, though heavily eroded, has never been subducted. You can still find exposed Precambian rock there. To name another, the Burgess Shale (also in Canada) contains fossils of some of the earliest known complex organisms.
This is one of the better outcomes for plastics floating around in the oceans that I can think of. Melted and lumped into rocks it won't tangle living organisms, and it should be more inert than if it were ground into micro-particles due to far less surface area.
It's even more beautiful than tangled nets and other plastic debris.
I'm not trying to defend it mind you, we really really need to do a better job of keeping plastic out of the oceans.
> we really really need to do a better job of keeping plastic out of the oceans
This was really hammered home to me on a trip I took a couple of months ago. I was on an uninhabited island and, while the island as a whole was beautiful, the beaches were all COVERED in plastic debris from the high-tide line upwards. It was really quite shocking to see.
I knew that there's a lot of plastic floating in the oceans, but I hadn't considered how much of it gets washed ashore. It doesn't accumulate if there's someone around to clean it up, but in uninhabited areas it's devastating. I wouldn't have believed how bad things are if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.
I wrote about the whole trip here, scroll down about halfway for a photo of what I'm talking about:
The largest contributors for plastic inputs to oceans are commercial fishing and a few rivers in Asia.[1]
I often feel powerless when a call to action is cloaked with the phrase "we must do ${something}" Some data at least gives me a concrete talking point if I ever talk to my local congress /parliament representative.
This narrative, i.e that the global plastic pollution in the ocean is primarily caused by a handful of Asian countries is misleading. It ignores the role of countries in the global north for overproduction of plastic and for exporting plastic waste to developing countries in the guise of trade.
It also frames the problem as a "problem elsewhere", as if there is little a consumer or their local congress for that matter in global north can do.
> Put it in the trash instead where it goes to safe, well regulated American facilities.
Is this verified? I have a theory (and haven't bothered to investigate so that one's on me) that a lot of recycling is just parceling it up and exporting it to landfill or incinerators abroad.
Mind you, the plastics found in the ocean should be traceable back to their origins; they may be from e.g. Asian rivers, but if the origin is from the US or Europe you know whose fault it is.
China said didn't want to recycle plastics. It did pile up in US while figured out where to send it. I don't think the US waste processors have found another place to send it so it is going to landfill. There might have been some plastics that got trashed by foreign recyclers but it shouldn't be common thing now.
The solution is to have more regulations about where US waste processors can send recycling to prevent sending to dubious places that throw it away. It is better if recycling goes to the landfill in US instead of playing hot potato.
Did you look at the article- it is tangled nets mixed with sand/stones. They still look capable of snagging small creatures. The location is next to a turtle nesting site.
Yes I read the article, and I think it's sensible to say that fishing nets melted down into nuggets are much safer for turtles (and other life) than when they are loose and intact.
the effect of having plastic merged with rocks is unknown, its bewildering to see comments romanticizing it, akin to those staring in awe of the green sky during chernobyl
I sometimes help an organizations that monitors the health of a river, a couple of years ago they started buying plastic buoys because the ones made from metal were a bit more expensive.
Plastics are releasing "trash" all the time. And yes, they lose some buoys every year. The upside is that people don't try to steal the plastic buoys but they sometimes steal the stainless steel mounts
I don't think is a big concern but it's funny considering they are scrutinizing what other organizations are releasing to the river
They’ll eventually end up as trash even if the team properly get rid of them. That and they can produce some micro plastic pollution too even if they are being recycled.
sure but it'd be penny-wise, pound foolish to hamper environmental research by eliminating the use of plastic components in research equipment. A few pieces of research equipment that are nominally retrieved are not going to be a major source of contamination no matter how you slice it. Dealing with environmental release of plastics is a major concern, but absolutism in this weird and focused domain accomplishes nothing useful and serves as a distraction from real solutions.
Not saying this is good news, but given the current amount of plastic floating around in the oceans, isn't aggregating as a big chunk better for the environment[1] than disintegrating into micro-plastics or small debris?
[1] excluding the "no plastics in the ocean" choice, of course
Aggregating in one big chunk can be good news, if it is treated as a garbage collector and if the garbage is removed. If the plastic isn't removed, then it will be an eternal source of microplastics. I can't see how that is a good thing, unless some fish, bacteria or plant knows how to eat that plastic and make it into something harmless. I doubt that this will act like a plastic-magnet for the microplastics in the area.
Does this article deserve some skepticism? Will fishing nets really melt like that? It looks like they took some oven waste and put it in the oven. If plastics were melting like this in nature, wouldn’t we have seen a lot of it, all over the warm parts of the planet, by now?
I agree on the skepticism. The article says that these fishing nets just melted on the beach from high temperature, but there is no beach on earth that I've heard of where temperatures are hot enough to melt plastic. 56°C is the world record temperature, not hot enough.
The origin of these melted plastic blobs are what's interesting. People here treat the discovery as some kind of warning against pollution, but it's an oddity: something that has been found in only one place.
Aside from fire hazard probability, are there any studies done about whether plastics fused with rocks (cement) could be a good material for building houses that are resistant to earthquakes? (Not discarding the use of steel)
If concrete mixed with plastics is a good idea, then it should be done in a controlled environment (factory), not taken from the sea. I don't see what this has to do with earthquake resistant building. If you want some "flex" in building materials, we already have steel. If plastic can replace steel, or can replace it partly, that would be great. Mixing plastic with concrete is environmentally a bad idea in the long run. How are you going to undo that mix later?
The most common way of distinguishing periods of geological time is by means of the fossils they contain. On this basis picking out the Anthropocene in the rocks of days to come will be pretty easy. Cities will make particularly distinctive fossils. A city on a fast-sinking river delta (and fast-sinking deltas, undermined by the pumping of groundwater and starved of sediment by dams upstream, are common Anthropocene environments) could spend millions of years buried and still, when eventually uncovered, reveal through its crushed structures and weird mixtures of materials that it is unlike anything else in the geological record.
Individual action alone cannot stem climate change and mass plastic pollution. All the cheapest food is packaged in single-use plastic. All the cheapest clothes and toys are made of plastic. One simply cannot opt out of this system without making massive, potentially ostrasizing changes to one's life. Many/most cannot afford fancy plastic-free goods.
Most plastic pollution in the ocean is directly related to shipping and in particular fishing[0]. Nothing I can do individually can address this, change must come from World leaders and industry bodies working in good faith across international borders. They all know this is happening, they all know measures that could be taken to address it.
Much of the framing of climate change and pollution as individual responsibility comes from large industry bodies themselves, who would much rather you feel guilty about it personally rather than wonder if they might be to blame.[1]
> Individual action alone cannot stem climate change and mass plastic pollution
Yes, but lack of individual action also cannot stem climate change and mass plastic pollution.
> Most plastic pollution in the ocean is directly related to shipping and in particular fishing[0]. Nothing I can do individually can address this
You can stop eating fish and you can limit the amount of junk you buy! But if you like eating fish and you like buying junk and you don’t want to inconvenience yourself, you’ll say that it’s the world leaders and industry bodies who must change.
And don’t get me wrong, this is an absolutely fine stance to have. You and I will be dead before the consequences of our choices are felt. But don’t pretend like there’s nothing you can do. It’s just that there’s nothing you actually want to do.
It's not pretend there is nothing you can do unless you are participating in mass action not individual action.
Focusing on personal consumption is an illness of upper middle class Americans that keeps you from focusing your efforts on activity that might lead the actual change.
Again no. The idea that you as an individual can’t make choices that are better for the world is self-delusion. You choose not to make those choices because it is easier to blame someone else. And again, there’s nothing wrong with this. But at least be honest about it.
You can take individual action and put effort into activity that might lead to actual change. But I’m guessing most people opt for the make no change, blame someone else, and put no effort into activity that might lead to actual change option. And again, nothing wrong with this! It’s our planet to fuck up.
> Your personal choices will make no difference in this problem.
Of course they do!
You are reducing your contribution to future plastic in the environment. We can argue over the extent of the difference this choice makes but to say it makes no difference is absurd.
OK, well, why say "there’s nothing wrong with this" as you do above—
> The idea that you as an individual can’t make choices that are better for the world is self-delusion. You choose not to make those choices because it is easier to blame someone else. And again, there’s nothing wrong with this.
—when your whole point is that there's something wrong with it?!
And it's mixed with unnecessarily confrontational language—"absurd", "self-delusion".
> You can stop eating fish and you can limit the amount of junk you buy!
I'm vegetarian, yet these plastic rocks still exist: my actions did not prevent their formation.
Collective action is needed. That will not happen until the "good" actions (e.g. using recyclable materials) are easier/cheaper than the "bad" ones (e.g. single-use, unrecyclable plastic trash). There are two ways to do that:
- Make the "good" actions easier/cheaper. This is very difficult, and may require new inventions, etc.
- Make the "bad" actions harder/expensive. This can be done using regulation and taxation; which (in a democracy) requires collective action.
> I'm vegetarian, yet these plastic rocks still exist: my actions did not prevent their formation.
But your actions are contributing less to the creation of new plastic rocks compared to the person who is out there buying a can of tuna. Whether your choice as an individual has a significant effect is another question. But it’s undeniable that one choice is better for the environment than another. As people we can make the better choice or the worse choice. It’s up to us as individuals.
Anybody who’s eating a can of tuna waiting for new inventions and government to save the day is just deluding themselves.
I would argue that not eating fish is not the solution. We can eat fish that are farmed or fished sustainably with minimal and sustainable environmental impact. A World exists where that is all fish. However without regulation, fish will be farmed using polluting methods, and fished in unsustainable and polluting ways, because it's cheaper and there's more profit to be made.
Voting with my wallet for sustainably farmed fish doesn't really affect anything either - this will always be a niche, high-end market that's unaffordable for most unless the fundamentals at the bottom end of the market change.
Fish is not the issue, fishing is, and only global regulation of the fishing industry can resolve the issue of (that industry's contribution to) ocean plastic pollution.
> Whether your choice as an individual has a significant effect is another question. But it’s undeniable that one choice is better for the environment than another. As people we can make the better choice or the worse choice. It’s up to us as individuals.
Sure, but such an impoverished "choice" is essentially "do nothing" or "do nothing, with the option of eating tuna". It's basically table-stakes: once you've made the easy choices you have control over, it's time to make difficult choices which involve many people. (I see voting the same way: the first step of political engagement)
> waiting for new inventions and government to save the day
That's a straw man; nobody is saying that's a solution. If you insist on viewing everything through the lens of individual choice, then we can just apply your own reasoning to more impactful choices, e.g. as an individual I can:
- "petition legislatures for stronger fishing regulations" or "don't petition legislatures for stronger fishing regulations"
- "file lawsuits against organisations/individuals breaking regulations" or "don't file lawsuits against organisations/individuals breaking regulations"
- "campaign for representatives with good environmentalism credentials for key posts" or "don't campaign for representatives with good environmentalism credentials for key posts"
- "infiltrate and disrupt environmentally-damaging organisations" or "don't infiltrate and disrupt environmentally-damaging organisations"
- "help organise and spread awareness of collective efforts at systemic change" or "don't help organise and spread awareness of collective efforts at systemic change"
- etc.
These are all individual, personal choices; and are likely more impactful than choosing whether or not to eat fish. Since it's pretty cumbersome to talk about "individually choosing to work alongside other individuals in an effort to support each others' efforts to implement changes that adjust the cost/benefit ratio of the choices of other individuals who may have large impacts on the environment", it's common to abbreviate this using phrases like "collective action" and "systemic change".
If this plastic didn't decompose due to salty water and sunrays into smaller parts, isn't that actually convenient for us, since it is unlikely to get out of the rocks and cause harm?
If a modern chemical plant is sloppy with $Stable_Chemical, then it's no surprise to find that chemical in the ground under it, in the groundwater, etc.
The bottom of the Mediterranean is littered with thousands-of-years-old pottery fragments from ancient shipwrecks and such.
Coal mining is a thing, all over the world, because microorganisms mostly couldn't break down dead trees back during the Carboniferous Era - ~300 million years ago.
The sedimentary process how the Earth deals with ~anything that water doesn't dissolve, and microorganisms & such can't break down. That has not been news since 4 or so billion years ago.
This is true, but waiting around millions of years for a new global ecological steady state to form, when the underlying causes of these problems are knowable and preventable, is needlessly painful, to state it mildly.
I don't think so. Either way I made a mistake. The article is pointing out that lead use can track the Roman economy because of the levels of it use, nothing about its dangers.
My general point was that most people were illiterate, proper science was almost never done, mysticism, etc and knowledge about hazards to the environment were not discussed.
Therefore the decisions back then didn't consider environmental issues so it's not a good comparison to what's happening today.
Is the material that pottery is composed of dangerous? How many shipwrecks occurred where pots were lost compared to the amount of plastics we produce today that end up in the ocean?
Yes, it means that the plastic is going to start entering the good chain there. Plastiglomerate rocks mean that there are bits of plastic in the soil, and this will be consumed by plants and worms, which will be consumed by animals that eat them.
It might kill us, but then new creatures will evolve and grow, with plastic being part of their ecosystem, perhaps even desirable. In million years the future civilization of these creatures might have "plastic preservation programs" because the old plastic rocks are a finite resource upon witch their culture was built.
They might even gaze upon their plastic-filled oceans in awe, with some quasi-religious gratitude for the ancient race that gracefully filled the world with plastic that they might thrive.