I have written in the past about a fascinating type of bacteria that was found on a Chinese rubbish stump number of years ago.
Plastics are a fantastic material because they breakdown very little, therefore giving strong materials for not much money. The problem is that many of the uses that these plastics have been put to, are single use. Once that use has occurred you can do nothing but out the plastic in the ground, and wait perhaps 100 millennia for it to be broken down.
As such this Chinese bacteria was something that everyone was very excited about. If the bottles can be broken down, perhaps the resulting material can be reused easily and cheaply.
It does appear that this is the case. With the adjustments made this happens on a timescale that is financially acceptable.
One of the problems that his been a continual issue with recycling, is the need to have very pure resources: if someone fails to split up rubbish properly, an entire batch of rubbish maybe unrecyclable.
But this problem maybe it’s an end with this method as it works effectively amongst mixed sources of rubbish.
We’re getting closer to to being able to recycle plastic fully which should save huge amounts of oil from ever being needed. While this process is not yet ready for mainstream, it should be in the next few years so keep an eye out for progress in this field.
I will hopefully right on this again as we move forwards, but I hope that this discovery is not leveraged in to billion to dollars, it will stop this discovery must not spread slowly- it must appear almost around the world in one go, and importantly this must not miss out Africa. if this Discovery has the magnitude that is expected it must be allowed to have the impact that is necessary in the space of a decade not a lifetime.
