A story from last year’s TheRecord.com explains that plastic can now be degraded by natural microbes at an impressive rate. The solution? A high school student figured out he should isolate the most productive strains by testing them on plastic bags.
He knew plastic does eventually degrade, and figured microorganisms must be behind it. His goal was to isolate the microorganisms that can break down plastic — not an easy task because they don’t exist in high numbers in nature.
First, he ground plastic bags into a powder. Next, he used ordinary household chemicals, yeast and tap water to create a solution that would encourage microbe growth. To that, he added the plastic powder and dirt. Then the solution sat in a shaker at 30 degrees.
After three months of upping the concentration of plastic-eating microbes, Burd filtered out the remaining plastic powder and put his bacterial culture into three flasks with strips of plastic cut from grocery bags. As a control, he also added plastic to flasks containing boiled and therefore dead bacterial culture.
Six weeks later, he weighed the strips of plastic. The control strips were the same. But the ones that had been in the live bacterial culture weighed an average of 17 per cent less.
That wasn’t good enough for Burd. To identify the bacteria in his culture, he let them grow on agar plates and found he had four types of microbes. He tested those on more plastic strips and found only the second was capable of significant plastic degradation.
Next, Burd tried mixing his most effective strain with the others. He found strains one and two together produced a 32 per cent weight loss in his plastic strips. His theory is strain one helps strain two reproduce.
The BBC says 2020 is when the country will eliminate their carbon footprint.
There is a growing consensus that, unless the world takes drastic action to slash carbon pollution, warming will tip beyond man’s control, unleashing unprecedented global catastrophe.
This is why, on 15 March this year, the Maldives announced its plans to become the world’s first carbon-neutral country in ten years. Our oil-fired power stations will be replaced with solar, wind and biomass plants; our waste will be turned into clean electricity through pyrolysis technology; and a new generation of boats will slash marine transport pollution. By 2020, the use of fossil fuels will be virtually eliminated in the Maldivian archipelago.
An explosion and fire in San Francisco has led authorities to advise residents to stay indoors
An underground explosion in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood has prompted fire officials to issue a shelter-in-place warning this afternoon because of toxic smoke caused by an underground explosion and fire.
About 4,500 Pacific Gas and Electric customers lost power shortly after 11:30 a.m., when an underground explosion occurred in the area of Polk and O’Farrell streets.
Firefighters used CO2 to suppress the flames, but PG&E requested they stop using it in order to allow the equipment to fail completely, fire Lt. Mindy Talmadge said.
But when firefighters stopped using the CO2, a black cloud of smoke seven stories high rose from the manhole. At one point around 1:15 p.m., flames 10 feet high shot from the manhole.
The downtown area has been seriously impacted as buildings with smoke detectors automatically have shutdown systems including elevators.
I certainly hope that the restructuring of GM will bring forward engine technology such as this awesome diesel V8:
These features give the new engine an unusually small, light, and narrow form factor for a diesel, with the ability to fit anywhere the current LS-series gasoline V-8 will go, according to GM sources. Potential applications mentioned so far include pickup trucks under 8,600 pounds GVW and the Hummer H2. While no passenger-car plans have been revealed so far, the new engine’s small footprint allows GM “the flexibility to introduce this engine in a wide variety of vehicle applications should there be future market demand,” according to GM statements. [And what a potential hot rod engine swap candidate! -Ed.