People really don’t kid when they say that our generation has to figure out the difficult problems of the world because the easy ones have already been taken. Thankfully, from the looks of it, we’re stepping up to the challenge.

Before May of 2007, you could have asked all doctors of ANY science “How long does it take for a plastic object to completely decompose?” and you would have been replied by a majority of them with the same answer of “anywhere from 20 to 1000 years.” According to Earth911.com, a website created for the sole purpose of promoting recycling in America, the complete degradation of a single plastic water bottle can take over 700 years!! And in the sixty or so years that plastics have been in common use, Americans have ALREADY created a landfill problem.

There are two main problems with landfills: water and gas. Over those hundreds of years that will be required to completely degrade those plastics (and even more for metals and glass), they release toxic gases both into ground water supplies and into the atmosphere. A common gas among many that are released is aerosol, which has already been shown to cause significant damage to the earth’s protective ozone layer. Although once believed to be harmless, we have come to find otherwise and that immediate action is definitely necessary in order to conserve our environment.

Que Daniel Burd, winner of the 2007 Canadian Science Fair in Waterloo, Ontario. His simplistic, yet scientifically impressive work with yeast has identified two genus, Pseudomonas and Sphingomonas, that have been shown to possess strains with the capability to decompose plastic. Not only that, but he has discovered what he believes to be optimum conditions for the microorganisms to work… resulting in the complete metabolism of a plastic bag in only three months, 19 years and 9 months before it’s projected degradation date. And did I mention that he was only sixteen at the time?

Kids, if you think that you’re too small to do ANYTHING, take a lesson from this guy. His experiments have found a way to take plastics, which would normally result in toxins released to both our air and water, and put them through a process that produces only water and carbon dioxide… the same stuff we produce during cellular respiration. Some have argued that this excess of CO2 would result in assistance to global climate change. But others believe that capturing this gas and releasing it into water-dwelling photosynthetic organisms, like algae, could be the ecological boost that our planet really needs to kick back into a healthy state.

Regardless, this guy is inspiring. In an interview with Cogito, a branch of Johns Hopkins University that focuses on the scientific education of high school level youths, Burd admits that his work was almost entirely his own. He was given equipment from an outside benefactor, but his ideas came from his own experience and research. “I did not have a mentor [...] I used the recourses available at my local library.”

If you take anything away from Daniel’s story, let it be this: you need not have a $5 million grant to do something amazing. All great things start small – McDonald’s, Google, America. Don’t be discouraged by youth or even by ignorance. If you pursue it, your day will come. Burd started out by completing household chores and has become a legend of our time. Who knows what you’re capable of? Not even you.

.

References: