Boy discovers microbe that eats plastic

[anon]

It's not your average science fair when the 16-year-old winner manages to solve a global waste crisis. But such was the case at last month's May's Canadian Science Fair in Waterloo, Ontario, where Daniel Burd, a high school student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, presented his research on microorganisms that can rapidly biodegrade plastic.

NOTE: a bit of confusion... there are TWO high school students who discovered plastic-consuming microorganisms. The first was Daniel Burd (last year). The second was Tseng I-Ching (last month), a high school student in Taiwan.

Daniel had a thought it seems even the most esteemed PhDs hadn't considered. Plastic, one of the most indestructible of manufactured materials, does in fact eventually decompose. It takes 1,000 years but decompose it does, which means there must be microorganisms out there to do the decomposing.

Boy discovers microbe that eats plastic | MNN - Mother Nature Network

[Mihai]

Man thats great.Now we could solve some problems with plastic waste.

[slikrapid]

isn't it kinda suspicious that a kid could come up with such an idea whereas multiple researchers & companies seem to waste their efforts using modern equipment & methods...this just doesn't feel right

some comments:

Every time I read an article like this, where some kid discovers something, I think about the THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of patents that the pentagon has suppressed and the thousands of patents that big corporations have bought from inventors so that their markets will not be challenged or changed.

People already knew how to decompose plastic. There is just no way to efficiently and safely do it. Gathering the plastic is one problem. The bigger problem though is that it is incredibly risky business to be introducing new species of anything anywhere. What does the plastic decompose into? What happens when you dump a bunch of these micro-organisms on a huge pile of plastic and their population grows too large and suddenly they are polluting things instead of the plastic?

[desodorante]

Well, even very environmentally valuable information like this is not appreciated as long as it does not create a business opportunity. "Green culture" is relatively new (as a fashion), so this was probably known decades ago, but since no one cared about it, and no one was willing to invest in this technology's development, as it did not forged a profitable investment, it was simply obliterated.

[Dynamic]

Hoax or not...this will be welcoming news for us all if it is actually true...Although if it was true than would you think people will pollute more?