Bags

On a whole, we produce 500 billion plastic bags which take up to 1,000 years to decompose. These bags pose a threat to animals, oceans and even our streets and parks. 16 year old Daniel Burd, a student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, has made a discovery that could potentially alter the way we think about discarding these pesky plastics.

At the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa, Burd presented an innovative way to make plastic bags degrade faster – in the space of three months, he predicts. The Canadian teen invested months of hard work into scientific testing and research which led him to create a dirt and chemical solution that produced plastic-eating microbes. With a bit of tinkering and the discovery of two helpful strains of plastic munching bacteria, Burd was able to develop a concentration effective enough to decompose a test batch of plastic strips. The strips were reduced by 43 percent over just six weeks and Burd was able to hypothesize that in three months, they would be fully decomposed. Daniel has not yet tried his experiment on a large scale, but he seems confident that it would work easily. Burd's project won the top prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair and he came back with a long list of awards including a $10,000 prize, a $20,000 scholarship, and recognition that he has found a practical way to help the environment. Read more about his discovery here.