Teenager Discovers how to Decompose Plastic Bags

Photo by: flickr/Andrew Davidson

The Headline from Wired Science: "Teen Decomposes Plastic Bag in Three Months"

Around the world we produce over 500 billion plastic bags each year.  These bags clog waterways and city streets, maim wildlife, and are believed to take over 1,000 years to break down.

People find ingenius ways to turn these environmental hazards, into useful products like musical instruments, yarn, and bricks. But no matter how many bags are reused and upcycled, there are still far too many littering our streets.  What if there was a way to get rid of them entirely?

As Karen Kawawada of The Record reports, a sixteen year old from Canada may have the homegrown technology to do just that.

David hated that his family had so many plastic bags and no way to get rid of them.  He hypothesized that there must be a way to biologically decompose the bags and set out to find it.

"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"

Daniel continued tinkering with and testing the plastic-eating effectiveness of different bacteria until he came up with a solution that provided 46% degredation in 6 weeks.  At that rate, he estimates it would take only 3 months to fully decompose the plastic bag.

Daniel told The Record:

"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."

I'm noticing a trend of bright young people mixing the power of nature with a little bit of science to invent extraordinary technologies that are good for the environment and good for people.  We'll be taking a look at more of them on this blog in the coming weeks, including some from the Invent Your World competition.

Until then, who are the young people that you know coming up with great new inventions that you never thought possible? Let us know!