Biotech Alternative for Plastic (material, price, problem, compare)

[ersatz]

This research is intriguing, though it is likely a long way from development of a feasible commercial product.

I admit that I boggled at the clickbait title of a "hyperintelligent mushroom."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/techn...6ba04242&ei=36

[king john IV]

"hyperintelligent mushroom."
i will steal that phrase to use
during an inappropriate setting.

[guidoLaMoto]

Henry Ford was an innovator. He spent a good deal of time and money trying to figure out a way to make cars out of soy beans...He gave up.

Consider the mushroom based "plastic" as a problem in spacetime geometry-- how much space & time would it take to grow enough mushrooms to replace petroleum based plastic production, considering 360 million TONS of plastic are produced every year?

The whole idea that plastics are an evil to be done away with just shows how uninformed TreeHuggers are. Plastic is made from the waste products of petroleum cracking. That waste product will be produced whether it's turned into plastic or not.

Using plastic reduces weight (important in shipping energy consumption) and price of manufactured items, making them more affordable to more people. That means more people are employed to produce those items to fill the increased demand, and that means a higher standard of living for everyone...and the shorter usefull life of plastic items compared to more durable materials is also good for the supply/demand/jobs cycle.

Using plastic, because it's made out of a waste product, is a good exercise in fullfillig the "Re-use- Recycle-Repurpose" mantra of environmental stewardship....

...not to mention that there will be a lot of unhappy Hippies if we use up all the mushrooms to make plastic.

[Pineapple674]

I was just watching this month's biotechnology seminar from Te Whare Wananga o Waikato. The topic was asparagopsis. The te reo words for biotechnology are "hangarau koiora".