- ‹ previous
- 848 of 1507
- next ›
Teenager's Science Fair Project May Deliver Us From Plastic
I bought groceries at Trader Joe's the other day. As anyone who has ever shopped there knows, Trader Joe's is full of incredibly attractive, cheap food, which, if you manage to make it through all the plastic packaging it comes in, you can actually eat. Unfortunately, by the time I started cooking I had more or less lost my appetite, since every time I discarded one of those packages I felt like I dropped another circle in hell.
So I pretty much love Daniel Burd right now. The 16-year-old from Waterloo, Ontario, as part of a science fair project, figured out a way to break down the polymers in plastic bags—compounds that can last for over 1,000 years—in about three months. Essentially, Burd hypothesized that since the bags eventually do degrade, it must be possible to isolate and augment the degrading agents.
Turns out that it's not only possible, it's kind of easy. Burd combined ground polyethylene plastic bags, sodium chloride, dirt from a landfill (which theoretically contains the microorganisms that ultimately degrade the plastic) and a yeast mixture in shakers for four weeks at a consistent temperature of about 86 degrees. At the end of the month, he took a sample of that mixture and combined it with a new one, with the goal of increasing the overall concentration of microbes. After one more repetition, he put fresh plastic bags in his solution for six weeks. In the end, the plastic degraded nearly 20%. A little more filtering to figure out exactly which microbes were the most effective, and he upped the degradation rate to 32%. He concludes, "The process of polyethylene degradation developed in this project can be used on an industrial scale for biodegradation of plastic bags. As a result, this would save the lives of millions of wildlife species and save space in landfills."
So, will this really work? Has a teenager really found a way to rid us of one of our most persistent environmental problems? Who knows, but judges at the Canada-Wide Science Fair apparently agree that it's worth pursuing. They sent Burd home with $30,000 in awards and scholarships. You can read his final report (all six pages of it) here (.pdf).
Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Arbel Egger.
—Casey Miner
I'm going to have to call BS on this. Not on the experiment, good going on that. But on the article. It's a myth that plastics last "1000's" of years. They breakdown in under a century, usually in less than 50 years even in sterile temp controlled environments like the Smithsonian. The older suits and plastic parts from Nasa equipment held there are already disintegrating. What they break down into is no better for the environment but thats another story... Get your facts straight.
Lol @ U! Get ur facts strait
Lol @ U! Get ur facts strait
Seth, I think that's the point. The Eastern Pacific Gyre is full of the separated polymers you describe as "disintegrated". The plastic itself remains intact as separated molecules floating around. Those, in turn, last for 1000's of years.
Reading this guys research paper, what he has done is isolated two bacteria that help eachother actually digest the polymers, meaning the carbon byproduct is bacteria, not more polymers.
So I call BS on your BS, and the facts are legitimate.
I call BS on your BS Kris. Get your facts straight. The bacteria cant be isolated as they have inverse density values. This means the plastic cant be degraded. Less in the time stated by the article.
I call BS on your BS kreth, which is calling BS on Kris' BS call on Seth's BS, because the bacterias density means nothing. This experiment needs to be reproduced.
I use BS to breakdown arguments and make them seem less important. A mix of doubt, multi-faceted BS, and some regular baker's yeast, blended by a educated 30-40 year old male who studied "political science" and is well versed in things like "science" because its in the name, resulted in a 64% chance it will appear on a Fox news story as true. No need to reproduce the experiment. It's done everyday.
If true even a little, I hope he retains the copyright on the process, etc.
LOL the comments made me laugh
But Justin, the question is, did the bacteria make you digest plastic?
So Kreth, if the bacteria can't be isolated, what is it you think was in his LB agar dishes?
My guess is you don't know the first thing about growing bacteria beyond the experiments in your fridge...
BS is a renewable resource.
Is it possible that if plastic on or in the ground biodegrades that it could more easily work its way into the water table. If so would we end up drinking it? Do we always need or want everything to biodegrade? These might be dumb questions but I do find this confusing. Fascinating article and comments except for the silly attitudes. Can't we argue with out becoming rude?
I want to congratulate this guy for his work, but seriously. We should RECYCLE. IF we digest all the plastic we throw away with bacteria, its just being wasteful. Gl waiting another 5 million years for it to turn into oil so we can make plastics out of it again. Its about reusing what we throw away not digesting plastics.
Yes, but does it blend?
hahaha, that show destroys all...even canadian teenagers with braces that make scientific "breakthroughs" (i wonder if he blends)...in all seriousness what is the point of breaking down the plastic bags. Like someone else said before, we should be reusing not breaking down. A bag that degrades in 3 months is just as useless as one that degrade in 1000 years.
It would be very interesting to find out what the byproducts of the degrading process are.
Interesting step toward solving waste issues
It actually is very useful that this kid discovered this. And to all of the people that said breaking down plastic is useless, bio-degradable plastic will save space in landfills and all of the other problems that leftover plastic causes. The plastic will go into giving the bacteria energy and not just be lying around the earth.
Will this bacteria grow and take over the world, being feed so much? Or will it just be obesse?
Good work to the kid for doing such an experiment in high school. But this article needs to work on its facts. Plastics readily degrade, they start degrading soon after they are made from oxidation, sun light and temperature. The companies that make plastics have to put in additives so the plastic is usable for a decent amount of time. They don't last 1000's of years, even with these additives.
since when do Canadians do anything right?
haha i agree!
Just to enlighten people, this child did not discover anything. The existence of plastic degrading bacteria has been known for many years now. The problem is mass producing it. All this child has done is culture it in his own home.
Brooke is actually the one full of BS
The only child I see here is you, Brooke. If you want to look "enlightened," don't degrade others who are hard at work attempting to improve the world. And for your information, age does not determine maturity.
Are you serious you feel like you drop a level in hell when you open something that is in plastic? Seriously, don't make statements that are too big to back up you idiot.
The british TV series "Doomwatch", in the 1970s started with a storyline of a research scientist trying to isolate bacteria to break down plastics. His work was hailed by the international community, as the way to save us from the menace of a build-up of discarded, but undegradeable waste that would be with us forever. The first episode opened with a transatlantic airliner whose overhead lockers start to melt and deform, then drip... as do its cable insulators, controls, fuel line seals etc.
Once again, something had been developed, but not properly thought through before general release. Nobody stopped to think, "can we confine it to only waste?", and of course, nobody stopped to think those bacteria might evolve into better and better plastics munchers.
Doomwatch looks incredibly corny, and dated now, I saw a bit on youtube..
But, HELP!!! MY KEYBOARD'S MELTING!!!!!!!!
I certainly commend the 16 year old Daniel for attempting to solve a very big problem. However, as was mentioned before plastics do degrade naturally in landfills; in the right conditions this can occur in less than 50 years. I agree with the recycling tidbit, but the fact is hardly any of the plastic in waste streams is recycled, so our landfills grow larger and larger everyday. The issue I take with the kid's experiment is the fact that growing bacteria in a petri dish doesn't transfer over so nicely to remediation in landfills. As we have seen with bioremediation of chemical spills, the sad fact is that these bacteria become "pussies" and can't stand living under any conditions other than the petri dish, the process has proved not to be so feasible. It's still pretty neat that a 16 year old thought of doing this though...
The idea that plastics take so long to degrade has actually been propagated by the Project for the New American Century, to distract from the fact that they have cornered the market on plastics.
Also,I do not enjoy the sex that I am having.
If you feel like you've dropped a "circle in Hell" when you throw something away, you have a lot more than the environment to be worrying about.
America is Canada's [deleted].
This has been known for some time. Dupont, for instance, did similar studies back in the 60s, and numerous other labs have looked at bacteria as a mechanism for converting plastics.
This is not a new discovery, it's just further evidence that life adapts.
I'll have to chime in as well. First, kudos to Daniel on a well-done science experiment. Given some of the methods taught in high schools these days, he is to be commended for following the scientific process. On to Seth's comment. His premise is right on the mark, except about the actual time for degradation of the plastic. It is certainly a myth that it takes 1000's of years, but it is also misleading to say it takes any specific amount of time. The fact is the plastics used in packaging for food, grocery bags, etc is designed to degrade in less than 3 months time. That's right - less than 3 months. The problem, and the reason it doesn't actually happen, is that the bags must be exposed to sunlight in order to catalyze the reaction that degrades them. When we put them in landfills, they no longer get the sunlight, and the reaction slows to a crawl, greatly extending the time it takes to degrade into it's constituent parts. How do I know? It is my job to engineer these, and similar items.
This is an interesting because it was done by a high schooler, but that is all. The study and facultative breakdown of chlorinated hydrocarbons has been around since the early nineties and the mechanism of degradation is still being studied today, its called bioremediation. If you have any further questions or doubt the legitamacy of my claim, please direct your attention to http://www.nature.com and search for plastic or chlorinated hydrocarbons remediation practices, research, or advancement. You will be pleasantly surprised to find over one hundred peer-reviewed articles/research papers on the subject. Have a pleasant evening.
WK
you are so stupid, what happens if you bio degrade plastics? how much of our technoligy is based on plastics? Just think if you created a virus that would destroy plastic in two years how much of your lives would be left without plastics? IDIOTS
so im reading the comments and i think people are honestly thinking into this whole issue alittle too much. Ofcourse plastic degredation happens naturally, if it didn't we'd be knee deep in plastic waste. This kids experiment identified which agents degrade the plastics naturally and and effectively. by doing so, as stated, he wishes for further research to allow for an idustrial implementation of a similar quick degradation process. this is by no means a solution but it is knowledge gained that scientist had not focused on before. i dont understand how an arguement can occur as i dont see anything to be disputed.
The basic fact remains with plastic, no matter how you ultimately dispose of it - you are using a non-renewable resource. It won't turn back into usable oil. The world economy, the whole damn thing, is based at its core on oil.
This is a great article and if true, this can be a blessing to one of many issues at hand. However, this technology should be used to degrade the billions of tons of plastic currently in our landfills and our oceans but not offer a reason to use plastic products in the first place. This, combined with biodegradeable plastic, will certainly help with the current issue at hand but ultimately we need to learn to use more of the renewable and reusable resources and not so much of disposable.
Cool, but pointless. You would have to sort out the plastic at landfills. If you do that, you might as well recycle it - not degrade it.
Plastics do indeed degrade. Different types of polymers however degrade by different chemical processes over varying timescales and, is dependent upon the catalyst employed to break down those chains.
Better to make it law for the suppliers and manufactures to accept back our packaging and force them to be accountable or invent their own solution for disposal?
Want to watch plastics degrade?
Pour some DEET (insect repellent) onto a plastic bag. See it go hard and crinkly? Thats degradation.
However, there are two problems I see with this experiment. One is that while the plastic has been 'degraded', are the final products any safer than the starting products?
I don't see the point in making more waste barrels filled with toxic organics.
Secondly, from what I've read there this process involves heating the reaction mixture for over a month.
In industrial terms, this is costly beyond need. And all that for a 32% yield?
Good idea, bright kid, bad chemistry.
As others have said, this is all nicey nice and good, but the real problem isn't so much that we have plastics in landfills, but that we use so much of them in the first place. Two things need to happen before we get comfortable with the idea of easily degradable plastic: 1 - Use less of it in packaging, and 2 - recycle what we can. When we get in the habit of doing those things as a society then we can pat ourselves on the back for figuring out a way to speed up the decomposition of the stuff we can't recycle.
I think this kid is brilliant and I loved reading all of your comments even if they were ridiculous. Weeed!
All well and good, but if the bags (and anything else that's organic) were feed for thermal depolymerization, then there wouldn't be any problem, and it could all be recycled.
I believe all of the above commentaries miss the point. Bill Moyers in his last program brought out the fact that many plastics, especially in food packaging, are finding their way into our bodies, where they damage
our hormone and endocrine systems. Go to the grocery store and try to find anything that is packed in glass, now. And it also lines cans and even paper milk and juice cartons. It's ubiquitous.
My question is, what sort of gases are released into the air
during an accelerated break down process?
I am not sure why this kid got that amount of money for a research paper which in my opinion is rather childish and not comparing to any industry application.
As also often stated the idea of bacteria degration is not new.
Further more are there plastics today which are bio degradable - those are developed and produced.
However again the idea of degrading plastic instead of recycling is seriously stupid and a waste of recourses. This paper might proof a point but is it an important point of our industrial application and furture? I doubt it.
It would be much better to tackle the real problem which is consumer behaviors - here in the USA people love plastic bags and are to lazy to bring their own bags and in addition in out food packaging industry plastic is overly used.
Promoting concepts to here I think would have been more subject of a nice award of 30 grand than this rather already known home experiment.
What the student started should be encouraged to continue. There is all kinds of equipment available such as gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy to identify products at stages of degradation. I stop now because I have an awful headache from all the toxic comments, like Carbon Monoxide.
This is definatly a better mousetrap and you who asked since when do Canadians...This time bucko. There is hope for earth in the next generation
Often ignoramous
I worked at a grocery store two summers back and unless they changed their policy again, all the baggers and cashiers are required to bag all the customer's groceries in plastic bags UNLESS they ask for paper.
There's no more deal with inquiring "Paper or plastic" and most people didn't bother asking for paper (not that that's any less harmful to the environment).
My point is that people are lazy and uncaring and they're not going to bother asking for no bags. And even if they did know about that option, they would rather take the bags so it's easier for them to carry their groceries ten yards into the house.
I think Costco has the right idea because there are no bags, and if someone wants something to carry their food in then they can use one of the discarded packaging boxes. I'm not saying that Costco is the pinnacle of eco-friendliness, since they clearly don't offer bags to increase their profit margin, but they are doing something that is probably least detrimental in the end.
I call BS on your BS Steve, which is calling BS Kreth's BS on Kris' BS call on Seth's BS. The kid is on to something, and they don't just hand out $30K to anyone with a crackpot idea without proven scientific merit.