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."

Comments

Re:In related news...

[Irish_Samurai]

You wouldn't think so, but they do.

I bartended all throughout college and on and off for a little while after while I built up my resume. You wouldn't believe how many Irish and German patrons I had that couldn't get enough of the stuff. It was amazing.

You got to remember, our Imports are their domestic and vice versa.

Re:I've seen this in action.

[HairyCanary]

Or perhaps the styrofoam peanuts are merely breaking apart into smaller chunks. I do not see how your experiment proves that styrofoam does biodegrade (especially when there is scientific evidence to the contrary). And this article does not suggest that there is any bacteria that can eat styrofoam directly -- it has to be heated and converted back into liquid styrene first.

Nice try though.

Re:Cancer anyone?

[luder]

I would be more worried if you said:

"Last I checked, eating styrofoam let off some pretty nasty gasses..."

Re:I've seen this in action.

[DietFluffy]

Did you check the water for dissolved polystyrene? Solubility for polystyrene is very low, but it may be noticeable after 10 years. If it did dissolve and not degrade, that means that all the styrofoam is chemically unchanged and is still in the 5-gallon bottle.

Re:We use a product called "Meltdown"

[Chris Burke]

Interesting. I'd remembered reading on Slashdot a couple years ago about a Japanese scientist who discovered that orange extract would disolve styrofoam quite easily. I tried to do this myself, when I had a large bag full of shipping peanuts and felt bad just throwing it in the trash. I bought a bottle of orange cleaner and tried spraying over the styrofoam to little effect... Dipping a single peanut into a glass of the stuff did mostly dissolve it, but in the end the concentration of d-Limonene in the consumer product I bought was just too low to do the job I wanted. Glad to see others have had more success!

Re:Cost/benefit?

[drew]

Well, yes, except that in that case...

(*** minor spoiler if you haven't read beyond the first book ***)

The bacteria were deliberately introduced into the Ringworld environment with that specific intention, so it wasn't an unintended side-effect.