Teen's Science Fair Findings May Help With Plastic Problem

A teenager may have uncovered natural bacteria that degrade plastic.

Basically, the teen isolated two bacteria that appeared to be dining on plastic and found that these guys reduced the volume of his plastic sample by 43%. Very interesting.

Check out a full blog post on the subject on the Discover website.

Comments

Sam said…
This was very interesting. I just read Rubbish (my review) and one thing that encourages bacteria growth is air and moisture - two key elements that are often not present in landfills. Because landfill garbage is packed so tightly together, decomposition is slow...if at all. Which is why we hear the stories of finding hotdogs that is probably decades old in perfectly good condition - not decomposed. So maybe if more space is devoted to landfills and the stuff is turned once in a while to replicate the conditions in my indoor composted then there is some hope of having the garbage and plastic decompose.

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