Plastic not Fantastic
Humans produce 500 billion plastic bags annually.
In China, they recently banned it. Australia, Bangladesh, Ireland, Italy, South Africa,Taiwan, Mumbai and India have either banned it or discouraged its use by raising taxes. And on March 27, 2007, San Francisco became the first city in the USA to ban it from large grocery stores.
More people are ditching plastic bags on a local and national level with good reason: we produce about 500 billion plastic bags world-wide, and less than one percent of that is recycled.
A recent QUEST report shows that plastic bottles are straining our environment, too: each year the USA alone produces 50 billion plastic bottles. Some would say to switch from plastic to paper bags - but reports show that paper bags aren’t the most sustainable solution.
Plastic can have a longer shelf-live than humans do: it can persist in the environment for anywhere between 20 to 1,000 years. But a 16-year-old from Waterloo, Canada figured out to decompose it in only six weeks.
Daniel Burd, a student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, discovered the key to decomposing plastic bags for a school science fair. Needless to say, he won.
“Almost every week I have to do chores and when I open the closet door, I have this avalanche of plastic bags falling on top of me,” said Burd to The Record, a Waterloo newspaper. “One day, I got tired of it and wanted to know what other people are doing with these plastic bags.”
First, Burd decided to isolate the microbes that break down plastic in polyethelene plastic bags. Burd ground plastic bags into powder and created a solution to break it down using tap water and yeast. Six weeks later, he found that the plastic weighed 17 percent less than the control group.
Burd then isolated the effective strains that caused the degradation - Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas - and tried the experiment again, adding sodium acecate.
Six weeks later - as opposed to 1,000 years - the plastic decomposed by 43 percent.
For his final report, Plastic Not Fantastic, Burd wrote that his process of polyethylene degradation can be used for large-scale plastic bag biodegradation.
“As a result, this would save the lives of millions of wildlife species and save space in landfills,” wrote Burd.
I agree with what danny did to his plastic bag problem. Decomposing them is a lot better than throwing them in the garbage and having them sit in a land fill. Its better to have them decompose for six weeks rather than having them sit in waste for a 1,000 years.
I think it is really good that this is going to help the world and natural environments and keep the world a cleaner place. Also it is crazy how Daniel Burd discovered this and how dramatic the effect was, that’s pretty amazing.
I agree with this article. I think that plastic is terrible for the environment and i think that Daniel Burd is an absolute genius for thinking about trying to safe the environment and being sucessful. I think the world showuld serioulsy take into consideration Daniel’s idea and apply it to more everyday things.
i dont really care much about what plastic is doing to the environment. i heard that many whales have been swallowing plastic bags and dying. that is pretty gnarly
I think that san francisco banning the plastic bags in major groceries stores is been a great idea. we have taken the iniciative to change things in the United States like they did in countries of Asia and Europe. I think the students trying to find a solution is very good.
I think the solution found by danny is good. It will be able keep more species alive for the next generations and as for san francisco banning plastic bags its a great idea to be an example for
other states to start doing the same.
I think that the paper bag idea is a good one. I recently went to san francisco and got a paper bag from safeway. That waterloo kid is pretty smart if he can figure those things out. GPGB
What daniel discoverd is very facsinating and relieving because now we can help save millions of wildlife species plus it is true that people tend to recycle paper bags more than plastic bags.
I think that this is a great idea not to have plastic bags in all large store. but paper bags arent the best beacuse we are cutting down the trees for more bags. the boy at the science fair was really smart about decomposing the bags but there is most likely a better and faster way to do it,
That Daniel is one smart kid. I really couldn’t understand what he was doing in the article but he found an eco friendly way to decompose plastic bags. I think this is a great thing because I for one hate paper bags and was pissed when i had to carry my groceries in those plus if they just use those then they will have to cut down more tree’s to make them which IMO is a bigger problem so big ups to this kid.
i think the plastic bag idea is very good. it can help our world by saving more trees. Daniel is very smart for being able to figure that out but there should be a faster way of decomposing bags
This is a great thing that Burd invented. The enviorment has been suffering a lot due to new technologies and the advancement of the world. It took a long time but im happy to see technology and inteligence giving back to the enviorment.
Finding ways to recycle plastic bags is better than not recycling them at all. I think it is more efficient to have them decompose than just having them being thrown out. The world would be much cleaner if everyone would recycle thier plastic bags. It would save time rather than having to wait 6 weeks.