LifeScience.com reports on an upcoming article in the journal Environmental Science & Technology describing a soil bacteria which can be used to convert some of the 3 million tons of polystyrene produced annually in the US into a biodegradable plastic.

Conducted at University College Dublin, the experimenters heated the polystyrene to get styrene oil, which was “fed” to the bacteria Pseudomonas putida. The result was a biodegradable plastic called polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA).

PHA can be used to make plastic forks and packaging film. It is resistant to heat, grease and oil. It also lasts a long time. But unlike Styrofoam, PHA biodegrades in soil and water.

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Related posts: Plastics as Marine Pollution, NEC Biopolymer Cellphone, Fujitsu Biopolymer Laptop,

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See Also: Chocolate + Bacteria = Electric Poop Fuel?,Nanowires Discovered in Bacteria,“Water Filters for the Third World”,

This entry was posted by Jeffrey Warren on Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 at 12:20 am and is filed under Environment, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.