Boy Discovers Mircobe that eats plastic (Samuel Mann)

As everyone knows the world is slowly turning into a garbage can. There is trash everywhere and we don’t know what to do with it. We decide to burn it, throw it on the landfills, and even dump it into the ocean! These actions are not only affecting us, its effecting organisms in our environment. Lots of animals mistake plastic trash for food and consume it. This is likely to continue if a solution is not found. Luckily, Daniel Burd, a high school student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, discovered a plastic consuming microorganism that may be able to solve our problems. He thought about how plastic actually eventually degrades, but it degrades slowly. He asked himself, “Could the microorganisms be bred faster?” He put his question to the test by immersing ground plastic in a yeast solution that encourages microbial growth. The he isolated the most productive organisms. He felt that the first results were encouraging so he kept going. Continuously selecting the most effective strains of bacteria and interbreeding them. Burd achieved 43 percent degradation of plastic in six weeks. This was an accomplishment that was almost inconceivable! Although Daniel is not the only high school student to discover this, he was the first. There was also a student in Taiwan to discover the same thing named Tseng I-Ching.

PERSONAL COMMENTARY

Okay, so I’m not exactly the savviest person when it comes to DNA switcharoos. Maybe because I’ve never done it before, nor have I ever seen it performed. The articles are making it seem pretty easy. I think that if the young man could team up with other scientists studying is same project they could come up with a solution. Apparently, by products of the plastic being broken down by these microbes could cause an even bigger problem in our water source because it will be hard to filter it and it will also diverse into the ocean and once again, kill the animals. I really don’t know what to do about plastic at this point. Right now, I feel like we just need to focus on prevention. If we all used glass bottles the world would be a better place!!!!! I think we should treat plastic like I’ve heard they do cigarettes in Canada. We should put a dead bird with plastic all inside its body, or a dolphin whose nose was all cut up by a broken plastic cup. Then, have a description like, “this is what you’re doing to our marine animals by not throwing your trash away properly.” Then people will feel bad! I think the worst of it is that glass containers aren’t really available with popular drinks so people really have no choice.

WHATS NEXT?

In my personal commentary, I mentioned a more simple approach than accelerating speed of consumption in microbes. I think that every thing should just switch to glass. The most pollution happens with your everyday plastic materials like drinking bottles. I understand chemicals may need a sturdier container but why not change what we can for right now. Glass being thrown into the ocean won’t hurt much of anything! At best it’ll be broken down into sand! There are already companies who have this idea in effect right now. I’ve found from my own experience the Honest Tea franchise as well as Tazo and Sweet Leaf.

Burkhart. K (2010 June 12) Boy discovers microbe that eats plastic Mother Nature Network 

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-inovations/blogs/boy-discovers-microbe-that-eats-plastic