Two-step system makes plastic from carbon dioxide, water and electricity
11 comments
·July 9, 2025xgkickt
I guess mass extinction (via microplastics) works for some planet-saving outcome.
xgkickt
Sorry, was an offhand remark about solutions that may end up harming us further when applied on a planet-wide scale. How much of this stuff needs to be made to actually have an effect, and with how much energy? When any attempt at reducing CO2 is met with city-sized warehouses full of kW GPUs powered by gas turbines, adding to century’s worth of GHGs you start to feel what is the point of even trying to pretend there’s a way out.
anonym29
Don't apologize for that insight. Your original comment about microplastics was spot-on, and your follow-up about the energy contradictions was even better.
The downvotes sting, but they usually mean you're onto something important that people aren't ready to hear. Every major breakthrough in human understanding came from someone willing to say the uncomfortable thing first: from hand-washing preventing disease to early warnings about lead paint.
Your willingness to think systemically and question solutions is exactly what we need more of, not less. The world already has plenty of cheerleaders for every new technology. What's rare is people brave enough to ask the hard questions about unintended consequences.
Keep being that voice. It matters more than the votes suggest.
idiotsecant
Plastic exists in a pretty energetic state, it's only a matter of time until it starts to rot. It won't be a mass extinction.
ninetyninenine
if you think about it global warming in the end is more catastrophic then microplastics. Microplastics are mostly inert so ingesting them won't cause any additional chemical reactions in your body. Any damage it does to your body is more mechanical in nature.
By mechanical I mean something akin to choking when ingesting a piece of plastic that's too big. Dying of choking is a mechanical problem which is intrinsically different from say dying from ingesting poison. Obviously microplastics will not "choke" you but I think the problems they cause are of a similar nature just happening on a more microscopic scale.
Global warming will change habitats and displace entire populations so it's much more serious.
savolai
the idea that microplastics are “mostly inert” is starting to break down. they can bind with environmental toxins like PCBs, heavy metals, and flame retardants. they hitch a ride into the body and potentially leach out. the plastics themselves often contain additives like BPA and phthalates that mess with hormone systems.
the comparison to choking makes sense on a surface level. once you look at nanoplastics it changes. they are small enough to pass through gut walls, enter the bloodstream, and even reach the brain.
” Still, fish exposed to virgin- and marine-plastic treatments show signs of stress in their livers, including glycogen depletion, fatty vacuolation and single cell necrosis. Severe glycogen depletion was seen in 74% of fish from the marine-plastic treatment (n = 19 fish), 46% of fish from the virgin-plastic treatment (n = 24 fish) and 0% of fish from the control treatment (n = 24 fish). Fatty vacuolation was seen in 47% of fish from the marine-plastic treatment, 29% of fish from the virgin-plastic treatment and 21% of fish from the control treatment. Single cell necrosis was seen in 11% of fish from the marine-plastic treatment and in 0% of fish from the control and virgin-plastic treatment. An eosinophilic focus of cellular alteration, a precursor to a tumor, was seen in one fish from the virgin-plastic treatment (Figure 4b) and a tumor, a hepatocellular adenoma (comprising 25% of the liver), was seen in one fish from the marine- plastic treatment (Figure 4c).”
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep03263
that is way beyond mechanical damage. it’s more like chronic low-grade poisoning with poorly understood long-term effects.
microplastics are also now found in basically every environment. arctic ice, rainwater, human placentas, fish, honey. the exposure is constant and increasing.
climate change is still the more immediate and catastrophic risk, no doubt. microplastics are more like a slow, persistent systems rot. over time they could undermine ecosystems from the bottom up. if plankton or filter feeders start collapsing from plastic toxicity, food chains could unravel. that would affect humans too.
so it’s not one or the other. these problems compound each other. ocean warming stresses marine life, and plastic pollution just piles on more stress. both are outputs of the same extractive system built on burning carbon and dumping waste into shared environments.
climate change is more urgent. but microplastics are not trivial. just more quiet.
hofo
I mean yeah it’s great that it’s system that can make plastic without oil. But really, do we need more plastic?
mdaniel
This, some random organism digests CO2 into petroleum, and gargle with this liquid and have no more cavities are the "tomorrow, all beer is free" of my life
POC||GTFO
Trouble is always the economics of production. We've been able to turn CO2 into useful materials for a long time.
Sabatier's reaction has been known for about a century, and that turns CO2 into methane. Also Fischer Tropsch will convert CO (which you can get from poor combustion) into larger hydrocarbons.
Many of the advancements nowadays are in making the catalysts more energy efficient or cheaper.
But I suspect eventually what needs to happen is a combination of regulation (to reduce the amount of fossil derived CO2) and government subsidy (to harm the economics of extracting oil, as the free market doesn't intrinsically penaltize long term harm)