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Bacteria Eat Styrofoam
chaosmage42 writes "Scientists at the University of Dublin have found a way to break down styrofoam, the bane of recyclers/composters everywhere. This could be a great step towards sustainability, but it does require the styrofoam to be heated first."
I eat styrofoam too. I didn't realize that I could get articles written about it! I guess it's time to author a new slashdot story.
Well, with global warming this will no longer be a problem... :-P
Unfortunately, eating the styrofoam causes the bacteria to shit lead. Give a penny, take a penny.
More
Last I checked, heating styrofoam let off some pretty nasty gasses... Is this really the whiz-bang solution we were hoping for?
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
Anyway, the scientists fed this styrene oil to the soil bacteria Pseudomonas putida, which converted it into biodegradable plastic known as PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates).
The next step for University College Dublin researchers is to get the bacteria to excrete Guinness.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Now all we need is a landfill problem so this solution could really take off!
Just disolve the styrofoam with gasoline and tada, you have napalm. Bingo bango, problem solved!
I've often wondered about exactly how long modern plastic bags or throw away plastic water bottles last when chucked into the sea or buried.
The problem is really apparent if you travel through India or another less developed country. They have no social stigma against littering like we do in western countries.
Plastic bags and water bottles are everywhere throughout the landscape, I've seen mountain villages use otherwise pristine streams as dumping grounds for vast mounds of plastic.
Will these things ever break down? Does anyone have links to information on the actual rates of decay of a standard plastic water bottle?
I have 5-gallon bottle of water, algae, moss, various aquatic creatures and about a dozen styrofoam peanuts. Its a nearly closed self-maintaining ecosystem that my wife calls my "pet dirty water." After some 10 years, peanuts are almost 2/3 gone -- eroded by something in the water. 10 years may seem like a long time, but compared to scare-tactic predictions of that styrofoam never goes away, this article (and my aquarium) proves otherwise.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Krylon spraypaint also eats away at it.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
This could be a great step towards sustainability, but it does require the styrofoam to be heated first.
I hope so. It would be rather bad if there was a bacteria that could feed on styrofoam that hadn't been altered in some way. Order some electronics online, and they arrive in a box dripping with whatever organic waste products these bacteria leave behind... Yeah, I'm glad.
The enemies of Democracy are
I'd like to see a comprehensive cost/benefit analysis in a real-world application. On the one hand, ridding ourselves of zillions of cubic yards of polystyrene materials (yes, Styrofoam is a trademarked name). On the other hand, releasing a bacteria through animal (?) husbandry may have repercussions about which we have not thought. I'd be very interested to see an analysis of whether or not these particular bacteria can have detrimental excretions, or even have an issue with the bacteria mutating into an "undesireable" breed.
I'm glad this type of research is ongoing. We really need to help old lady Earth out as much as possible these days.
A Passionate Independent Musician
From reading the article (I know, how novel!), I understand that the styrofoam must be turned into a liquid and the first thing that came to my mind was: How much energy is required to do that?
The foam doesn't just need to be warmed, it has to be heated to the point of breaking down. I can't imagine doing this on a large scale would be cheap. Would the enviromental impact resulting from the creation of millions of joules of energy required to break down styrofoam outweigh the environmental benefits of destroying the styrofoam?
Also, I have learned from my accidental non-scientific microwave experiments that melting styrofoam smells terrible. Would liquifying styrofoam on a large scale produce similar noxious fumes (and potential environmental side effects)?
We've known that since the Vietnam war, at least.
...hope they eat our late-coming, cliche-posting overposters.
I had a good debate with a ('socialist') friend yesterday regarding funding research and development voluntarily -- medical, environmental, etc.
We had talked about the problem with pollution and his solution was always using government to try to make people stop polluting. Yet it seems to me that there are other solutions, including finding ways to take pollutants and break them down. I've heard more and more over the recent years about using bacteria to break down oil spills and radioactive wastes and even to use bacteria to eat up garbage dumbs. Here is another article regarding new bacteria that serve the purpose of cleaning up past pollutions.
I know from my experiences that government regulations on polluting seem to have a positive effect of making the world cleaner, but they also have a negative effect of reducing a company's ability to provide their customers with a product or service at the best price. Sure, the average socialist will say that corporations just want to pollute the world so they can make a buck, but that's not the case: corporations want to provide the best price to their consumers, which is why pollution has tended to be so obvious. It also seems to me that there are new and amazing ways to fix the problem of pollution without only making the source stop.
Are there organizations, private ones, that are dedicated to finding new ways to combat the pollutants around us? If so, I'd love to know how I can help fund them. I'm a regular reader of perc.org which focuses on private and voluntary environmentalism, and I'd love to put my money where my mouth is.
In Soviet Russia Styrofoam eats you!
There. Someone had to do it.
Did you guys remember how Teflon(TM) was non-biodegradable? Well, the Teflon guys modified E.Coli to digest Teflon. Ta-da, problem solved :)
See, this is one of the good parts about genetic engineering, I recall other bacteria being used in water treating plants to process cyanide (was it on Discovery where I saw it?). To prove the non-toxicity of the water they used fish in the outstream. The fish was breathing without problems.
When I was in Manaus, Brasil many years ago, the entire floor was covered with poisonous liquids... Eventually we found the big 200 L barrel which had emptied. Who would emptied that barrel, and why?! Well, the answer was underneath. The entire bottom had been perforated by some notoriuous beetle larvae eating the low polymer plastics of the barrel. It had the beautiful winding pattern you may see on murky wood at times. Guess if that 1 cm larva got a surprise trying to drink 200 L of poisonous fluids...
...not the "University of Dublin" which is a completely different entity.
now if they could only fart ozone..
Generally speaking it's pretty slow. Hundreds of years. And even then you will be left with some nasty redidue. It's a petrolium product. They never really go away.
That's why we recycle so much plastic these days. I believe all water bottles are recyclable. Now in countries without recycling, yeah, big problem. But whatever, they got all sorts of problems if they're a 3rd world country.
"but it does require the styrofoam to be heated first."
What will they demand next? Some rolls and butter?
I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
Larry Niven's famous Ringworld civilization (SPOILER ALERT) collapsed when they became infested with rampant superconductor-eating bacteria.
What happens when these bacteria inevitably escape into the "wild"? Powerplants and conduits, whose designers never anticipated that hot styrofoam would rot within a few weeks, could suddenly fail, causing disasters worldwide. Nuclear plants, including nuclear submaries and aircraft carriers, could literally explode once their insulation (both heat and electric charge) disappears. Less sensational, but probably more destructive overall, bacterial infestations of general consumer products would destroy vast amounts of property with styrofoam components. Much of it critical, some of it valuable, but all of it gone, likely in large quantities.
The bacteria engineers would be much more responsible to include a critical factor required by the bacteria for digesting styrofoam, other than just heat. Like a cheap, biodegradable, nontoxic fluid "tagged" with a specific set of functional groups. That "synthetic enzyme" would allow the bacteria to eat the styrofoam when applied. When not applied, the bacteria couldn't eat, couldn't reproduce. We could control the amount of styrofoam consumed by controlling the cheap enzyme, mixing it into landfills and water purification.
--
make install -not war
Or, at least I say I am to people I work with. I also usually add "I don't have kids, why should I care". This usually gets their attention a bit more than whining to them about the environment.
Don't forget to mention that you're buying a gas sucking utility vehicle!
Plastic bags and water bottles are everywhere throughout the landscape, I've seen mountain villages use otherwise pristine streams as dumping grounds for vast mounds of plastic.
Will these things ever break down?
As technology increased, we will find solutions. Look at space travel. At one time, it was something only a large government superpower like the USA or USSR could do. 30 years later there are other nations. And today we have private companies taking people into space. What will happen in another 20 years, will a ticket for a space flight fall to $500?
One possible solution to the problem you describe is to use the great incinerator in the sky. Maybe NASA will become profitable as the largest garbage company?? They will support their research branch by hauling away our plastics on one way trips to the sun in cheap shuttles.
Maybe some company will find a way to refine or recycle plastics into usefull products. India is filled with engineers, one of them will think something up. Maybe the trash plastic can be melted and reshaped into a rock hard bycicle frame? Or it can be shaped like drywall to make cheap housing. Who knows. The only thing which limits us is our imagination. Until then, there will be lots of trash.
This actually scares me. What happens to modern society when bacteria, fungus, and other assorted critters evolve the ability to break down plastics? There is no particular reason this can't happen, as plastics would make an extremely high-energy organic food source.
Imagine if your laptop computer started growing mold like an old loaf of bread. Now take a look around your house, office, or wherever and imagine if every single plastic item in existence did. Maybe it won't ever happen -- I certainly hope not -- but this is a worrying first step. Are we too confident in the permanence of our plastic items?
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
Now, if those bacteria give off energy as they devour the styrofoam, we already have some sort of algorithm to try to get the bacteria to follow courtesy of Symantec's recent coding contest.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
"University of Dublin" => www.tcd.ie
"University College Dublin" => www.ucd.ie
They're different universities, can someone update the initial comment?
cool the bacteria!
----
"Those who quote others are more likely to one day be quoted" -Tom Planter
The good news is that the PET (what water bottles are made from) will degrade from UV exposure. The bad news is that manufacturers add UV stabilizers to containers made from PET in order to protect the contents from UV, the stabilizers also protect the plastic from UV. My questions are: If PET water bottles will eventually degrade from UV exposure, what chemicals do they release and what compounds do they degrade into? Are the decompostion products more or less environmentally desireable than an intact water bottle? Are the UV stabilizers leaching into the product?
The article wasn't very clear on numbers, but...
Composting produces quite a bit of heat, if it requires to be heated to those temperatures, it could be included in a process (bury it in compostable material, let the heat build up, etc).
Else, you could use solar energy. Our backyard composters are black plastic, they're frigid now, but in the summer sun they get so hot you can barely touch 'em... then again, TFA seems to imply "heated to liquefaction", so, maybe not.
You can't take the sky from me...
I might be the only one who remembers Larry Niven's "Ring World" series - SciFi about a ring that completely circles a star, and that provides many millions of times the living area of Earth. The Ring World's civilization was destroyed through the introduction of a plastic-eating microorganism. (The things ate the superconductors.)
I've long worried that some entrepreneurial little microbe would learn to efficiently eat modern plastics, and spread. My truck wouldn't run without plastics. My computer would not work. My carry pistol's polymer frame would be eaten (no that it would help vs. microbes.) Food packaging would be targeted. All that storable food in 5 gallon buckets and Food Saver bags would be exposed. The handle would fall off my pocket knife! My cheap, optical microscope that I put aside for post-nuclear-war diagnosis would be trashed. Most lab equipment is plastic, and would be eaten. Plastic pipes and valves would die, causing problems. We would not have the technology left to beat the little buggers, and we'd die off.
Andy Out!
This is great news!
Now we need to take it to the next level and find out a way to make these same bacteria eat whole fast food restaurants, and the world will be saved!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Hmmm... sounds to me like the packing, cooler, refrigerator, insulation and plastic cup industries could be in BIG trouble if this little bacteria gets out in the wild in warm climates. Would you believe picking up your cooler in the park and having the bottom fall out? ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
...this could be the demise of shipping containers everywhere!
This just in! 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population.
I kid, I kid.
--Residential Interior Design
...who swallowed a cat
How about that? She swallowed a cat!
She swallowed the cat to catch the rat,
She swallowed the rat to catch the spider
That wiggled and jiggled and tiggled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly,
She swallowed the fly to catch the bacteria,
She swallowed the bacteria to catch the styrofoam,
I don't know why she swallowed the styrofoam,
Perhaps she'll experience lead-hydrocarbon toxicity effects.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
But on a public policy side, there's no landfill shortage at all.
Check out this article from the New York Times magazine, "Recycling is Garbage" by John Tierney. From the article:
A. Clark Wiseman, an economist at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., has calculated that if Americans keep generating garbage at current rates for 1,000 years, and if all their garbage is put in a landfill 100 yards deep, by the year 3000 this national garbage heap will fill a square piece of land 35 miles on each side.
This doesn't seem a huge imposition in a country the size of America. The garbage would occupy only 5 percent of the area needed for the national array of solar panels proposed by environmentalists. The millennial landfill would fit on one-tenth of 1 percent of the range land now available for grazing in the continental United States. And if it still pains you to think of depriving posterity of that 35-mile square, remember that the loss will be only temporary. Eventually, like previous landfills, the mounds of trash will be covered with grass and become a minuscule addition to the nation's 150,000 square miles of parkland.
It appears someone archived it here.... http://www.williams.edu/HistSci/curriculum/101/gar bage.html
And there's the actual nytimes page... http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/063096- tierney-magazine.html
(If you get to this link from John Tierney's nytimes columnist page, they give you this article for free, but if you follow any other link, they try to charge you. weird!)
Something that is inert in the environment like polystrene really isn't that much of a problem. We have plenty of land, the only problem with landfills is the NIMBY phenomena.
What becomes a problem is when stuff starts degrading into bioactive compounds that cause various health issues. Once an inert material becomes toxic and mobile through biodegradation have you really done anything good?
but it does require the styrofoam to be heated first
Well of course! Who wants to eat cold styrofoam?
Would this not be an excellent use for a Pebble bed reactor or similar device instead of using heat to make electricity to make heat why not just use the heat?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670496626/102-17 19409-4630548?v=glance&n=283155
When this gets into the environment, and teams up with an extremophile to create the heat, watch out. End of civilization as we know it.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Won't they just be hungry again in an hour after eating the stryofoam that my Chinese takeout came in?
University of Dublin is a different university altogether. University College Dublin is part of the National University of Ireland. University of Dublin is our arch nemesis Trinity College! Damn Prodestants! Taking credit for our work!
We use a lot of EPS and styrofoam where I work (theatre, we make a lot of scenery with it), and we use a product called "Meltdown".
h tm/.
http://visualpollution.com/Construction/meltdown.
Essentially you spray this stuff on the foam, it smells a bit like oranges. Within seconds, it "dissolves" the foam, and can actually be used over again, so what we do is spray the foam, then put it in a bucket and keep feeding pieces into the bucket. It makes a sticky "slime". I'm honestly not sure what we do with the substance once we're done, but I think that we just keep using it in the bucket, it keeps eating foam. I imagine that at some point it reaches some sort of "equilibrium" where it doesn't dissolve any more. The MSDS http://visualpollution.com/PDF/Meltdown.pdf/ says it is accepted by most sewage plants.
I suppose the advantage of the article's subject is that it actually turns the foam into something usable, rather than just d-Limonene sludge.
Of course I'd rather have my food cooked than raw! Pan fried it with some salt please!
Why the concern over a rock? A rather soft rock.
[looks at his computer]
.but the tricky part is input. Do they *make* metal keyboards?
I guess I'll be buying one of those expensive Aluminum cases when that happens. .
Maybe they can use a combination of heat-producing bacteria.
Heated styrofoam! The humanity! :o
Could you also go ahead and post some links to articles regarding the fact that there is no impending oil shortage? (...or that global warming has nothing to do with human activity and the same goes for the ozone hole...)
Recycling is about sustainability and energy efficiency. It's about turning the waste stream into a raw material stream, not about diverting it from landfills. Like any other process like this, it needs to be economical to be successful. Not that I have anything against landfills... I mean, they take up hardly any real estate and they smell fantastic!
Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters
It describes that very scenario about some plastic-eating bug which accidentally is released and starts to chew not only on the plastic it was designed to eat but also other plastics...
Cause that's the next question: you can design a bug which eats some certain sort of plastics, but what happens if it mutates and starts eating other stuff as well?
Perfect! This is why we must continue our efforts to achieve global warming.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
dunkin' donuts coffee works too
I've noticed there seems to be less stigma, but I've noticed something else. all those huge piles of garbage have poor people living in them. we have poor people living in piles of garbage elsewhere in the world, too. we just call them hobos instead of peasants or subsistence farms, since we don't have nearly as many of them in the richer parts of the western world.
You'll never get away with it!
What did she ever do to you to deserve this?
Not wanting to be pedantic or anything, but the researchers are at University College Dublin (UCD), not the University of Dublin, which consists solely of Trinity College Dublin (TCD). Far various centuries-old reasons, UCD is part of the National University of Ireland rather than being part of the University of Dublin. (Full disclosure: I'm an academic at UCD, and used to be an academic at TCD.)
-- Simon
But if we resort to dumping all of our trash into the sun, we'd soon run out of materials that could otherwise be recycled and the Earth would end up like Bethselamin. And you thought the receipt-whores at Walmart or BestBuy were bad...
I was going to say that too... but then you have to get rid of the napalm somehow. But then it's not a waste problem anymore. It's a military problem!
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
She calls them "rice cakes", though.
Sounds suspicious to me - but then I love the random jokes people play on that day
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Styrofoam (R) is a Trademark of The Dow Chemical COmpany. What this article is talking about is normal polystyrene such as taht used in cups.
Why the concern over a rock? A rather soft rock.
Good question. I guess the obvious (as you know) answer is that we're even softer rocks. And I, for one, care what happens to me and mine.
There was already a known way of breaking down polystyrene using limonene,the solvent in citrus oil in the rinds of citrus fruit -- the same solvent used in those aromatic citrus household cleaners.
Using bacteria for this is new, but I thought it'd be helpful to provide some perspective on the subject.
* BTW, Styrofoam is a brand that's been generalised, like Kleenex.
Introducing styrofoam-consuming bacteria is all part of my master plan to get McDonalds to bring back the Mc D.L.T. Styrofoam is required to "keep the hot side hot, and the cool side cool."
I think they even claimed it was implemented in Japan (I have no idea if this is true or not), with trucks that could pick up styrofoam and dissolve it en route, meaning they could pick up a LOT of material because most of the volume of styrofoam is air. Back at the processing plant, they clean the solution with filtering, recover the polymer chains, and make new materials, even stuff like pens, not just new styrofoam.
In short, does anyone know more about this, and why it hasn't been brought to the US? (besides our suckage at most things environmentally friendly)
How is this useful? Can't you just use the styrene oil (I think that's what TFA called it) to make more polystyrene?
And if most polystyrene isn't recycled, how are you going to gather it up to feed it to the bacteria?
Or are we going to light the landfill on fire, then spray it with the bacteria?
I just feel like I'm missing something here....
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
If the styrofoam needs to be heated first, we just need to start polluting our atmosphere, and then that will cause global warming which will allow the bacteria to digest the waste we create! Wait, somthing doesn't seem right about that...
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
If one wants to do something useful with all the excess styrofoam, consider that it is basically a long-chain alkane with phenyl group side chains, each of which individually look a lot like toluene. Looking at it from the phenyl group's point of view, it's an aromatic ring with a big anonymous alkane hanging off it, which will act perfectly well as an activating, ortho-para directing side chain. Add some nitric and sulfuric acid and you've made poly-TNT. The only reason this is more difficult than the standard stepwise nitration of toluene is that it's hard to find a solvent that dissolves polystyrene but is also fully miscible with the nitric/sulfuric, but there ARE solutions (pardon the pun) to the problem.
'course these days that's probably not a wise area to be researching.
While I'm on the subject of getting hydrophobic and hydrophilic things together:
Know why white bears dissolve in water?
Coz they're polar!
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I read somewhere that when you burn it as fuel, styrofoam returns 90% of the energy that was used to create it. That is a pretty efficient recyclable if you ask me. You cant recycle the raw material but you sure can recycle the energy.
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
It's University College Dublin. Did the submitter even read TFA?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
This is somewhat late to the discussion, but I wanted to emphasise that this the research was done in University College, Dublin ("UCD", also known as "NUI Dublin"). The submitted blurb says "University of Dublin" (a.k.a. "Trinity College"), which isn't the same place at all. Think "Penn State University" vs. "University of Pennsylvania".
styrofoam is a dish best served cold.
Is it 5:30 yet?
Maybe the people who produce styrofoam could eat it themselves.
So, in Australia, (and the US, from what I know) McDonalds no longer sell their burgers in styrofoam containers.
I recently went for a bit of a tour of Europe, and while I was there, received burgers in styrofoam containers. I was a little surprised, as I hadn't seen a burger come like that for years and years. I was a bit more surprised, however when my girlfriend pointed out that the container said it was made in 1996. I didn't think about this too much the first time.
Then I noticed that I was getting styrofoam containers from 1996 in more than one country, and ALL of the containers had "1996" on them. It seems like McDonalds produced TONNES of these containers in 1996 and when they were getting too much bad publicity in the US for using them, they shipped all of their US supplies over to Europe, where they are still using their surplus containers from 1996.
Tierney's widely regarded as a grumpy-old-man crank with a self described "contrarian" streak a mile wide. In other words, he does this sort of thing to get a rise out of people.
His article is pretty thouroughly debunked, and was nicely discredited within months of its publication.
You can listen to the scientists, or you can listen to the crackpot at the NYT.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
Don't stack your rocks so high that they might fall on you.
I love this argument, because it's sooo liberal.
In short it's "Don't worry about consequences, we'll figure out how to fix them."
Now, don't dismiss it out of hand. The author is right - over time, people have solved some rough problems. The danger is getting fooled into it... for instance:
Don't worry about smoking, we'll figure out how to cure cancer. I'm absolutely certain that someone will figure out how to cure cancer. I'm also absolutely sure that cure (for lung cancer) isn't going to be in the next year.
So, let's take things a little more conservatively, and not spend our money before we have it. A little risk is worth a little reward - playing Russian Roulette is a dumb thing to do.
"Styrofoam is a dish best served cold."
Aren't the bumpers in cars made out of styrofoam?
...The good news is...
And would they get heated enough during operation to allow for their decomposition?
So hypothetically, if these bacteria get out, the world will be slightly less safe for drivers everywhere.
I'll prime for someone:
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
The garbage would occupy only 5 percent of the area needed for the national array of solar panels proposed by environmentalists
What the fuck does that have to do with anything? You do also realise that you're talking about a pile of trash that's half a kilometer deep vs a potentially small surface construct that can go anywhere?
And why is anyone pro-solar suddenly lumped with those crazy "environmentalists" and talked down to? Your logic seems to be approximately: "Because environmentalists are no doubt hippies. And most hippies are communists. You don't like solar power.. you don't like.. communists.. do you?"
Environmentally friendly practices should be the default, and a term should be applied to those that are not.. a term like: "destructionists".
Anyway, your argument doesn't hold weight as I'd be quite happy to have the entire roof of my house covered with solar panels - and even as the entire surface of my driveway. This may come as a shock, but I don't want my house (or my backyard) covered in garbage - even if it was just a tiny bit to a depth of 300 to 500 meters.
As a man-made construct: Solar panels == good. Garbage == bad. Got that?
Eventually, like previous landfills, the mounds of trash will be covered with grass and become a minuscule addition to the nation's 150,000 square miles of parkland
Yes. Except that you often have to sink pipes down into the ground to vent explosive gases as the trash decomposes or it may catch fire and burn. It'll also stink for a good 20 years, even when the vegetation returns. The groundwater will be permanently polluted in the region from the plastics, metals and human waste contaminants. Any structures built will be unstable as the ground slowly shifts on top of decaying matter. In short: that land will be destroyed.
Sounds a tad like Andromeda Strain; minus the death and nuclear fallout and the bacteria broke down rubber not plastic, but same concept.
'Or else pizza is going to order out for you'
So you would rather that we wait for their to be a landfill problem?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I'm surprised that people from Trinity College (which is also Dublin University) haven't started a shitstormflamewar yet about /. referring to UCD as the University of Dublin...
Even lowly bacteria.
90% of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at.
*cough* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Dublin
The University of Dublin has existed since 1592, however it has only one constituent college, this been Trinity (TCD)
You can't just launch something into space and have it fall into the sun. You need to blow a ton of energy getting rid of 30km per SECOND of sideways momentum or else it will completely miss the sun and orbit it instead.
Environmentally friendly practices should be the default ...
As a man-made construct: Solar panels == good. Garbage == bad. Got that?
I'm all for getting energy from the sun, but a couple of years ago I read that because of the inefficiency of solar cells and their relatively short lifespan, that manufacturing a solar cell consumed more energy than what the cell would produce during its lifetime. Because of this, they really only made sense to use in locations where other electrical sources were not available.
Has technology advanced to the point where solar energy is a net energy-gainer, or was my information faulty? Perhaps this loss was only for photovoltaic cells, and a solar-powered steam turbine system is a net energy producer?
...but I was more interested in this story. Just think...soon there could actually BE sharks with freaking laser beams on their heads.
Oh yeah, because evidently the US is the only country on Earth.
Not all countries in the world have the vast amounts of land that the US does to just chuck things around. Sure, say, Canada does, or Russia, or Australia, but what about say, the Netherlands, where the density of population is absolutely massive, the suburbs practically never end.
Here in the UK, it's either suburbs, villages, or farmland, too, and we've got a 60 million strong population. Occupying an incredibly small chunk of land. WE have a landfill problem.
I've got the spirit, lose the feeling.
So it's nice that they've found a bacteria with an interesting matabolism, but what's the point of speculating about using it to perform actual, industrial-scale recycling? Once you've gone to all the trouble to actually seperate and heat the styrofoam, there are plenty of great ways to perform reactions on it without going through all of the hassle of using bacteria to do it. If you have have styrene oil, your recycling problem is already solved -- the styrofoam has been saved from the dump, and you can use it as a feedstock for lots of reactions. The problem is performing the first step, and finding a less efficient (though extremely cool) way to deal with the styrene doesn't really help.
I noticed that cockroaches also chow down on anything resembling cellulose ... in particular cigarette butts or styrofoam.
:) I always wondered what nutruitional value those things could possibly have for any living thing.
I guess its the bacteria feeding within the pores of it that they're after, and not simply just digesting the styrofoam for the sake of eating something filling.
I would also assume that THHN (common wire insulator made from polyethelene and polystyrene) has the same attraction for them.
Kinda cool
The most difficult part of working for an ecological recycling firm is fighting the seagulls for your turf.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
This book? http://homepage.ntlworld.com/john.seymour1/ukbookg Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater