Dive Brief:
- A team of researchers at Imperial College in London created a process that can transform waste from landfills into bioplastics and introduced a method that can break down the plastic before disposal.
- The student researchers re-engineered the genetic code of E.coli bacteria, effectively rendering landfill waste into a bioplastic.
- The plastics can be used in the healthcare industry for syringes and other disposable items used in hospitals.
Dive Insight:
The researchers state that the process could be executed at an industrial magnitude and could be made using waste matter instead of plants, the main ingredient used for current methods of creating bioplastics, allowing more tracts of land to be used for growing food.
Students at BYU invented a spray specifically targeted toward landfills that capture methane. The formula is made to degrade plastics at landfills, effectively creating more space at the sites and enabling the facility to capture a greater amount of methane, as the spray accelerates the production of methane.
