Think about how many things you touch a day. Now think about how many of those things are plastic. Plastics are great materials, they are strong but lightweight, flexible but permeable and the most important fact is that it is extremely cheap to produce. Plastics are everywhere, from our homes, grocery stores, hospitals and etc. That’s the problem, Plastic is everywhere. Most importantly plastic is not biodegradable, that straw you use for ten minutes can take up to 200 years or more to decompose naturally. Most plastics used today are single-use plastics and it is polluting our planet. In 1975, The National Academy of Science estimated about 14 billion pounds of garbage is being dumped in the oceans every day, most of which is unrecyclable plastic that will end up circulating the oceans for centuries.
On paper, the solution is easy, just get rid of plastics. One problem though, there is nothing better at doing what plastic does, then plastic. When it comes to its low cost, versatility and durability the plastic that we use today is unbeatable. Obviously, we aren’t getting rid of plastics anytime soon, so we need to find a way to deal with them with a more intelligent approach. That means two things, we have to develop new environmentally friendly material to use instead of the fossil fuel based plastic used today, and that also means we have to clean the already existing plastic that we used.
One team, at the center of sustainable polymers at the University of Minnesota, that has been working on developing a new sustainable replacement for plastics. This team managed to change the way plastics are made, 90% of plastics used today are made from petroleum, but at the University of Minnesota, they made plastics using bacteria. They use the bacteria known as “Ecoli” and other naturally occurring materials, to produce “plastics” by genetically modifying the bacteria to synthesize molecules that can be polymerized to create new material, with proper nutrition and fermentation process the bacteria produces a precursor to plastic when mixed with a catalyst the chemical reaction produces a substances similar to plastic and it is biodegradable. what makes this material different from conventional plastic, is the fact when it gets collected it can be broken down into the same precursor they started with, so repeating the process of producing plastic will be easier than ever.
Power Of Engineering 