Bacteria Eat Styrofoam

chaosmage42 writes "Scientists at the University of Dublin have found a way to break down styrofoam, the bane of recyclers/composters everywhere. This could be a great step towards sustainability, but it does require the styrofoam to be heated first."

Re:In related news...

[Irish_Samurai]

You wouldn't think so, but they do.

I bartended all throughout college and on and off for a little while after while I built up my resume. You wouldn't believe how many Irish and German patrons I had that couldn't get enough of the stuff. It was amazing.

You got to remember, our Imports are their domestic and vice versa.

Re:I've seen this in action.

[HairyCanary]

Or perhaps the styrofoam peanuts are merely breaking apart into smaller chunks. I do not see how your experiment proves that styrofoam does biodegrade (especially when there is scientific evidence to the contrary). And this article does not suggest that there is any bacteria that can eat styrofoam directly -- it has to be heated and converted back into liquid styrene first.

Nice try though.

Re:Cancer anyone?

[luder]

I would be more worried if you said:

"Last I checked, eating styrofoam let off some pretty nasty gasses..."

Re:I've seen this in action.

[DietFluffy]

Did you check the water for dissolved polystyrene? Solubility for polystyrene is very low, but it may be noticeable after 10 years. If it did dissolve and not degrade, that means that all the styrofoam is chemically unchanged and is still in the 5-gallon bottle.

Re:Cool science! But there's no landfill problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you also go ahead and post some links to articles regarding the fact that there is no impending oil shortage? (...or that global warming has nothing to do with human activity and the same goes for the ozone hole...)

Recycling is about sustainability and energy efficiency. It's about turning the waste stream into a raw material stream, not about diverting it from landfills. Like any other process like this, it needs to be economical to be successful. Not that I have anything against landfills... I mean, they take up hardly any real estate and they smell fantastic!

Re:We use a product called "Meltdown"

[Chris Burke]

Interesting. I'd remembered reading on Slashdot a couple years ago about a Japanese scientist who discovered that orange extract would disolve styrofoam quite easily. I tried to do this myself, when I had a large bag full of shipping peanuts and felt bad just throwing it in the trash. I bought a bottle of orange cleaner and tried spraying over the styrofoam to little effect... Dipping a single peanut into a glass of the stuff did mostly dissolve it, but in the end the concentration of d-Limonene in the consumer product I bought was just too low to do the job I wanted. Glad to see others have had more success!

Re:Cost/benefit?

[drew]

Well, yes, except that in that case...

(*** minor spoiler if you haven't read beyond the first book ***)

The bacteria were deliberately introduced into the Ringworld environment with that specific intention, so it wasn't an unintended side-effect.

Re:I've seen this in action.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was refering to 'in a landfill' and no you don't normally bury an apple to plant an apple tree, which shows your ingorance.. one simply discaards the apple core, and allows it to rot away at ground level, and if all goes well one has about a 1/20% chance that an apple tree will germinate, and lower odds the sappling will survive. afterall apple trees produce hundreds of apples annually, with dozens of seeds a piece, to grow a few sapplings that will continue the legacy as the trees become mature and 'die'... another note, heat from fire will Improve the odds of germination Highly, especially will all the soot (and moisture) left over..

Burying an apple is a good way to NOT plant a tree, the seeds need to be under no more than 1" of Loose potting soil (or even less 'typical' topsoil)

Now sometimes, even burried the seeds can manage to 'grow anyways' but they need to be shallow enough for 'light' to penetate, wich generally means 1/4" to 1/2" of covering or less, many people germinate seeds under a single ply paper towel, to 'keep them moist' as a germinated seed can easily be transplanted into soil and you at least know which seeds germinated...