Teenager Wins Science Fair, Maybe Solves Environmental Problem (opens in new tab)

(blogs.discovermagazine.com)

17 pointsamelim16y ago11 comments

11 comments

11 comments · 6 top-level

viggity16y ago· 3 in thread

What this kid has done is certainly cool and I can definitely see very legitimate uses for this technology. But what is so awful about burying plastic garbage? I know it supposedly takes 1000 years to decompose, but what does that matter if it is buried and can't easily be accessed by any animal?

I know that there is a problem with plastic getting into the oceans, but how does this technology help that?

jcl16y ago

Actually, I have heard it argued that burying plastic is the best thing we can do for the environment. Our current environmental problems are caused in part by us digging up carbon and releasing it into the air. Putting some of it back in the ground removes it from circulation.

The article closes with a comment about the kid fixing the carbon emissions problem -- which is ironic, considering that his invention makes the problem somewhat worse.

maercsrats16y ago

Well, there is already a lot of plastic in the oceans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

This could be useful for helping to break down that island if it was seeded with a slurry of this bacteria.

Retric16y ago

It's not an island. It's not a visibly dense field of floating debris. The process of disintegration means that the plastic particulate in much of the affected region is too small to be seen The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has one of the highest levels known of plastic particulate suspended in the upper water column. Only the continuous addition of new plastic that keeps the consentrations that high, the plastic actually decomposes fairly quickly.

crpatino16y ago· 1 in thread

Other problem I see is the same as the poop vaporizer in the Jack Black's movie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envy_%28film%29. The fact that the shit is nowhere to be seen does not mean that it is not there anymore.

We know this kid figured out a natural process to fade plastic away. The problem with every process is that it has outputs as well as inputs. It is not a black hole where all plastic bags get lost forever. For the project to "solve" any environment problem (for future waste disposal, what is spread already is likely to remain so) it has to avoid creating dangerous byproducts itself. One risk I see is that very likely the bacteria in this experiment produce some sort of greenhouse gas that is released all over the atmosphere; which is a bad outcome, instead of having that same material buried in a single, concentrated (aka. small), non-livable place.

weaksauce16y ago

It is true that the bacteria must emit some sort of gas or waste product. I wonder if the bags were put into special chambers that could capture the gas and turn it into some kind of usable fuel.

jbrun16y ago· 1 in thread

This was published 1.5 years ago, what has happened since?

pmorici16y ago

This is the third time this has been posted here.

xenonite16y ago

What is it about the remainings? Two comments about that (not by me):

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/05/27/its-i...

It is not scientifically possible to decompose plastic, the only thing that happens is that the plastic is broken into even smaller microscopic bits that are filtered through all polluted areas; the water is the most dangerous because plankton and other small organisms filter feed the small bits of plastic and it travels through the food chain back to us and other animals.

http://seeinggreen.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/05/can-plastic...

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.

philk16y ago

Awesome project but I don't think this really counts as solving the problem of plastic bags:

* Ideal conditions are unlikely to be encountered in the wild.

* Plastic bags are spread out throughout the environment. How to get the plastic-munching bacteria to this disparate plastic isn't solved. (If all the plastic is in one place, well, we've got recycling already).

* The existing bacteria in the world will probably outcompete the bacteria this guy has developed.

jerhinesmith16y ago

Some discussion from the last time this story was posted:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=732123

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