Teenager's Science Fair Project May Deliver Us From Plastic

That's amazing if it works as good as he says without creating some toxic by-product. My natural cynicism says this will disappear like Cold fusion though...

cool

Cool, though its too bad we can't reuse the plastic in the bags.

So...are we going to be putting the bags in the recycling bin or the compost bag?

Ahhh, I did the same thing when I was eight. Seriously, good ont he kid. It's not exactly all that new technology (in situ bioremediation of petroleum hydrocarbon contaiminted soil is quite common). But I read his paper--jeez, smart kid. Gives you hope, ya know.

Plastic bags are recycleable. Unfortunately, not every city recycles them, though. Ultimately, it's better to just bring your own cloth bags to the grocery store so you don't have to use plastic at all.

Interesting project, but I see a problem. If a garbage bag is thrown into a landfill, you would have to dig it out or heat up the whole landfill. Very inefficient. And if you are able to collect them, then you are better off recycling them. There are plastics made from derivatives of plants that will degrade in relatively short amounts of time.

Now it isn't entirely useful because you can only recycle so much plastic before the structure breaks down and can't be use. This could be use to speed up the process and then finally eliminate the plastic.

Plastic bags are recycleable. Unfortunately, not every city recycles them, though. Ultimately, it's better to just bring your own cloth bags to the grocery store so you don't have to use plastic at all.

So this is only good for those already IN the landfill? I mean, we use cloth bags and boxes for shopping, and at worst, paper bags. We could just get rid of them

I think the heating up was just to speed up the process for the science fair.