Video captures moment plastic enters food chain

Dr. Richard Kirby. BNPS

Dr Richard Kirby's footage shows plankton ingesting plastic microfibre

A scientist has filmed the moment plastic microfibre is ingested by plankton, illustrating how the material is affecting life beneath the waves.

The footage shows one way that waste plastic could be entering the marine and global food chain.

An estimated 150 million tonnes of plastic "disappears" from the world's waste stream each year.

Waste plastic in the world's seas has been recognised by the United Nations as a major environmental problem.

"When I saw it, I thought that here was something, visually, to convey to the public the problem of plastic in the sea," said Richard Kirby, who recorded the footage.

"What intrigues me is that because the fibre has made a loop inside the animal's gut, you can actually see the consequences of something as small as the arrow worm consuming microplastic.

Dr Kirby, a self-styled Plankton Pundit, said that people were familiar with the idea of large marine animals - such as whales, seals and birds - swallowing plastic bags.

"But here we have something where we actually see that at a tiny fibre has caused a blockage in something as small as a Sagitta setosa, a member of the plankton, stopping food progressing down.

"An arrow worm's gut extends for the whole length of its body, so this has stopped anything moving down the gut from about just below its head."

Choking oceans

Although Dr Kirby had witnessed the effects of microplastic on plankton before, this was the first time he had filmed it.

He added that this incident was not an isolated occurrence, saying that the sight of plankton ingesting plastic was a relatively common sight in the sample he had collected from British waters.

The issue of plastic waste in the marine environment has been rising up the political and policy agenda.

The United Nations has estimated that there are 46,000 pieces of waste plastic per square mile of sea.

The international body's environment agency, UNEP, has launched a #CleanSeas campaign.

Speaking at the launch of the campaign, the organisation's head, Erik Solheim, said: "It is past time that we tackle the plastic problem that blights our oceans."

He added that plastic waste in the ocean was allowing the material to enter the food chain.

Mr Solheim stated: "We've stood by too long as the problem has gotten worse. It must stop."

The UN estimated that as many as 51 trillion (500 times as many stars estimated to be in our galaxy) particles of microplastic are in the world's seas and oceans.

The widespread presence of plastic in our waters meant that it was a problem for arrow worms, said Emily Baxter, senior marine conservation officer for the North West Wildlife Trusts.

"Their scientific name, chaetognaths, means bristle jaw, and that comes directly back to what they look like," she told BBC News.

"There are about 100 species worldwide. In UK waters they tend to be about one to two centimetres in length.

She added: "They play a really important ecological role in the marine food web. They are voracious predators of other planktonic animals and also represent an important food source for fish, squid and other things that eat plankton.

Dr Baxter said that the video posed a very worrying scenario.

"Even if we stopped producing plastic today this problem is going to continue for a long time. We see it now coming into the bottom of the food chain and potentially affecting the food chain all the way up.

"That problem is not going to go away," she observed.

'Genie out of the bottle'

Dr Kirby said that the "genie was out of the bottle" and that this was visual evidence of the impact of plastic waste in the marine environment.

Previous studies have highlighted the problem of plastic waste in the world's oceans. Researchers have voiced concern over the fact that plastic is listed as non-hazardous waste.

Dr Mark Browne, who has published numerous papers on the effects of plastic waste on the marine environment, said: "Plastic waste is infiltrating the ecosystem at a global scale and this video footage adds to the growing body of evidence showing that polymers are routinely ingested by animals.

"The key question remains: does this material cause ecological impacts and why are governments not using robust science to replace problematic products with safer alternatives?

"This could be done if they tasked ecologists and engineers to work together to identify and remove features of products that (if found as debris in habitats) might cause ecological impacts," he told BBC News.

"Similar approaches are already used to engineer infrastructure ecologically or to make less toxic 'biocompatible' medical devices."

Follow Mark on Twitter: @Mark_Kinver

ORIGINAL: BBC

By Mark Kinver. Environment reporter, BBC News

11 March 2017

Plankton eating plastic caught on camera for the first time

By New Scientist
Published on Jul 6, 2015
Watch zooplankton waft tiny, fluorescent beads of plastic towards them, before swallowing the stuff - demonstrating the dangers of marine litter
Full story: New Scientist

This Company Wants To Stop Our Algae Epidemic By Sucking It Up And Turning It Into Plastic

The combination of rising temperatures and industrial chemicals in our water is creating a lot of algae. Bloom thinks it has a solution to clean up our lakes—and make products in the process.

Bloom uses custom technology to carefully harvest wild algae from the water.

There, they collect algae from the top six inches or so of the water column.

The design, with screens and gentle suction, can't harm wildlife in the water.

Looking at the thick green layer of slime on some Florida beaches, most people see only the environmental crisis: out-of-control algae, fed by human activity and climate change, are killing fish, manatees, and other underwater life. Rob Falken sees a solvable problem and your next pair of shoes.

Along with the algae, the harvester also removes nitrogen and phosphorus.

Bloom, Falken's startup, uses custom technology to carefully harvest wild algae from the water, and then transforms it into a raw material to make plastics and foams for use in clothing, sneakers, car upholstery, and other products. The first product—a foam traction pad for surfboards, made with Kelly Slater—will hit shelves on October 1.

All of those products are typically made from petroleum formed into tiny pellets. Bloom makes pellets from algae instead, solar-drying the algae into flakes, pulverizing the flakes into a powder, and then turning that powder into pellets that can be melted down to merge with the petroleum-based ingredients. By partially replacing the pellets made from fossil fuels—and by sucking up carbon as it grows—the algae also helps lower carbon footprints.

"The end goal is to remove as much of the petroleum feedstock as possible," says Falken. "When you take a waste stream from nature—there naturally but there in such mass because of man made inputs—we can take that feedstock, that problem, and functionalize it into usable goods that are the exact same quality, indistinguishable, from the status quo that's out there today."

The company's small mobile harvesting units sit at the edge of a pond or lake, or float on a pontoon in the ocean, and collect algae from the top six inches or so of the water column.

The company's small mobile harvesting units sit at the edge of a pond or lake, or float on a pontoon in the ocean.

"The harvester works like a giant vacuum, basically," Falken says. The design, with screens and gentle suction, can't harm wildlife in the water; the technology was used first at catfish farms, where sucking up a fish with the algae would be an obvious problem.

Along with the algae, the harvester also removes nitrogen and phosphorus—excess fertilizers that end up in the water from farming, sewage overflows, or lawns, and help cause the algae growth in the first place. Pure, filtered water is returned to the body of water.

In Florida, where officials declared a state of emergency in several counties because of algae blooms this summer, much of the problem comes from giant Lake Okeechobee, where runoff from sugar cane plantations and cattle farms fills the lake with algae-boosting fertilizer. Infrastructure and development in the area have made the problem worse. After heavy rains, the state flushes the algae-filled water out through canals, and it ends up also harming beaches at the coasts.

As the algae proliferate in the water, they can cut off oxygen. When the growth is out of control, and the algae die, they release toxins called microcystins that can last for weeks or months.

Bloom hopes to control the problem in Florida—and many other places struggling with algae—by regularly harvesting algae before it reaches a toxic state, and clearing out the fertilizers that cause future overgrowth. While the company can clean out toxic algae, only healthy algae is usable, so it's better to catch the problem before it escalates.

"When you have an algae crisis today, that's because of a lot of negligence, that's because nobody's doing anything to remove the inputs of nitrogen and phosphorus, and there's a massive influx of those inputs running rampant," says Falken. "You also couple that with an extremely high heat index and you've got a perfect storm."

The company has been operating in China at Lake Taihu—an even larger lake than Okeechobee that millions of people rely on for drinking water—for two years, where the company says they have removed millions of pounds of algae.

Now, they're in meetings with Florida officials, along with the infrastructure company AECOM, to make a plan for demonstrating the technology in the state. They hope to begin regularly working at Lake Okeechobee.

While other companies grow algae in tanks, wild harvesting has advantages—the process solves an environmental problem, and doesn't require the energy and cost used to grow algae in the dark. Algae grown in tanks is also genetically engineered, and Bloom argues that it could wipe out natural strains if it escaped into the wild.

The algae-based feedstock can be dropped into current manufacturing without any changes, and the cost is the same as petroleum-based feedstocks on the market today. "We can't convert industries worldwide if the price is higher," Falken says.

Then it transforms it into a raw material to make plastics and foams for use in clothing, sneakers, car upholstery, and other products.

There's also no shortage of wild algae, especially as warming waters make the problem worse. "We've already got more algae than we'll ever need," he says. "In China, Lake Taihu could produce enough algae for us to produce a pair of shoes for every man, woman, and child on this planet."

Even as some governments try to address the larger problems—Florida, for example, plans to spend more than $1 billion buying land to create storage ponds in the hope of naturally treating water—the process isn't guaranteed to work, and will take time.

"Those inputs are not going away," says Falken. "Agriculture's not going away, sugar cane plantations aren't going away, people are not going to en masse stop using fertilizers on their lawn. It's unfortunate. We can educate as much as possible, but the reality here is someone has got to be proactive. Because we can do something with it, and do a lot of good with it, we can ensure that algal bloom crisis is in time a thing of the past."

They hope to use the algae harvesters all over the country and world. "You look at Florida and say that's the epicenter, that's where the crisis is worst because all of the water policy issues and all the negligence," he says. "But if you look at the U.S. as a whole, all 50 states have algal bloom in some semi-crisis mode right now. You've got about 20 states that are really at peak crisis. The algae is everywhere, and the problems are global."

ORIGINAL: Fast Company

ADELE PETERS 

09.29.16

Promising solution to plastic pollution

Harvard's Wyss Institute creates bioplastic made from shrimp shells

Wyss Institute Communications

For many people, “plastic” is a one-word analog for environmental disaster. It is made from precious petroleum, after all, and once discarded in landfills and oceans, it takes centuries to degrade.

Then came apparent salvation: “bioplastics,” durable substances made from renewable cellulose, a plant-based polysaccharide. But problems remained. For one, the current bioplastics do not fully degrade in the environment. For another, their use is now limited to packaging material or simple containers for food and drink.

Now researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have introduced a new bioplastic isolated from shrimp shells. It’s made from chitosan, a form of chitin — the second-most abundant organic material on Earth.

Chitin, a tough polysaccharide, is the main ingredient in the hardy shells of crustaceans, the armorlike cuticles of insects, and even the flexible wings of butterflies.

The Wyss Institute makes its shrilk from chitin from shrimp shells, most which would otherwise be discarded or used in fertilizer or makeup, and a fibroin protein from silk. Researchers discussed it in a March online study in the journal Macromolecular Materials & Engineering.

Shrilk is cheaply and easily fabricated by a novel method that preserves chitosan’s strong mechanical properties. The researchers said that for the first time, this tough, transparent, and renewable material can be used to make large, 3-D objects with complex shapes using traditional casting or injection-molding techniques. That means objects made from shrilk can be mass-manufactured and will be as robust as items made with the everyday plastics used in toys and cell phones.

“There is an urgent need in many industries for sustainable materials that can be mass produced,” Wyss Director Donald E. Ingber said in March. “Our scalable manufacturing method shows that chitosan, which is readily available and inexpensive, can serve as a viable bioplastic that could potentially be used instead of conventional plastics for numerous industrial applications.”

This environmentally safe alternative to plastic could also be used to make trash bags, packaging, and diapers.

Once discarded, shrilk breaks down in just a few weeks — and even releases rich nutrients that support plant growth. In one experiment, Wyss Institute researchers grew a California black-eyed pea plant in soil enriched with its chitosan bioplastic. Within three weeks, the material encouraged plant growth.

In environmental terms, finding viable alternatives for conventional plastics — prized for their lightness, durability, and low price — is an urgent matter. In the United States alone, according researchers at Columbia University, about 34 million tons of plastic waste is generated every year; less than 7 percent is recovered for recycling.

Meanwhile, according to the same researchers, plastics buried in landfills will take 1,000 years to degrade. Plastics discarded into the world’s seas — an estimated 100 million tons so far, circulating in vast oceanic gyres — are a threat to marine life.

The challenge is clear: We will drown in plastic if we don’t find a sustainable alternative. Harvard’s Wyss Institute has been working on a bioplastic that is expected to provide part of the solution. Video courtesy of the Wyss Institute

This story is a combination of two press releases issued by the Wyss Institute in March and May. The content has been edited for length and clarity. To read the original releases, Manufacturing a solution to planet-clogging plastics andChitosan bioplastic, visit the Wyss Institute website.

ORIGINAL: Harvard

Editor's Pick Audio/Video

May 5, 2014 | 

Plastic-eating worms may offer solution to mounting waste, Stanford researchers discover

An ongoing study by Stanford engineers, in collaboration with researchers in China, shows that common mealworms can safely biodegrade various types of plastic.

Mealworms munch on Styrofoam, a hopeful sign that solutions to plastics pollution exist. Wei-Min Wu, a senior research engineer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, discovered the larvae can live on polystyrene. (Photo: Yu Yang)

Consider the plastic foam cup. Every year, Americans throw away 2.5 billion of them. And yet, that waste is just a fraction of the 33 million tons of plastic Americans discard every year. Less than 10 percent of that total gets recycled, and the remainder presents challenges ranging from water contamination to animal poisoning.

Enter the mighty mealworm. The tiny worm, which is the larvae form of the darkling beetle, can subsist on a diet of Styrofoam and other forms of polystyrene, according to two companion studies co-authored by Wei-Min Wu, a senior research engineer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford. Microorganisms in the worms' guts biodegrade the plastic in the process – a surprising and hopeful finding.

"Our findings have opened a new door to solve the global plastic pollution problem," Wu said.

The papers, published in Environmental Science and Technology, are the first to provide detailed evidence of bacterial degradation of plastic in an animal's gut. Understanding how bacteria within mealworms carry out this feat could potentially enable new options for safe management of plastic waste.

"There's a possibility of really important research coming out of bizarre places," said Craig Criddle, a professor of civil and environmental engineering who supervises plastics research by Wu and others at Stanford. "Sometimes, science surprises us. This is a shock."

Plastic for dinner

In the lab, 100 mealworms ate between 34 and 39 milligrams of Styrofoam – about the weight of a small pill – per day. The worms converted about half of the Styrofoam into carbon dioxide, as they would with any food source.

Within 24 hours, they excreted the bulk of the remaining plastic as biodegraded fragments that look similar to tiny rabbit droppings. Mealworms fed a steady diet of Styrofoam were as healthy as those eating a normal diet, Wu said, and their waste appeared to be safe to use as soil for crops.

Researchers, including Wu, have shown in earlier research that waxworms, the larvae of Indian mealmoths, have microorganisms in their guts that can biodegrade polyethylene, a plastic used in filmy products such as trash bags. The new research on mealworms is significant, however, because Styrofoam was thought to have been non-biodegradable and more problematic for the environment.

Researchers led by Criddle, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, are collaborating on ongoing studies with the project leader and papers' lead author, Jun Yang of Beihang University in China, and other Chinese researchers. Together, they plan to study whether microorganisms within mealworms and other insects can biodegrade plastics such as polypropylene (used in products ranging from textiles to automotive components), microbeads (tiny bits used as exfoliants) and bioplastics (derived from renewable biomass sources such as corn or biogas methane).

As part of a "cradle-to-cradle" approach, the researchers will explore the fate of these materials when consumed by small animals, which are, in turn, consumed by other animals.

Marine diners sought

Another area of research could involve searching for a marine equivalent of the mealworm to digest plastics, Criddle said. Plastic waste is a particular concern in the ocean, where it fouls habitat and kills countless seabirds, fish, turtles and other marine life.

More research is needed, however, to understand conditions favorable to plastic degradation and the enzymes that break down polymers. This, in turn, could help scientists engineer more powerful enzymes for plastic degradation, and guide manufacturers in the design of polymers that do not accumulate in the environment or in food chains.

Criddle's plastics research was originally inspired by a 2004 project to evaluate the feasibility of biodegradable building materials. That investigation was funded by the Stanford Woods Institute's Environmental Venture Projects seed grant program. It led to the launch of a company that is developing economically competitive, nontoxic bioplastics.

Co-authors of the papers, "Biodegradation and Mineralization of Polystyrene by Plastic-Eating Mealworms. 1. Chemical and Physical Characterization and Isotopic Tests" and "Biodegradation and Mineralization of Polystyrene by Plastic-Eating Mealworms. 2. Role of Gut Microorganisms," include Yu Yang, Jun Yang, Lei Jian, Yiling Song and Longcheng Gao of Beihang University, and Jiao Zhao and Ruifu Yang of BGI-Shenzhen.

For more Stanford experts on engineering and other topics, visit Stanford Experts.

ORIGINAL: Stanford

BY ROB JORDAN

September 29, 2015

Plastic to Oil, Fantastic

Blest Japan.

This video brief about the invention of a plastic-to-oil converting machine went viral and exceeded 3.7 million views on YouTube.

This is evidence that concern over “the plastic problem” is certainly not going away, despite encouraging bans on and decreases in the use of plastic shopping bags.

Here on Our World, on the video’s YouTube page and those of re-posters too, as well as on the hot Reddit Science link, the topic has generated much interest and debate amongst commenters.

Many think that this type of recycling is not a solution, but that instead the world should be seriously focused on the first “R” — which is reduce. We should shun single-use plastic (such as your average PET bottle or disposable container) altogether, they argue. The world’s oil resources are diminishing; does technology like this enable our denial of that fact, or is it a hopeful and constructive step in the right direction?

Others are doubtful of the conversion process and have concerns about pollution or toxic residue. But the machine actually

• uses highly efficient but pretty straightforward pyrolysis: 
• the plastic is fed into the pressurized oxygen-free oven and 
• heated to 427° C (800°F), which liquefies it. 
• The machine then converts the liquefied plastic to gas, 

which condenses to form a crude oil mixture of gasoline, diesel, kerosene and heavy oil.
Blest tells us that, if the proper materials are fed into the machine (i.e., polyethylene, polystyrene and polypropylene — PP, PE, PS plastics), there is no toxic substance produced and the small amount of inert char residue that may be leftover can be disposed of with regular garbage.

They also explain that while methane, ethane, propane and butane gasses are released in the process, the machine is equipped with an off-gas filter that disintegrates these gases into water and carbon.

Lastly, commentators from around the world are anxious to know if and where they can purchase a machine. Though the company still mainly produces larger, industrial-use machines, Blest Co. will be more than happy to hear from you. Please contact them directly at info@blest.co.jp.


Below is the original article, published on April 14, 2009

We are all well aware of plastic’s “rap-sheet”. It has been found guilty on many counts, including the way its production and disposal raises resource issues and lets loose extremely negative environmental impacts.

Typically made from petroleum, it is estimated that 7% of the world’s annual oil production is used to produce and manufacture plastic. That is more than the oil consumed by the entire African continent.

Plastic’s carbon footprint includes landfilling and incineration, since sadly, its recycle rate is dismally low around the globe.

Plastic trash is also polluting our oceans and washing up on beaches around the world. Tons of plastic from the US and Japan are floating in the Pacific Ocean, killing mammals and birds. Perhaps this tragedy is best captured in the TED presentation by Capt. Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.

Using less, or use it better?

Thankfully, there are those who fully appreciate that plastic has a higher energy value than anything else commonly found in the waste stream. A Japanese company called Blest created a small, very safe and easy to use machine that can convert several types of plastic back into oil.

Though Japan has much improved its “effective utilization” rate over the years to 72% in 2006, that leaves 28% of plastic to be buried in landfills or burned. According to Plastic Waste Management Institute data, “effective utilization” includes not just the 20% that is actually recycled, but also 52% that is being incinerated for “energy recovery” purposes, i.e., generating heat or electric power.

“If we burn the plastic, we generate toxins and a large amount of CO2. If we convert it into oil, we save CO2 and at the same time increase people’s awareness about the value of plastic garbage,” says Akinori Ito, CEO of Blest.

Blest’s conversion technology is very safe because it uses a temperature controlling electric heater rather than flame. The machines are able to process polyethylene, polystyrene and polypropylene but not PET bottles. The result is a crude gas that can fuel things like generators or stoves and, when refined, can even be pumped into a car, a boat or motorbike. One kilogram of plastic produces almost one liter of oil. To convert that amount takes about 1 kwh of electricity, which is approximately ¥20 or 20 cents’ worth.

The company makes the machines in various sizes and has 60 in place at farms, fisheries and small factories in Japan and several abroad.

Sources: Kohei Watanabe, “Waste and Sustainable Consumption” March 2005; Association of Regional Planners and Architects, Detailed Sorting and Measuring of Household Waste, Kyoto 1998.

“To make a machine that anyone can use is my dream,” Ito says. “The home is the oil field of the future.”

Perhaps that statement is not as crazy as it sounds, since the makeup of Japanese household waste has been found to contain over 30% plastic, most of it from packaging.

Continually honing their technology, the company is now able to sell the machines for less than before, and Ito hopes to achieve a product “that any one can buy.”

Currently the smallest version, shown in the videobrief, costs ¥950,000 (US $9,500). [Note of 30 November 2010: Blest informs us that, since we visited them last year, improvements have been made to the machine and the price is now ¥1,060,000 (around US$12,700) without tax.]

Changing how we think

But it is the educational application of the small model of the machine that Ito is most passionate about. He’s taken it on planes on many occasions as part of a project that began some years ago in the Marshall Islands. There he worked with local government and schools to teach people about recycling culture and the value of discarded plastic, spreading the Japanese concept of mottainai, the idea that waste is sad and regrettable.

In such remote places, the machine also serves as a practical solution to the plastic problem, much of it left behind by tourists: the oil produced is used for tour buses or boats, Ito says.


“Plastic’s carbon footprint includes landfilling and incineration, since sadly, its recycle rate is dismally low around the globe.”

“Teaching this at schools is the most important work that I do,” Ito reflects. In Japan too, he visits schools where he shows children, teachers and parents how to convert the packaging and drinking straws leftover from lunch.

If we were to use only the world’s plastic waste rather than oil from oil fields, CO2 emissions could be slashed dramatically, he says.

“It’s a waste isn’t it?” Ito asks. “This plastic is every where in the world, and everyone throws it away.”

Akinori Ito demonstrates the machine to school children, teaching them about the energy embodied in the plastics we too easily throw away.

A mountain to climb down 
The wonderful invention of plastics has spawned a huge problem that we are struggling to solve. With peak oil looming, things are set to change, but we find ourselves on top of an oil and plastic mountain, and the only way forward is down.

So while many solutions like this are not without hiccups or detractors, they are a step forward in coming to terms with our oil and plastics dependence and help raise awareness of the carbon footprint of its production and use. Somehow we all know that plastics is a habit we need to kick. But that doesn’t seem to make it any easier.

Perhaps the best thing you can do is to look more deeply into this issue. A good place to start is the 2008 Addicted to Plastic documentary from Cryptic Moth productions. You can watch the trailer online and maybe request it at your local video rental store.

According to the blurb, “the film details plastic’s path over the last 100 years and provides a wealth of expert interviews on practical and cutting edge solutions to recycling, toxicity and biodegradability.”

Next it is just a matter of taking action to break our love affair with plastic.



Both the Plastic to Oil Fantastic article (by Carol Smith) and the video brief at top are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License.

PLEASE NOTE: The Plastic to Oil Fantastic video brief and any excerpt taken from it must make attribution to the source (United Nations University’s Our World Magazine) and state the conditions of the license under which it was published so that others may also share it. An example of such a note follows:

This work by United Nations University’s Our World Magazine is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

(Use the Creative Commons tool to generate appropriate variations.)


ORIGINAL: United Nations University - Our World Magazine
Carol Smith United Nations University
2010•08•27 

Recycled PET Plastic Bottle Plant Sculptures by Veronika Richterová

Photo by Michal Cihlář

Czech artist Veronika Richterová creates new life from repurposed plastic PET bottles. For the last decade the artist has used various methods of cutting, heating, and assemblage to build colorfully translucent forms of everything from crocodiles to chandelier light fixtures to plants. Her obsession with plastic bottles doesn’t stop with creating artwork, Richterová has also collected over 3,000 PET plastic objects from 76 countries and writes extensively about the history and usage of plastic in her article A Tribute to PET Bottles. You can see hundreds more sculptures in her online gallery. (via Mister Finch, Lustik)

Photo by Michal Cihlář

Photo by Michal Cihlář

Photo by Michal Cihlář

Photo by Michal Cihlář

Photo by Michal Cihlář

Photo by Michal Cihlář

Photo by Michal Cihlář

Photo by Michal Cihlář

Photo by Michal Cihlář

ORIGINAL: This Is Colossal

by Christopher Jobson 

April 6, 2015

This mushroom devours your plastic waste - and once it’s finished, you can eat it too.

Image: Paris Tsitsos, Livin Studio

WATCH: This new device turns plastic into edible mushrooms

Microbiologists in the Netherlands have teamed up with Austrian industrial designers to come up with an amazing solution to our plastic problem - now we can simply eat it, via an edible fungi.

It's been a good year for promising plastic breakthroughs, with scientists in November developing a plastic that breaks down fully in just three hours. Now the European team has developed a device called the Fungi Mutarium, which uses fungi to safely break down plastic, in turn growing an edible food source.

Fungi Mutarium - Julia Kaisinger and Katherina Unger

The prototype machine works on small bits of thin plastic - like the kind used in shopping bags - and first uses UV light to sterilise and kickstart their decomposition.

This UV-treated plastic is then placed in a small pod made from agar, which is an edible, algae-based type of gelatin.

These pods are then placed in the dome-like “growth sphere” and liquified fungi sprouts are poured over them.

In just a few weeks, fungi begins to grow out of the pods, using the plastic to feed its development. After several months, the plastic will be completely decomposed and you’re left with nothing but an agar cup filled with edible fluffy white mycelium - the soft, vegetative part of a fungus.

“We were both really inspired about the idea that something digests plastic but then still creates edible biomass,” Katharina Unger, one of the two industrial designers from the studio Livin, who worked on the project, told Kaleigh Rogers from Motherboard. They also wanted to find some new and innovative solutions to food shortages around the world.

“Farmers are increasingly dealing with extreme environmental conditions to produce food," Unger explained to Adele Peters from Co.Exist. "Fungi Mutarium is a projection of how new biotechnologies might be applied to grow edible material on so far harmful or even toxic waste material."

Amazingly, these mushrooms are, in theory, safe to eat, because although they can fully digest plastic, they do this without accumulating the toxic compounds - although the designers admit that more testing would need to be done on their safety before the mutarium could be commercialised. 

While it all sounds very cool, we know what you’re thinking - what do the mushrooms taste like? The microbiologists have so far used oyster mushroom and split gill mushrooms in the system, which are two of the most popular mushrooms in the world.

According to Unger, they’re pretty tasty, and can be eaten whole.

“It starts off being very neutral, but it can also get a bit nutty and spicy in taste. It really depends on the strain, actually,” Unger told Rogers.

The team also developed some recipes to flavour the agar cups that the mushroom is inside, which range from savoury to a sweet one with peaches and yoghurt.

As you can see in the video below, the whole set-up looks pretty futuristic.

Unfortunately however, there’s still a long way to go before this device can be used more widely.

Right now the fact that it takes months to break down tiny bits of plastic means that it’s not super appealing to the market. But the team are now looking into how they can improve the process and also scale it up for mass use.

“We know that there’s potential to speed up this process simply by optimising the processes around it: temperature, humidity, the perfect microclimate for this fungi to colonise the plastic material,” Unger told Rogers.

“Also, though it’s more controversial, there is genetic modification. What happens if you modify the organism so that it can process the materials more quickly?”

They also hope the prototype will make people think a little differently about plastic waste and the potential ways we can grow food.

While it’s still got a long way to go, the fact that scientists have now estimated there are 5.25 trillion bits of plastic polluting our oceans shows just how badly we need some new solutions to dealing with plastic waste. 

And if we can find a way to do that while also helping to feed the population sustainably, then that’s pretty awesome.

Source: Motherboard, Co.Exist

ORIGINAL: Science Alert

FIONA MACDONALD
 20 DEC 2014

Ocean Array Could Clean 7,250,000 Tons of Plastic

ORIGINAL: Mashable

Tracy Staedter for Discovery News 

WHAT'S THIS?

Image via Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Millions of tons of tiny bits of plastic float in giant patches — or gyres — in oceans around the world. There are five large patches of plastic. One of them, the North Pacific Gyre, is roughly twice the size of the United States. All of them are a problem.

These bits of plastic look like food to fish and birds and once consumed, end up killing these animals. But the plastic bits also contain chemicals, such as DDTs and PCBs, that once consumed by small sea creatures then enter the food chain to be consumed eventually by people.

SEE ALSO: What’s an Ocean Garbage Patch?

And because plastic doesn’t break down and dissolve, these gyres are going to be around forhundreds, if not thousands of years, even if we stopped polluting tomorrow.

What to do?

Young entrepreneur Boyan Slat wants to develop an array of floating devices designed to clean up the more than 7 million tons of plastic bits suspended in the top layer of the gyres — that’s the weight of 1,000 Eiffel Towers.

The array would be made of manta-ray-shaped platforms connected in a zig-zagging pattern and affixed to the seabed. Ocean currents would drive plastic debris toward the platforms, which would be powered by the sun and wave action. Long, floating booms — not nets — would be used to sift plastics from the water with very little bycatch. Slat found that zooplankton, microscopic animals important to the bottom of the food chain, can be removed safely from the water using a centrifuge.

SEE ALSO: Pacific Plastic Soup Sees 100-Fold Increase

In a TED talk for TEDxDelft 2012, Slat detailed his plan. Not only would his plan clean up the ocean, save the lives of aquatic animals and reduce the amount of pollutants from entering the food chain but it would also save industry millions per year. Marine vessels are damaged every year from the garbage floating in the ocean, countries lose money when tourists no longer want to visit their polluted beaches. And Slat also thinks that he can make millions of dollars from the plastic he collects, by recycling it.