Imagine if the plastic in your yoga pants or memory foam pillow could simply disappear when you're finished with it, without harming the environment.
Thanks to innovative scientists at the University of San Diego, this green dream is on its way to becoming a reality.
Researchers have created a remarkable new biodegradable plastic by combining thermoplastic polyurethane, the material used in products such as shoes and cushions, with spores of bacteria. Their findings recently appeared in the journal Nature Communications.
When exposed to the microbe-rich conditions of compost at the end of the plastic's life, the bacterial spores reactivate and get to work. They can break the plastic down by 90% in just five months.
To create their eco-friendly material, the scientists fed pellets of thermoplastic polyurethane and bacterial spores into a hot plastic extruder, using extra-resilient spores bioengineered to withstand the heat. The process is repeated again and again to allow the bacteria to naturally mutate and adapt.
"It's amazing how well this process of bacterial evolution and selection worked for this purpose," marveled study co-author Adam Feist.
The resulting self-destructing plastic doesn't even need to end up in an ideal compost facility to biodegrade. It can break itself down without any extra help, making it an exceptionally versatile material.
With further development, the bacterial strain used could even act as a probiotic that nourishes plant life.
While there's more work to do to scale up the process, scientists hope this innovation will eventually help tackle the plastic waste crisis that threatens wildlife and chokes our landfills and oceans with pollution. Cutting this waste also means reducing the methane pollution from trash that's heating up our planet and fueling costly extreme weather events.
"If the plastic industry wants to keep using plastic, if our dependency is that severe, then by manufacturing a biodegradable plastic, it would eliminate the waste in an impressively short period of time," praised Maria Mocerino of Interesting Engineering.
As this research progresses, the dream of having our yoga pants and sneakers return to nature when we're done with them looks closer than ever. We may soon be able to enjoy our favorite products without worrying about them spending centuries in a landfill when we no longer need them.
Just as those bacterial spores can bring plastic back to life, green scientific breakthroughs like this one are helping to restore our environment's health.
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