A solution to the world’s plastic crisis may have a possible long-term solution: a Waterloo, Canada teenager, Daniel Burd, has found a way to make plastic bags degrade faster — in three months, he figures. Burd recently 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.
Burd’s discovery isolated two strains of bacteria (Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas) that work together to consume polyethelene plastic at record rates, yielding a culture that rendered plastic bags 43% decomposed after six weeks, with the only outputs being water and an infinitesimal amount of carbon dioxide. The system is cheap, energy efficient, and easily scalable for industrial applications. “All you need,” Burd says “is a fermenter . . . your growth medium, your microbes and your plastic bags.”
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