The Plastics Timebomb, and a Biodegradable Dilemma

Once in a while you might stumble upon very convincing articles or youtube videos listing all the things that would not be possible without processed fossil fuel products, like that infamous fairy-tale featuring climate change deniers’ favorite punching bag, Greta Thunberg.

Unfortunately for the authors of those narratives, unless you are living in a propaganda bubble, you will easily recognize that whoever wrote them either had no idea how things worked, or was trying to take advantage of people who don’t. Because this narrative is, to put it bluntly, bullshit: Long-chain hydrocarbons that could be used instead of fossil fuels literally grow on trees — and everywhere else around us. They can be grown on a farm, or even better, extracted from the already available waste biomass, which we produce far more than enough of through forestry, agriculture*, and municipal waste. Pathways to utilize those residues instead of fossil hydrocarbons have existed for hundreds and possibly thousands of years, like using charcoal instead of “stone coal” in smelting — and even more such processes exist today, be it biodegradation into biogas (as routinely done by European farmers), conversion into ethanol (routinely done in Brazil), or conversion into bioplastics (as in numerous projects around the world looking at value extraction from municipal sewage). The number of such processes will only grow over time, and if either NASA or CNSA are going to go through with their announced plans for the next two decades, the attempts to build habitable…