this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2026
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[–] ekZepp@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

New Billionaires tune - " Eat πŸ‘ Our πŸ‘TrashπŸ‘!!!:

[–] bitteroldcoot@piefed.social 62 points 1 day ago (4 children)

The process takes ~2 days, costs ~$60/kg, and can't scale to the 400 million tonnes of plastic waste produced annually. Jason Hallett of Imperial College London: "There's no way you could do this commercially. We're not gonna be eating plastic cookies."

Nobody has even had the courage to taste one.

It's all hat and no cattle.

[–] CalypsoGirl@lemmy.today 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

So they wrote this absurd article just for the thrill of getting everyone upset?

Yup. Now rage baiting isn't just on Facebook, reddit and twitter.

Thanks to Rage Bait Inc (LLC) franchising opportunities , now all the social networks can present clueless false information framed in such a way to anger the public and generate angry clicks.

Sign up today and you too can profit from the Enshittification of the internet.

[–] fluckx@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

All hat and no cattle. I have never heard that expression. I'll be looking that up

[–] TWeaK@lemmy.today 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Outside of the US that expression is rare as rocking horse shit.

[–] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

Rocking horse shit. I have never heard that expression. I’ll be looking that up

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[–] ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 111 points 1 day ago (6 children)

It's not as bad as it sounds. PET plastic has the same atoms as sugar, so it's matter of reorganising it.

The researchers engineered an yeast that eats plastic and "ferments" it into sugar

[–] Zwrt@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

This is actually a huge step in the direction of star trek food replicators.

[–] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

Always thought that would be graphene with nano robotics.

[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Sodium and chlorine are the same atoms in table salt. Not gonna have them by themselves.

[–] ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, but if you feed the pure sodium and chlorine into any process that outputs pure NaCL it's exactly the same as any other table salt. Same with PET and sugar, if yeast turns the PET into 100% sugar it's not different from any other sugar.

[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

Assuming the yeast gets all of it and there isn't any left, sure.

But hey, I'm sure we can trust the proccesed food industry to have our best interests at heart.

[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 65 points 1 day ago (4 children)

NileRed on YouTube has done a few interesting things like turning plastic gloves into hot sauce through different chemical processes.

It's more of a fun science demonstration than anything meant to be even remotely practical to create food from waste, and there are some pretty nasty chemicals involved in some of them that really have no business being anywhere near food

But it does I think drive home the point that everything is basically made out of the same stuff and it's a matter of figuring out how to break it down and put it back together in the right way to be useful.

[–] Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 30 points 1 day ago (5 children)

The alchemists were right, they just focused on the wrong area of the periodic table. We can't turn lead into gold, but we can turn plastic into mouthwatering hamburgers!

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

We've so far turned lead into gold 2 times

It's just so expensive it's not worth doing except to see if you can

It's also weirdly easiest to turn things much more radioactive but further away into gold, such as Osmium, but the gold that it produces is radioactive

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 day ago (3 children)
[–] popekingjoe@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

It's an old family recipe.

I thought we were having plastic bottles

[–] decolo@piefed.social 6 points 1 day ago

Pressed hams

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You can turn lead into gold; it was something that was demonstrated in my HS science class. It's just that the chemical used to make the change is far more valuable than the gold you get out of the process.

[–] Akrenion@slrpnk.net 8 points 1 day ago

Actually we can turn lead into gold by shooting it with particle accelerators. It is not profitable though.

We actually can turn lead into gold and fairly easily now, it's just that it would cost you billions of dollars to make pennies worth of gold.

People really need to stop writing about the torment nexus because all it's doing is giving the oligarchs more ideas...

The researchers on this one are convinced they can eat the cookies. And while scientists underestimating personal risks isn't unheard of (hence why they need university approval), it means there isn't anything obviously dangerous with this process.

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[–] prenatal_confusion@feddit.org 19 points 1 day ago (2 children)

For the last 16 years there has been some kind of organism that could break down plastic. Never seems to go anywhere.

[–] ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (7 children)

This kind of thing always have a long trail of "almosts" before a breakthrough makes it viable outside of the lab. Every attempt makes us closer to it.

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The ones I remember reading about all come with a big caveat: The organisms can only work after the waste has been through some capital and energy intensive pre-treatment, like thermal depolymerization, which makes the economics unworkable for recycling.

Maybe one day we can do the heat treatment with direct solar energy.

[–] A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It’s not as bad as it sounds.

Still, a new dystopian scifi trope is born. Can't wait to see it in action: "ingredients: 50% PET bottle sugar, 40% insect protein, <10% human excrement, flavor, coloring"

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Mmm, the terephthalate adds extra crunch

[–] mavu@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 day ago

I mean, it's not a bad idea, we certainly have enough of the stuff

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 10 points 1 day ago

Soylent Green is plastic!

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 4 points 1 day ago

Where else are you gonna get your recommended daily allowance of Vitamin P while in space?

[–] fireweed@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Turning old plastic into food? I've seen this one before!

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

Bold of you to assume you'll be able to afford the plastic bottle cookies, peasant!

[–] SW42@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago

It’s Carbohydrates all the way. Always has been πŸ”«

[–] lagg_mine@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

At the times it take to make these, I bet there will not be much left of the PET molecule structure.

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

i love when left wing progessive lemmys loop around and turn into hard right conspiracy theorists

this also isn’t a meme, does this comm have any moderators?

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 24 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

Lemmy is just awful about reacting only to the headlines, especially with popsci reporting. The above referenced work is kick ass - converting one of the most common garbage plastics into sugar with a bioengineered yeast is cool as hell. sure it's a headline born of the petite dystopia we live in, but it's a really optimistic breakthrough and not at all a dystopian thing in itself.

In this instance people are talking about "the article" and there isn't even an article LOL. Lots of lemmers devoutly believe they're better than the rest of the world - whether it's because of their ethical purity or neurodivergence or whatever.

[–] Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 day ago

Lemmy is just awful about reacting only to the headlines

That's pretty much normal all over the internet. It's a bad human behaviour heavily exploited via attention economics, of course such bad traits get reinforced. Staying in one place and thinking gets disincentivised (you might even put down your phone! Outrageous!!) and outright punished through dark patterns and antifeatures, faster scrolling and high frequency interaction with populistic takes is being rewarded with shiny stuff on your profile, Karma, hearts, stars etc.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 day ago

I remember seeing the youtuber NileRed doing similar experiments:

Making grape soda from disposable vinyl gloves.

https://youtu.be/zFZ5jQ0yuNA

Turning paint thinner into cherry soda

https://youtu.be/NIVkBs7oWDI

Making hotsauce from plastic gloves

https://youtu.be/1B3Xi5L6siI

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 3 points 1 day ago

My first thought was "Hey we're one step closer to Star Trek replicators." :D

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[–] FuyuhikoDate@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Not even soylent green anymore :(

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[–] Ypsilenna@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

I miss the times when outrage food was made of bugs πŸ˜”

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