High School Student Breaking Down Plastic Bags
July 2, 2008
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Plastic bags are a common target for environmentalists. They can take up to 1000 years to decompose while contributing to your carbon footprint, and often end up floating around the air and landing in nearby lakes and ponds. But a high school student from Canada has discovered a way to break down plastic bags in mere months.
Daniel Burd, a 17 year from Waterloo, won first place at the Canada-Wide Science Fair for his discovery, earning him $10,000 and lots of attention from recruiting universities.
Burd is remaining modest about his discovery and saying it still needs a lot of work before it is marketable.
In an effort to reduce the annoyance of all the plastics bags his mom keeps in the home, Burd started some research on how plastic bags decompose. Burd wanted to isolate the bacterium that eventually decomposes the bags and concentrate them.
He took a few soil samples and added polyethylene and a solution to encourage bacteria growth. After six weeks on plastic bags he found that they bags exposed to his solution had lost 17% of their weird compared to the control group.
Burd is now planning on a much larger scale and envisions recycling centres for plastic bags that act like large composters.
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Comments:(1)
wow, great job, thats so good..17 years old. You go Daniel Burd!!!
Posted By: anonymous @ 2008-08-24 20:57:37
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