I remember that when I was in high school, science fair projects tended to be pretty cheesy. It sounds like things have changed very significantly. Seen in The Record:
[W]e produce 500 billion a year worldwide and they take up to 1,000 years to decompose. They take up space in landfills, litter our streets and parks, pollute the oceans and kill the animals that eat them.
Now a Waterloo teenager has found a way to make plastic bags degrade faster — in three months, he figures.
Daniel Burd’s project won the top prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa. 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.
He was able to identify a couple of bacteria, one that loves to eat plastic, and the other that loves to support the plastic-eating bacteria. Create a bacteria soup, drop in plastic bags, wait three months, êt voilá!
So, when can we start getting the necessary vats o’ bacteria set up at the local recycling plant?