Isn’t it nice when reality follows a TOG discussion on plastic bioremediation? A high school student in Canada may have isolated microbes that degrade plastic bags. As far as I can tell from the not-so-coherent news article, Daniel Burd created a bacteria-friendly environment (warm, wet, and nutritious) and seeded it with ground-up plastic bags. He then isolated plastic-eating strains and cultured them together with plastic. The most successful strain reduced the plastic’s mass by 32%.
Of course (assuming Burd’s results are reproducible), there is a ways to go before we can have giant vats of plastic-munching bacteria. Bacteria that can easily be grown in small, liter-sized cultures are often difficult to grow on industrial scales, and some bacteria can produce nasty byproducts (like methyl iodide, a greenhouse gas). It’s impossible to assess Burd’s results based on a news article – maybe he’ll continue his hot streak and publish in peer-reviewed journal. Still, plastic eating bacteria! From a high school student! Very promising, indeed.
Thanks to Sam for the link.
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May 26, 2008 at 5:01 am |
Sounds promising!
Hopefully the bacteria has a strong taste for #3-## which so many recycling programs refuse to accept, yet which so many packagers are using.
Gotta love those high school projects!
I’ve got one I posting as soon as the journal paper is released with a high schooler as one of the authors.
May 26, 2008 at 3:33 pm |
Eric – I was under the impression that most recycling programs only accept 1 and 2. So everything 3 and up would need to be munchable. (unless that it what you typed and it got horribly mangled.) Very neat to be publishing with a high school student!
September 11, 2008 at 6:04 am |
An excellent idea, this is!
It will surely give Mother Earth some hope to survive longer in the future. Since the maintaining costs are low, hope, even the smallest country tries to implement this method.
Burd is a GENIUS!!
September 27, 2008 at 9:54 am |
This is very compelling. We manufacture various plastics and to know that people are working on a bacteria that can decompose the plastics makes me feel better about my job.
Obviously, plastics play an important role in our society and offer a great deal of benefits. Learning that someone as young as a high school student is working to provide new solutions for how we deal with the byproducts of the plastic industry is fantastic!
September 27, 2008 at 9:57 am |
Also,
I’m just curious. Do you have any good links to read about why it is difficult to grow bacteria on a massive scale? That seems to be the biggest issue for these types of solutions.
As a manufacturer of plastics, we try to stay abreast of the latest technologies for not just making the plastic materials, but also how to deal with them after they have served in their application.
Would his solution work with Melamine and Phenolic? Those are two materials we do a lot of work with.
Thanks.
March 16, 2009 at 6:19 pm |
This is also promising…
A Review of Plastic Waste Biodegradation
Critical Reviews in Biotechnology, 25:243–250, 2005
Copyright c Taylor & Francis Inc.
ISSN: 0738-8551 print / 1549-7801 online
DOI: 10.1080/07388550500346359
and
Implication of Arthrobacter and Enterobacter species for polycarbonate degradation
Reeta Goela,, M.G.H. Zaidib, Ravindra Sonia, Kusum Lataa, Yogesh S. Shouchec 2007
I suppose the issue is not so much isolating the bacteria (a high school student could do it!) as it is creating an environment that will allow them to degrade the wide variety of plastics that exist. It’s an awfully complex problem.
May 10, 2009 at 7:25 am |
Really this is great opportunity for every people because plastic cause many of problem.I want to introduce with my self because am also collect
research papers about it i want create a noble microorganism which is highly degradable of plastic.
Hope so you will provide some of clue regards to this topic.
Thanks