An eleventh grader in Waterloo has figured out what makes plastic decompose and how to speed up that process—to three months. The trick was figuring out which bacteria are responsible for breaking down plastic over time and then to grow those.
“Almost every week I have to do chores and when I open the closet door, I have this avalanche of plastic bags falling on top of me,” the 16-year old-told The Record. “One day, I got tired of it and I wanted to know what other people are doing with these plastic bags.”
Via Treehugger via The Record
everydaytrash 
Saturday, May 31, 2008 at 6:16 pm |
Ack, wow. Is this gonna be huge? In a way I hope not, I was really hoping we might see bioplastics start to take off a bit here…
Sunday, June 1, 2008 at 8:00 am |
Oh, YEAH!!!! I love the plastic-eating bacteria! now he needs to send ’em all to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch .
Sunday, June 1, 2008 at 2:14 pm |
It sounds huge, doesn’t it? I also hope this doesn’t slow down the intellectual energy focused on plastic alternatives and solutions. I mean, even rotted plastic can’t be all that good for the Earth. Little Shiva, if it’s safe I hope they do send the bacteria to the GPGP. DT, what’s your thinking on bioplastics? Aren’t some of them made from evil corn?
Monday, June 2, 2008 at 3:01 pm |
My thinking on them is that we need to invest in them, bigtime.
There was a battle in the early part of the 20th century between bioplastics and petrol-based plastics. Petrol won for 2 reasons:
1. Pressure from Big Oil companies (surprise)
2. Bioplastics weren’t fully waterproof and could degrade during shipment
Bioplastics arent currently made with genetically modified crops, although they may be in the future. Read the wikipedia article. We’re talking 100 percent biodegradable diapers here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic
As far as GM crops go, they aren’t necessarily evil at all. I have a hunch that the smear campaign launched against them was actually begun by the oil companies themselves, as they stand to lose billions if we invest in this technology. We’ve been genetically modifying crops for thousands of years. (Broccoli, anyone?) And I think that well-meaning environmentalists with no specific scientific knowledge have played right into their hands. There are evil aspects that must be addressed, i.e. the companies that produce them will copyright the DNA of the crops and lock them down into a kind of monopoly.
However, I am also not a scientist, and these are my feelings based on what I have read and or heard on NPR 😉
Saturday, August 2, 2008 at 6:59 am |
[…] giraffe, authored by the fabulous Mark Jenkins. You know how I love street art, giraffes and creative ways to reuse plastic bags and promote their extinction! Possibly related posts: (automatically […]
Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 6:29 am |
Do you know how bioplastics are produced or any website that gives that certain information? I kinda need it for my proposal. If I’ll knew how to produce it my proposal would be approved.
Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 9:26 am |
This article from Treehugger covers the pros and cons of bioplastics. Hope it helps: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/bioplastics-problem.php
Thursday, February 26, 2009 at 5:53 pm |
[…] these kids today. Remember the teen who discovered the cure for plastic? Thanks for the tip, […]