81–90 of 329 posts
"To confirm it wasn't just the chewing mechanism of the caterpillars degrading the plastic, the team mashed up some of the worms and smeared them on polyethylene bags, with similar results." A disturbing but effective way to test the hypothesis.
"To confirm it wasn't just the chewing mechanism of the caterpillars degrading the plastic, the team mashed up some of the worms and smeared them on polyethylene bags, with similar results." A disturbing but effective way to test the hypothesis.
Yeah, pretty horrible.
"A chance discovery occurred when one of the scientific team, Federica Bertocchini, an amateur beekeeper, was removing the parasitic pests from the honeycombs in her hives. The worms were temporarily kept in a typical plastic shopping bag that became riddled with holes." What a great accident.
The history of science is full of such accidents, the discovery Penicillin being one of the most famous. http://www.kidsdiscover.com/quick-reads/penicillin-found-fun...
Imagine yourself coming home with your bicycle and having a massive (250 ug) LSD trip only having experienced it once, pretty scary and interesting at the same time [1].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann#Discovery_of_LS...
[1]: http://www.thegooddrugsguide.com/articles/lsd_accident.htm
Scaling up enzymes ftw! Anyone interested?
IndieBio, $250k seed investment: http://indiebio.co/companies/
I am skeptical that any sort of bacteria/insect based plastic decomposition project will address the problems with plastic waste. The biggest problem with plastic is not with the products that make it into the landfill, where bacteria could be used. The problem is with what happens when they don't make it into a landfill, and they end up as basically permanent pollutants in the water.
I, for one, have never understood the problem with landfills. There's tons of unused space left, and landfills take up a tiny fraction of that. Who cares if we make a trash hill somewhere and styrofoam sits there for a million years?
What exactly comes out the other end? Small pieces of plastic?
"The analysis showed the worms transformed the polyethylene into ethylene glycol, representing un-bonded 'monomer' molecules." Moderately toxic, but breaks down in the air in about 10 days. Used in antifreeze. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene_glycol
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I, for one, have never understood the problem with landfills. There's tons of unused space left, and landfills take up a tiny fraction of that. Who cares if we make a trash hill somewhere and styrofoam sits there for a million years?
I think the biggest issue people have with landfills is that it's basically banking on the things being dumped there not having an adverse effect on the environment, ground water, etc over a long period of time. Even if no one really knew/knows/ensures what is entirely safe to dump.