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https://abcnews.go.com/US/scientists-figured-make-bio-based-plastic-completely-biodegrades/story?id=110032450>
'Scientists may have found the answer to manufacturing plastics products that
actually break down without forming into microplastics, or tiny pieces of
plastics that could linger for thousands of years.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and materials company
Algenesis said they found a way to construct plastic with polyurethane, a
“bio-based” polyurethane polymer that could compost and break down in the
natural environment, compared to typical petroleum-based plastic polymers,
which typically are inaccessible to biological processing, according to a study
published in
Scientific Reports earlier this year.
But the big question is whether the algae-based material would break down into
microplastics — microscopic pieces of plastic smaller than one micrometer in
size, or less than one-seventieth the width of a human hair.
"The argument then was always put back to us, 'How do you know they're just not
making microplastics?'" Skip Pomeroy, a professor in the Department of
Chemistry and Biochemistry at U.C. San Diego and one of the authors of the
study, told
ABC News.
So the researchers set a goal to prove their substances don't make
microplastics over time because they're really being broken down by the
microbes in the environment, Pomeroy said.
They found a strain of bacteria in compost that could live completely off of
the polyurethane-made plastics, Michael Burkart, another U.C. San Diego
chemistry researcher and co-author of the paper, told
ABC News.
"In the past, we thought that maybe we needed multiple different microbes
working together to biodegrade these materials," Burkart said. "But no, we
found a single bacterial strain that could live off these things, and so that
that really means that these materials that we're making are truly, completely
biodegradable."'
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
