Teen Discovers Method To Dispose of Plastic Bags

Daniel Burd is doing more than his part to help the environment. The Canadian teen has come up with an innovative plan to dispose of the plastic bags that cities and countries around the world are starting to ban.

"We like these conveniences and we sometimes don’t even consider these effects on our earth," Burd told Reuters.

"We don’t have a spare world in our back pocket."

During a science project that won him a $9800 first place prize in the Canada-Wide Science Fair, the Waterloo, Ontario, high school student successfully isolated microorganisms from soil, and used them to facilitate the degradation of 43 percent of his polyethylene sample.

"The purpose of my project was to first of all prove that it’s possible to do the degradation, and I just wanted to develop a beginning procedure that could be used," said Burd, who has also received nearly $34,000 in college scholarship offers.

"We know that after 40 to 100,000 years, the plastic bags will be degraded naturally. Some type of microbe must be responsible for this. So the first step was to isolate this microbe and that’s what I did," said the 17-year-old 11th grade student, who began his research in December 2006.

Burn began the process by first turning the plastic bags into powder, a critical step that increases the surface area and facilitates the growth of the microorganism, Burd said.

Once in powder form, he obtained samples of soil from a landfill, and combined the two with a homemade solution that promotes the growth of the microorganism. After months of trials, he successfully isolated two microbial strains from the genuses pseudomonas and sphingomonas.

Burd then manipulated the microbes to determine the combination that would best degrade strips of plastic bags. Finally, the entire process was optimized by factoring in elements such as microbe concentration and temperature.

"In the end I was able to find that after six weeks incubation 43 percent of my plastic bag is degraded," he said.

Burd hopes to refine his work to shorten the time required for the process and to raise the overall degradation percentage. He believes the process would also work on an industrial scale, with significant environmental benefits.

Burd’s work has drawn widespread praise and attention, and even an invitation by the Canadian Intellectual Properties Office to explore the possibility of patenting his work.