Scientists find bug that feasts on toxic plastic

Bacterium is able to break down polyurethane, which is widely used but rarely recycled

The bacterium is the first that is known to attack polyurethane. Photograph: imageBroker/Alamy

A bacterium that feeds on toxic plastic has been discovered by scientists. The bug not only breaks the plastic down but uses it as food to power the process.

The bacterium, which was found at a waste site where plastic had been dumped, is the first that is known to attack polyurethane. Millions of tonnes of the plastic is produced every year to use in items such as sports shoes, nappies, kitchen sponges and as foam insulation, but it is mostly sent to landfill because it it too tough to recycle.

When broken down it can release toxic and carcinogenic chemicals which would kill most bacteria, but the newly discovered strain is able to survive. While the research has identified the bug and some of its key characteristics, much work remains to be done before it can be used to treat large amounts of waste plastic.

“These findings represent an important step in being able to reuse hard-to-recycle polyurethane products,” said Hermann Heipieper, at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ in Leipzig, Germany, who is one of the research team. He said it might be 10 years before the bacterium could be used at a large scale and that in the meantime it was vital to reduce the use of plastic that is hard to recycle and to cut the amount of plastic in the environment.

More than 8bn tonnes of plastic has been produced since the 1950s and most has ended up polluting the world’s land and oceans, or in landfill dumps. Scientists say it threatens a “near permanent contamination of the natural environment”.

The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, identified a new strain of Pseudomonas bacteria, a family known for its ability to withstand harsh conditions, such as high temperatures and acidic environments.

The researchers fed it key chemical components of polyurethane in the laboratory. “We found the bacteria can use these compounds as a sole source of carbon, nitrogen and energy,” Heipieper said.

Fungi has been used before to break down polyurethane, but bacteria are much easier to harness for industrial use. Heipieper said the next step would be to identify the genes that code for the enzymes produced by the bug that break down the polyurethane.

Scientists revealed in 2018 that they had accidentally created a mutant enzyme that breaks down plastic drinks bottles, which are made of PET, potentially enabling the complete recycling of bottles for the first time. One of the team behind this advance, Prof John McGeehan, the director of the Centre for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth, England, praised the new work.

“The breakdown of certain polyurethanes can release toxic additives, which need to be handled carefully. This research group has discovered a strain that can tackle some of these chemicals,” he said. “While there is still much work to be done, this is exciting and necessary research that demonstrates the power of looking to nature to find valuable biocatalysts. Understanding and harnessing such natural processes will open the door for innovative recycling solutions.”

Heipieper said: “When you have huge amounts of plastic in the environment, that means there is a lot of carbon and there will be evolution to use this as food. Bacteria are there in huge numbers and their evolution is very fast.

“However, this certainly doesn’t mean that the work of microbiologists can lead to a complete solution,” he said. “The main message should be to avoid plastic being released into the environment in the first place.”

Previous research has also shown that some fungi can break down PET plastic, while wax moth larvae – usually bred as fish bait – can eat up polythene bags.  SOURCE

Ocean cleanup device successfully collects plastic for first time

Floating boom finally retains debris from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, creator says

The boom skims up waste ranging in size from a discarded net and a car wheel to tiny chips of plastic. Photograph: AP

A huge floating device designed by Dutch scientists to clean up an island of rubbish in the Pacific Ocean that is three times the size of France has successfully picked up plastic from the high seas for the first time.

Boyan Slat, the creator of the Ocean Cleanup project, tweeted that the 600 metre-long (2,000ft) free-floating boom had captured and retained debris from what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Alongside a picture of the collected rubbish, which includes a car wheel, Slat wrote: “Our ocean cleanup system is now finally catching plastic, from one-ton ghost nets to tiny microplastics! Also, anyone missing a wheel?”

About 600,000 to 800,000 metric tonnes of fishing gear is abandoned or lost at sea each year. Another 8m tonnes of plastic waste flows in from beaches.

Ocean currents have brought a vast patch of such detritus together halfway between Hawaii and California, where it is kept in rough formation by an ocean gyre, a whirlpool of currents. It is the largest accumulation of plastic in the world’s oceans.

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 Crew members sort through plastic onboard a support vessel in the Pacific. Photograph: AP

The vast cleaning system is designed to not only collect discarded fishing nets and large visible plastic objects, but also microplastics.

The plastic barrier floating on the surface of the sea has a three metre-deep (10ft) screen below it, which is intended to trap some of the 1.8tn pieces of plastic without disturbing the marine life below.

The device is fitted with transmitters and sensors so it can communicate its position via satellites to a vessel that will collect the gathered rubbish every few months. MORE

 

Climate Change: The blame falls squarely on the heads of the fossil fuel sector and our complicit governments

Rosalind Adams, among others, successfully convinced Prince Edward  Council to declare a climate emergency. In  part of her presentation, she pointed to Canada’s per capita energy consumption; but, as Lionel Enright notes, “per capita energy consumption is not expended equally.”

Our government and International oil companies are irresponsibly ripping up the tar sands 

Alberta’s tar sands ecocide and Canada’s shame

We will never solve a problem if we do not define the problem accurately . This statement has a few glaring misuse of statistics . Let us not assume that per capita energy consumption is expended equally per capita . This speaker did not explain the source or construction of the per capita statistic . She leaves us to assume that we Canadians personally are doing something to produce  8 times more co2  than persons of other countries.

She does not explain that we – OUR GOVERNMENT and the international OIL COMPANIES  are ripping up the TAR SANDS irresponsibly ( which is part of that statistic ) and not only polluting our air but also polluting the river systems that drain into the Arctic Ocean.

This should NOT be blamed upon each Canadian .

Those of us who are aware of it have been complaining of this wreckage for years but our irresponsible government not only allows it to go on but says it must go on to supply JOBS.

 The whole oil industry in Alberta is run by the oil cartels for their own benefit at the expense of Canada AND  the people of Alberta.

Under Peter Lougheed Alberta made a 40 % and had saved 11 billion for the Heritage Fund. Klein gave it all away . ( Do you think he did this on his own without the help of the oil companies ??? )  There was also savings to cap abandoned wells . Now there is no money collected from the oil companies to do the cleanup and we THE PEOPLE are stuck with $ billions in old wells abounded by the oil companies because the gov. did not require them to pay up front.

Even if we each cut our emissions personally we would not meet the climate  goals unless the industrial wasteful practises of which the oil sands is only one , were to be curtailed .

Conclusion  : If there is an environmental statement to be made please know your facts and understand how the statistics you use are composed .

The environment is an important issue but we must understand that the corporate processes are doing the greatest harm . This is a topic which needs some careful explanation . Largely it is not the people’s fault . Many of the bad habits of the people are made necessary by the decisions of the corporate sector .  Example, most of us drive cars that run on fossil fuels. We do this because the corporate crooks want to sell us the carbon . We could have had  E V ’s years ago but they prevented it from happening . We also could have had much better public transportation but the car producers took action to prevent that also from happening so that they could sell more cars. And lastly the plastics industry still wants to make as much plastic as they can even though the world is drowning in the excess .

We have biodegradable material . We could have been using it years ago but we thought we were recycling it – We weren’t . Now we see the  mess we are in when plastics some companies shipped abroad mislabelled are being returned 10 to 15 years later as the garbage it is and was  –  AND who is paying for it ? –  THE PUBLIC PURSE –  THE PEOPLE .

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4 Ways to Cut Plastic’s Growing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

 “Unless waste management practices improve, the amount of plastic entering oceans could be 10 times greater in 2025 than they were in 2015 according to a 2015 study in the journal Science.”

Every stage of plastic’s life cycle, from fossil fuel extraction to disposal, produces greenhouse gases. A new study looked at ways to lower the toll.

The greenhouse gas emissions associated with plastics are projected to be nearly four times greater by mid-century. Increasing the use of renewable energy, plant-based feedstocks and aggressive recycling and reducing demand can help lower the impact. Credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

As concern over plastic waste grows, researchers are raising red flags about another problem: plastic’s rapidly growing carbon footprint. Left unchecked, greenhouse gas emissions associated with plastics will be nearly four times greater by mid-century, when they are projected to account for nearly one-sixth of global emissions.

Not all plastics have the same carbon footprint, though. What they are made from, the source of the energy that powers their production, and how they are disposed of at the end of their life cycle all make a difference.

In a study published Monday in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change, researchers calculated the life cycle emissions of different types of plastics, made from fossil fuels and from plants, and looked for ways to lower their total greenhouse gas emissions.

They found that there is no silver bullet. Every combination of plastics production and end-of-life disposal generates greenhouse gas emissions. But by combining four different approaches, they found they could lower emissions up to 93 percent compared to business as usual by 2050 if each measure was taken to the extreme.

The most effective combination the researchers found was to use a plant-based feedstock (sugarcane in this case), with 100 percent renewable energy for production, recycling of all plastics rather than incinerating or dumping them in landfills, and reducing the annual growth in demand for plastics by half.

That combination could theoretically reach a 93 percent reduction compared to business as usual in 2050, or about a 74 percent reduction from 2015 levels, the researchers found. MORE

From making it to managing it, plastic is a major contributor to climate change

New report finds plastic production and use could have the equivalent impact of nearly 300 new coal power plants on Earth’s climate over the next decade.

Plastic is polluting oceans, freshwater lakes and rivers, food and us — but it’s also a major contributor to global climate change, warns a new report.

Scientists, policymakers and consumers are increasingly aware of the threat plastic pollution poses to oceans and water, wildlife, food and people. However, often lost in calculating plastics’ environmental harm is its contributions to climate change.

“I don’t feel the petrochemical buildout is being considered as part of climate change discussions at any level in our state [Pennsylvania],” Michele Fetting, program manager at the Breathe Project, a coalition of 24 environmental organizations, told EHN.

Petrochemical facilities, such as cracker plants, take fuels like natural gas and convert them to chemical products, which are most often used to make plastics. Shell is building a massive petrochemical complex in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, as part of a broader effort to put such facilities in multiple spots along the Ohio River Valley.

Each step in the life of a piece of plastic — production, transportation and managing waste — uses fossil fuels and emits greenhouse gases and, as petrochemical and plastic production continues to ramp up, these impacts must be considered, according to the report released today by the Center for International Environmental Law, the Environmental Integrity Project, FracTracker Alliance, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, 5Gyres, and #BreakFreeFromPlastic. MORE

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Plastic & Climate: The Hidden Costs of a Plastic Planet

180 countries — except US — agree to plastic waste agreement

 

Five ways to make your home less toxic

We are surrounded by chemicals – in food and drink, cleaning products, household items and furnishings. Here’s how to reduce household pollution

Keeping dust to a minimum is important. Perhaps you could use a homemade cleaning product? Photograph: Getty Images/Hero Images

Ventilate

Cleaning products, cooking, candles and building materials all contribute to pollution inside our homes. The British Lung Foundation (BLF) recommendschoosing fragrance-free cleaning products and using solid or liquid products when possible, rather than sprays. It also advises opening windows or skylights, especially when cooking or showering, and avoiding the use of several candles or incense sticks in a small room such as a bathroom. As outdoor pollution can also travel into the home, the BLF also suggests keeping windows closed when Defra’s Daily Air Quality Index is high.

Cut down on plastic

The synthetic chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) is found in many plastic products and can be ingested or absorbed through skin contact, potentially disrupting the endocrine system. Ninety-five percent of adults are thought to have traces of BPA in their bodies through continuous exposure – Tamara Galloway, a professor of ecotoxicology at the University of Exeter, says avoiding heavily processed and packaged food can help to limit exposure. Breastfeeding or buying baby bottles with a BPA-free label are also among her recommendations. MORE

We can decide to live within the limits of our planet

As much as 70% of the world’s genetic biodiversity may already be extinct Image: REUTERS/Rebecca Naden

Are we living within nature’s limits? Or are we putting ourselves at profound risk of climate change, resource scarcity and a depleted world? Does the Fourth Industrial Revolution offer new opportunities or pose new threats? The World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Environmental and Natural Resource Security has spent the last two years trying to answer these questions.

We have entered the era of the Anthropocene

Humanity is reshaping the natural world. Nowhere on Earth has escaped our influence, from the deepest ocean trench to the outer limits of the atmosphere. We have truly entered the era of the Anthropocene.

Every year, we produce enough steel to make a girder that could circle the earth nearly 100 times, and we pour enough concrete to make a car park the size of England. In our lifetimes, plastic production has increased twentyfold, of which only 10% has been recycled. Every year, we produce our own weight in plastic, and the world uses 500 billion plastic bottles – around one million every minute. There could be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050, according to a report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Another recent report estimated the mass of all mammals on Earth and concluded that by weight, 60% are livestock (mostly cattle and pigs), 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals. The world has 1.5 billion cows, 1 billion pigs and 1 billion sheep, and we raise more than 50 billion chickens annually. Three quarters of agricultural land supports livestock, and nearly two fifths of grain is fed to animals rather than people. MORE

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Accelerating climate action

Plastic threatens our health from before production to long after it’s thrown away: Report

“Every stage of the plastic lifecycle poses significant risks to human health, and the majority of people worldwide are exposed to plastic at multiple stages of this lifecycle.”

Credit: Bo Eide/flickr

Plastic pollution is a “threat to human life and human rights” and, in order to stem this problem, we have to overhaul how we produce, use and dispose of it, according to an international report released today.

The report, the result of a collaboration between seven environmental organizations, finds most attempts to examine the impact of plastic on people and the planet focus on one aspect—such as manufacturing, the testing of products, or how plastic is disposed. However, the authors of today’s report say we need to look at the entire lifecycle of plastic because “each of those stages interacts with others, and all of them interact with the human environment and the human body in multiple, often intersecting, ways.”

Plastic pollution has been recognized as pervasive across the planet and research increasingly finds it is infiltrating wildlife, our food and us—bringing fresh concerns about how our plastic addiction may be impacting our health.

“Health problems associated with plastics throughout the lifecycle includes numerous forms of cancers, diabetes, several organ malfunctions, impact on eyes, skin and other sensory organs, birth defects” and many other impacts, said David Azoulay, a report author and managing attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, in an email to EHN. “And those are only the human health costs, they do not mention impacts on climate, impacts on fisheries or farmland productivity,” he added. MORE

Life Without Plastic Is Possible. It’s Just Very Hard.

Going plastic free starts with cloth bags and straws. Suddenly, you’re … making your own toothpaste?

For Beth Terry, the epiphany came when she read an article about how albatross chicks are being killed by discarded plastics. It was time to banish plastic from her life.

First, she focused on her kitchen and got rid of the shopping bags, microwaveable Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese, Clif energy bars and the prewashed salads in plastic tubs.

Then she turned to her bathroom, where she switched to shampoo bars instead of bottles and made her own hair conditioner from apple cider vinegar. Toothpaste without plastic packaging was exceptionally hard to find, so she started making her own with baking soda.

Sometimes her personal war on plastic created awkward moments. During a vacation to Disneyland in California to run a half-marathon, Ms. Terry and her husband left their reusable cloth bags in the hotel, soon discovering that the local supermarket only had plastic bags. How to carry a bunch of apples, oranges, avocados and melons? MORE

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Plastics reach remote pristine environments, scientists say

The plastic backlash: what’s behind our sudden rage – and will it make a difference?