A chance to get rid of all this plastic?

 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/28/new-super-enzyme-eats-plastic-bottles-six-times-faster

 

"Plastic pollution has contaminated the whole planet, from the Arctic to the deepest oceans, and people are now known to consume and breathe microplastic particles. It is currently very difficult to break down plastic bottles into their chemical constituents in order to make new ones from old, meaning more new plastic is being created from oil each year.

The super-enzyme was engineered by linking two separate enzymes, both of which were found in the plastic-eating bug discovered at a Japanese waste site in 2016. The researchers revealed an engineered version of the first enzyme in 2018, which started breaking down the plastic in a few days. But the super-enzyme gets to work six times faster."

 

This is great and all, but we really need to find alternatives to plastic in the first place.

 

pandemic a great time to try Universal Basic Income

 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-02/brazil-hands-out-so-much-covid-cash-that-poverty-nears-a-new-low

 

In other words, as Covid-19 has killed some 122,000 Brazilians, it has paradoxically driven down poverty and inequality, at least in the short term, and also placed government welfare at the heart of political debate, like a decade ago with the “Bolsa Familia” program that lifted millions. The issue will reverberate in November’s local elections, a dry run for the presidency in 2022.

 

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 People are out of work.  Businesses are closed.  If there was ever a time to try universal basic income, this is it.