16yr Old Boy Discovers Microbe that Eats Plastic

What an awesome story. I mean, we have all been told for my whole life anyway, that plastics, would not breakdown, and fill our dumps for "x" years to come. and now...

"The preliminary results were encouraging, so he kept at it, selecting out the most effective strains and interbreeding them. After several weeks of tweaking and optimizing temperatures Burd was achieved a 43 % degradation of plastic in six weeks, an almost inconceivable accomplishment."

very promising indeed.

Probably won't ever happen. It would be quite amazing if scientists can engineer the microbes to have an optimum at those exact conditions.

this boy is going to be rich. Before we get to serious about it though someon needs to get the paper work on this organism. Big companines will want to buy and and sell it to us for profit.

Wow, very smart kid. There may be a down side to all of this though. I will do some digging for a link but the history channel had something on there about this very type of thing. Plastics of course take a very long time to biodegrade as we all know and they theorized that if a microbe was ever discovered that could break down plastics in a short time span it could also biodegrade every thing else including our planet in a very short span of time. I believe it is called the gray matter theory but I may be wrong of the name. I'm not trying to fear monger or put this kids discovery down I'm just adding to the conversation. I'll see if I can find a link for you guys. Peace.

reply to post by Alaskan Man

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can i ask?? what does it matter what this kid looks like??? it is obvious human behviour that you put that pic up to gain laughs, at his expense i may add!!

This kid has done more for our race than you ever could, hence the fact that you would do such an immature thing as put his pic here, i know that he is not the best looking of people, but that does not remove the fact that he has a brillaint mind, and any of you who are thinking " thats what i thought he would look like "... shame on you. stereotyping!!!!!!!! get a grip all of you!!!

Now we have to revisit all the surgical plastics implanted in people.

There may be harmful byproducts of the microbes.

Smart kid... less Xbox more learning.

There are chemicals that would be far more useful as a plastic-dissolving weapon. =)

You might be thinking of Grey Goo, and that was with nanotech, not microbes.

This can be both a good and bad thing in ways.

Yes, out in the wild, will it start decomposing plastic indiscriminately? look around at all the plastic we use.

Then, when it comes to eating, what comes in eventually comes out.. if plastic goes in, what comes out? What does the bacteria poop out, for lack of a better term.

What else does/will it eat?

This kid ain't that cool, I happen to have 2 very similar trophies myself....

anyone wanna start a thread about seattle's most inspired bartender 2007 AND 2009?

reply to post by Alaskan Man

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Star & Flag

This is great news

Alien Mind

awesome. now i can watch my computer and monitor decompose before my very eyes.

the ultimate computer virus.

people need to stop already with the tinkering.

1,000 years for plastic to decompose in general ..

No worries then really. in 1,000 years there wont be any plastic and his research will be of little importance. But good thinking nonetheless!

Lets hope he can move on to some real groundbreaking solutions.

[edit on 23-6-2009 by jvm222]

reply to post by Alaskan Man

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Uhh Ohh,..Science Fiction about to become science fact...anyone remember the book "Mutant 59 the Plastic Eaters"...now this is scary!

reply to post by Alaskan Man

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Actually, I don't think it will solve a problem.

How many microbes would have to be produced to destory and biodegrade decades of unfathomable amounts of plastic?


This also doesn't take care of the other environmental disasters, paper, wood, metals and whatever diapers are made out of. Oh, and foam.

To produced enough microbes to break down the plastic we have landfilled and that is swrilling around the oceans, would almost be an environmental disaster in itself.

You know what?You are right my friend,which makes my point invalid. Thanks for the correction. It's been so long since I saw the program I was having a hard time recalling the specifics about it. All of this is very interesting though. And what a smart kid.

I can see it already someone grows a large batch of these things thinking they will make millions. Then a problem comes up of how to control them pops up. So since theres no rules on disbosal of this bacteria they just flush it down the toilet destroying the sewer system then getting into the water supply and destroy the pipes for water supply but not befor people wash things with the water cars, boats even your dishes and clothing with buttons and hello third world country.

wow, i honestly wasn't thinking that at all, its sad that you immediately went judgmental.

i didn't post the pic for people to "laugh at him" i did it so people could be amazed by a young man actually making a difference.


not to mention if YOU would have actually read the article, that picture was half way down the page.

please think before you fly off the handle bars again, its shameful.

can anybody say "nobel prize"?

So....all the recycling we're doing on plastics is now nil and void?!! We'll just destroy it and make more!

hmmm...so in order to make more plastics, which is made from OIL, less recycle means more oil production... got it!!!