This is how "Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters" http://www.amazon.com/Mutant-59-Plastic-Eaters-Kit-Pedler/dp... started, a researcher who wants to clean up oil spills and plastic trash has developed a microbe the eats plastic that is accidentally released into the sewers of London.
Someone correct me if I am wrong here, but wouldn't this same selective breeding process happen naturally in any waste area enriched with plastics? (Bacteria will reproduce to the extent that they can metabolize the plastic.) The fact that plastics in landfills haven't disappeared seems to indicate that optimal bacteria in the wild simply don't eat plastic that fast.
The idea is that he isolated the bacteria and identified conditions (i.e. temperatures) where the bacteria are more effective.
If you increase the population of a natural agent and modify the environment, then you should be able to significantly speed up the decomposition of plastics.
Very interesting. Perhaps the article should be titled "boy discovers conditions under which bacteria eat plastic". It still seems like introducing the new bacteria into the environment would be pointless, though. If the conditions in the landfill are left as they are now, I imagine the new bacteria would evolve back into what is presently optimal. If we modify the conditions, these new strains of bacteria would evolve on their own anyway... I guess I am assuming there are no local nash equilibria in the competition between different strains.
It's rather simple to modify the environment of the bacteria, normally plastic in landfills is surrounded by refuse of all different kinds, like paper, metal and the rest of the crap of modern civilization.
The key here would be to select out the plastics that these bacteria thrive on and seed the entire mound with these bacteria. I'm assuming the reaction will naturally be exothermic, which a sufficiently large bacterial density mixed with the naturally insulation properties of plastic should help the pile get near optimal temperature on its own.
However, there are obviously other factors. Do the bacteria release chemicals that are poisonous to themselves? Does the pile need good ventilation? Does it need sunlight or water? Petri dishes and shreds of plastic bags are a good start, but a lot of other factors need to be worked out before we're going to start breaking down enough plastic to matter.
We change our own oil in our vehicles. We save it in oil cans for either burning on a fire or pouring along with gasoline down a hornet hole. We know it's "Bad for the environment" but we do it.
One year, we decided to re-roof our house. Considering it was 2500 sq ft, it was an arduous job. Now, for those that know about roofing, you use tar paper, which is asbestos with really thick petroleum tar (think super thick motor oil). One evening, we left a half of a roll lying outside cause we were too damned tired of taking it off the raised porch. It was on concrete, and not the grass.
The next morning (we started about 9am), the roll of tar paper was crawling - literally. There were hundreds of thousands of ants milling about everywhere. We go to shake them off, and lots of egg sacs fall out. But along with the white egg sacs, we notice that the inside of the roll is now pure white fibers. The ants ATE the petroleum tar.
We've noticed similar events, but never saw it happen over the course of 12 hours. We then tested it later with used motor oil... they ate it up too.
It just tells me that whenever nature creates something (petroleum), it also creates something to eat it. And sometimes nature creates stuff to eat man made stuff.
