Life finds a way.
We're going to see an increase in plastic metabolizing bacteria as well, so eventually our plastics will 'rust' and degrade faster.
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We're going to see an increase in plastic metabolizing bacteria as well, so eventually our plastics will 'rust' and degrade faster.
Also there's the risk that we accidentally release some genetically modified bacteria and they prove to be hardier than expected.
Earth had a plastic like problem before. There were no fungi that eat cellulose so dead trees were just piling up without degrading. Those trees turned into ~petroleum~ coal that we consume now.
That trees somehow turned into ~petroleum~ coal, I learnt in school. I used to imagine trees were somehow buried under stand suddenly and before they could be degraded they turned into ~petroleum~ coal under heavy pressure.
https://big.ucdavis.edu/blog/plastic-eating-microbe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETase
November 4th : https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251104013023.h...
> Beneath the ocean’s surface, bacteria have evolved specialized enzymes that can digest PET plastic, the material used in bottles and clothes. Researchers at KAUST discovered that a unique molecular signature distinguishes enzymes capable of efficiently breaking down plastic. Found in nearly 80% of ocean samples, these PETase variants show nature’s growing adaptation to human pollution.
> The world at beginning of the Carboniferous period was a humid, tropical place. Seasons, if any, were indistinct. The Carboniferous trees and plants resembled those that live in tropical and mildly temperate areas today. They grew in wetlands and were shallow-rooted. This, combined with their great height and ponderous weight, was a bad combination, because these enormous trees would regularly become uprooted and topple into the marshy ground, landing on other trees that preceded them.
> Here is where fate steps in. Although trees had evolved lignin and cellulose, no bacteria that could digest these woody substances had yet evolved. In fact, those bacteria would take another 60 million years to evolve. All this time huge trees kept growing, crashing into the swampy ground, and piling up on top of uncounted other trees, getting buried deeper and deeper into the ground. Over millions of years, subjected to the heat and pressure of deep burial, the carbon in these trees was converted into the fossil fuels we know and love today – coal, oil, and natural gas. All the fossil fuels we use were produced during this 60-million year period.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45886479 ("Widespread distribution of bacteria containing PETases across global oceans (oup.com)"—1 day ago, 72 comments)
(The new $300 iPhone thong is made of PET (polyester), so, it's reassuring to know the universe does have the capability to unmake those).
I read too much dystopian sci-fi to write much else, but in truth, I have pretty high hopes for these garbage-eating microbes.
Depending on the conditions and chemistry, you can get coal from ancient algal sources, but you can't get petroleum / liquid oil from ancient forests - the chemistry doesn't work out. You need lots of water and heat and pressure, single cell structures. Lots of cellulose and lignin means you don't get the liquefaction and mixing, forcing the material to carbonize and compress instead.
> A narrow strip of material, typically leather, used to fasten, bind, or secure objects.
Also the availability of other resources might have meant that even if eating the tree parts did develop earlier it just wasn't enough to be a key survival advantage, especially if initial “versions” of the process were inefficient. Perhaps what happening was in one strain it lost the ability to feed on the older sources but had the latent ability to consume the new ones, even if much less efficient, so switched and continued from there to quickly refine the process via further mutation. Changes in the availability of other components, which the trees themselves will have had a hand in, will have changed the balance but over a significant amount of time.
Furthermore, and perhaps more significantly the components of our plastics and how they hang together are not that novel, requiring less changes to come together in one individual or population to make consuming them practical.
From memory; a scientist created a breed of bacteria that could digest a special food-like plastic, which was accidentally released, but sporulated as their special food source could not be found in the environment. Decades later, a product company introduced "bio-degradable" plastic for greener packaging, which happened to be similar enough to their original food source that the bacteria were able to feed on it. Unfortunately for humanity, plastic itself was also much more widely distributed in the current year, and the bacteria was able to make the jump from eating this plastic to eating "any" plastic. (For added drama, this process also resulted in the release of explosive gases - methane, maybe?)
Also perhaps related, I also picked up The Last Gasp[1] at the same book sale, another speculative sci-fi about global warming. It was very influential on my preteen mind.
[0]: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2368220.Mutant_59
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1685500.The_Last_Gasp