Planetfurry BBS Forum Index Planetfurry BBS
Forums for Planetfurry Site Members and more
 
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   DonateDonate   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

Canadian Student has a solution for plastic bag waste

 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Planetfurry BBS Forum Index -> Everyday blither-blather
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
Vallus
Registered User


Joined: 20 Nov 2000
Posts: 397
Location: Oologah, OK

PostPosted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 9:57 am    Post subject: Canadian Student has a solution for plastic bag waste Reply with quote

http://news.therecord.com/article/354044#=rss

Quote:
WCI student isolates microbe that lunches on plastic bags TheRecord.com - CanadaWorld - WCI student isolates microbe that lunches on plastic bags

Karen Kawawada
RECORD STAFF

WATERLOO

Getting ordinary plastic bags to rot away like banana peels would be an environmental dream come true.

After all, we produce 500 billion a year worldwide and they take up to 1,000 years to decompose. They take up space in landfills, litter our streets and parks, pollute the oceans and kill the animals that eat them.

Now a Waterloo teenager has found a way to make plastic bags degrade faster -- in three months, he figures.

Daniel Burd's project won the top prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa. He came back with a long list of awards, including a $10,000 prize, a $20,000 scholarship, and recognition that he has found a practical way to help the environment.

Daniel, a 16-year-old Grade 11 student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, got the idea for his project from everyday life.

"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," he said. "One day, I got tired of it and I wanted to know what other people are doing with these plastic bags."

The answer: not much. So he decided to do something himself.

He knew plastic does eventually degrade, and figured microorganisms must be behind it. His goal was to isolate the microorganisms that can break down plastic -- not an easy task because they don't exist in high numbers in nature.

First, he ground plastic bags into a powder. Next, he used ordinary household chemicals, yeast and tap water to create a solution that would encourage microbe growth. To that, he added the plastic powder and dirt. Then the solution sat in a shaker at 30 degrees.

After three months of upping the concentration of plastic-eating microbes, Burd filtered out the remaining plastic powder and put his bacterial culture into three flasks with strips of plastic cut from grocery bags. As a control, he also added plastic to flasks containing boiled and therefore dead bacterial culture.

Six weeks later, he weighed the strips of plastic. The control strips were the same. But the ones that had been in the live bacterial culture weighed an average of 17 per cent less.

That wasn't good enough for Burd. To identify the bacteria in his culture, he let them grow on agar plates and found he had four types of microbes. He tested those on more plastic strips and found only the second was capable of significant plastic degradation.

Next, Burd tried mixing his most effective strain with the others. He found strains one and two together produced a 32 per cent weight loss in his plastic strips. His theory is strain one helps strain two reproduce.

Tests to identify the strains found strain two was Sphingomonas bacteria and the helper was Pseudomonas.

A researcher in Ireland has found Pseudomonas is capable of degrading polystyrene, but as far as Burd and his teacher Mark Menhennet know -- and they've looked -- Burd's research on polyethelene plastic bags is a first.

Next, Burd tested his strains' effectiveness at different temperatures, concentrations and with the addition of sodium acetate as a ready source of carbon to help bacteria grow.

At 37 degrees and optimal bacterial concentration, with a bit of sodium acetate thrown in, Burd achieved 43 per cent degradation within six weeks.

The plastic he fished out then was visibly clearer and more brittle, and Burd guesses after six more weeks, it would be gone. He hasn't tried that yet.

To see if his process would work on a larger scale, he tried it with five or six whole bags in a bucket with the bacterial culture. That worked too.

Industrial application should be easy, said Burd. "All you need is a fermenter . . . your growth medium, your microbes and your plastic bags."

The inputs are cheap, maintaining the required temperature takes little energy because microbes produce heat as they work, and the only outputs are water and tiny levels of carbon dioxide -- each microbe produces only 0.01 per cent of its own infinitesimal weight in carbon dioxide, said Burd.

"This is a huge, huge step forward . . . We're using nature to solve a man-made problem."

Burd would like to take his project further and see it be used. He plans to study science at university, but in the meantime he's busy with things such as student council, sports and music.

"Dan is definitely a talented student all around and is poised to be a leading scientist in our community," said Menhennet, who led the school's science fair team but says he only helped Burd with paperwork.

Other local students also did well at the national science fair.

Devin Howard of St. John's Kilmarnock School won a gold medal in life science and several scholarships.

Mackenzie Carter of St. John's Kilmarnock won bronze medals in the automotive and engineering categories.

Engineers Without Borders awarded Jeff Graansma of Forest Heights Collegiate a free trip to their national conference in January.

Zach Elgood of Courtland Avenue Public School got honourable mention in earth and environmental science.

[email protected]



http://news.therecord.com/article/354044


I read about this on another message board a while back. I think this kid's got a bright future ahead of him if he's solving these kinds of problems at his age. I also think it's pretty amazing that the solution was also fairly simple. Makes one wonder why this wasn't figured out sooner.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
anthony
Site Owner
Site Owner


Joined: 12 Nov 2001
Posts: 1304
Location: Norway

PostPosted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 1:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nice work.

The only real problem I see is that he's 'attacking a symptom' instead of getting something done about the real problem...

And the problem is that we actually manufacture those billions of shopping bags in the first place.

I'm not entirely guilt-free, myself, but I always have one or more shopping bags folded neatly in a pocket in my jacket, or in my backpack. I figure that I get at least 4 or 5 uses out of each before they're unusable, on average.
Of course, if I only shop a few items, they go directly into my backpack.

And no, I don't use old bags as garbage bags.

Old bags and other plastic 'waste' is all recycled.
(The garbage truck picks up the plastic recycling every 4 weeks around here)
Bottles are recycled at the store.

Note, around here a plastic shopping bag costs from .5 to 1NOK(around .1 - .2$ at current rates) and recycling fees for empty bottles are usually 1NOK for a .5L and 2.5NOK(.5$) for a 1.5L bottle.

_________________
"My name's Lion, Anthony Lion"
A fur with a license to purr...
---
Like my Avatar?
Why not surf over to www.micecomics.com and tell Mary what a stellar job she did...
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
anthony
Site Owner
Site Owner


Joined: 12 Nov 2001
Posts: 1304
Location: Norway

PostPosted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 5:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A little difference is that here in Norway you don't have people stuffing your bags for you. (Most people aren't that lazy, yet, here... )
Also, if you want plastic bags, you either have to ask the ashier for them or pick theum up from a shelf under the converyor belt and leave them on top, together wih your groceries.

Anyway, this means we have a bit more control over which bags and how many are used. Which means we really have no excuse for the 1billion plastic bags used here every year.

Anyway, on the question of recycling, in addition to plastics, we also recycle glass and metal(special containers placed here and there, usually on parking lots outside grocery stores), paper is collected every 4 weeks, and then biological and 'non-biological' waste is also sorted.

_________________
"My name's Lion, Anthony Lion"
A fur with a license to purr...
---
Like my Avatar?
Why not surf over to www.micecomics.com and tell Mary what a stellar job she did...
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Styx
Site Owner
Site Owner


Joined: 25 Dec 2002
Posts: 3176
Location: West Covina, California

PostPosted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 7:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here in the US we're all about the LAZY, people will drive to the mail deposit box four houses down even with the gs prices as they are. Rolling Eyes
_________________
"Political Correctness is tyranny with manners." Charlton Heston

Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
CJ_Krythos
Registered User


Joined: 16 Sep 2004
Posts: 87
Location: Wadsworth, OH

PostPosted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 2:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

meh, the recycling program in my area is completely non existent. In order to recycle, you have to drive about 10 miles to deliver bags of waste that has been divided up by type to the local recycling center. Plus, Im told they require that you pay to recycle certain materials. Id have gotten more info on this had the place even tried to respond to my calls. its like they are encouraged to make things impossible for people in the area to recycle.
_________________
"hey honey, could you tell me if this smells like Cloroform to you?" *holds up a damp rag*
-anonamous

"When taking a vacation from life, death is only the beggining and birth is only the end"
- Crimson Jackal
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message AIM Address Yahoo Messenger
Cookie
Registered User


Joined: 12 Nov 2005
Posts: 1690
Location: Yankee Appalachia

PostPosted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 12:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Styx wrote:
Here in the US we're all about the LAZY, people will drive to the mail deposit box four houses down even with the gs prices as they are. Rolling Eyes


Sad but true. I remember this, A friend of mine wanted to go to the convenient store, which was just across the apartment complex, so I asked "Want to walk over?"

To which she replied "Why the hell would I walk? I have a car."

-_-;

_________________
AKA Skoon

AKA Mogthemoogle
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
Vallus
Registered User


Joined: 20 Nov 2000
Posts: 397
Location: Oologah, OK

PostPosted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 6:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mogthemoogle wrote:
Styx wrote:
Here in the US we're all about the LAZY, people will drive to the mail deposit box four houses down even with the gs prices as they are. Rolling Eyes


Sad but true. I remember this, A friend of mine wanted to go to the convenient store, which was just across the apartment complex, so I asked "Want to walk over?"

To which she replied "Why the hell would I walk? I have a car."

-_-;


There's a Dollar General about 1/4 a mile from where I live. About the only times I'll drive to get something from it is when the weather's nasty or when I'm getting more than I could conveniently carry myself.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
Vallus
Registered User


Joined: 20 Nov 2000
Posts: 397
Location: Oologah, OK

PostPosted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 8:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mike Regan wrote:
How about the people that will drive around in a circle waiting for someone right in front of the store to leave so they can have the spot when there are 7 or 8 empty spots about 50 feet away.


Shopping carts that are secretly designed to seek out their cars and deliberately crash into them.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Planetfurry BBS Forum Index -> Everyday blither-blather All times are GMT - 4 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group