{"id":408,"date":"2008-05-30T06:18:23","date_gmt":"2008-05-30T06:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/?p=408"},"modified":"2008-05-30T06:18:23","modified_gmt":"2008-05-30T06:18:23","slug":"plasticbagproblemhecanfixthat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/plasticbagproblemhecanfixthat\/","title":{"rendered":"Plastic bag problem? He can fix that."},"content":{"rendered":"


\nThe world is drowning in plastic bags. A long time ago I wrote a short article about the “lack of leadership”:http:\/\/duenos.net\/article\/339\/Plasticbagleadershipnowheretobefound<\/a> around the issue of disposable bags and featured a photograph from the incredible “Plastic Bag Gallery”:http:\/\/www.photonet.org.uk\/plasticbag\/<\/a> but today I wanted to highlight a story with decidedly more hope.
\n“This post”:http:\/\/www.inhabitat.com\/2008\/05\/28\/breakthrough-decomposes-plastic-bags-in-three-months\/<\/a> from Inhabitat describes a 16-year old Canadian student named Daniel Burd who may have developed a way to accelerate the decomposition of thin plastic shopping bags to just a few months–it ordinarily takes millenia. Burd’s discovery hinges on the isolation of two strains of bacteria (Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas) that have been proven to decompose the polyethlene plastic by 43% in just 6 weeks. There must be someone out there who can refine this process beyond “his rudimentary method”:http:\/\/news.therecord.com\/article\/354044<\/a> and turn this into a product.
\nOf course, this innovation could help with the plastic bag problem all over the world but nowhere more than the United States, where we have routinely failed to regulate this wasteful practice. Other countries–Ireland, Israel, South Africa, “even China”:http:\/\/www.iht.com\/articles\/2008\/01\/09\/asia\/plastic.php–<\/a> have already taken up the cause.
\nSome plastic bag facts for you:
\n* Plastic bag production consumes 1.6 billion barrels of oil annually
\n* We produce 500 billion a year worldwide
\n* 1 million plastic bags are used and discarded worldwide every minute of the day.
\n* Only 1 to 2% of plastic bags in the USA end up getting recycled.
\nSources: “here”:http:\/\/usa.envirosax.com\/pages\/plastic-bag-facts.php<\/a> and the articles linked above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A 16-year old Canadian student named Daniel Burd may have developed a way to accelerate the decomposition of thin plastic shopping bags to just a few months, a process that normally takes millenia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffginger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}