If you’ve ever thought this site didn’t have enough nerdy stuff. Well, you’re just plain wrong.
According to THIS ARTICLE published by a team of Yale students- they’ve identified an organism in the rainforests that can feed off of PUR – essentially polyurethane widgets- that are everywhere- in what appears to be a completely oxygen depraved environment.
What does this mean?
Well, some articles would have you think it would solve the worlds waste problem.
I’m not so sure.
Consider this: they found a fungus that eats PUR, in a rainforest where plastics, synthetic polymers and manufactured urethane products aren’t exactly abundant. It can perform it’s task of consumption of this unnatural resource without oxygen, and it’s all Kool and the Gang: We cultivate a buttload of the fungus, throw it and the worlds garbage in a vacuum, watch it eat, make more spandex without feeling guilty. SUPER NEGATIVE CARBON FOOTPRINT DANCE!
I don’t know. The skeptic in me would posit that there has to be an unknown byproduct of the process, a waste. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, right? It eats a carbamate or other thermoset polymer and something has to happen… We can’t throw all the world’s hideous clothing into a bin and watch it just vaporize. I love the idea, but what if the fungus gets in places where we don’t want it to be? Starts to grow at an uncontrolled rate? Creates a waste that is more toxic than the controlled expulsion of current urethanes? This stuff is everywhere, primarily building materials and bits of the car like the tires and cloth interiors, gaskets and such.
Let’s also not forget that one of the bigger things we use like SEALANTS are also urethanes, polyurethane rubberized liners are what basically line half the ponds and major water installations in the world. Urethane gaskets control the seals on the majority of machined water parts on everything else from sinks to water fountains. IMAGINE THE WORLD, but LEAKING. lol….
This could be a disaster. But it could be cool. You decide. Read the article first, then the published paper. I don’t want to talk down to you, but there’s a lot of big f*cking words in it, and it’s boring, and it reads, well….like a science experiment, and unless you’re a science nerd with a penchant for biology, this Bud’s not for you.