This article was taken from the May 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Gerben Stouten, a biochemist at Delft Technical University, has found a microorganism that turns waste into water -- and makes bioplastic in the process. "We try to find organisms in nature that can do a special trick," says Stouten, 30.
The bacterium, a strain he named Plasticicumulans, feasts on particles in waste water, and stores any excess. Waste water was given to a variety of microorganisms; some consumed the waste and quickly reproduced, but others stored it as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), which share many properties with petrochemical plastics. "When all the waste gets eaten, the guys who didn’t store anything are going to have a hard time," says Stouten. "We’re interested in the bacterium that consume the waste water so quickly, it creates a "belly" faster than it is able to reproduce." Half the water is then removed, new waste water added, and the process repeated until only organisms that instinctively store are left. This enriched population is given a larger amount of waste water, pushing the organisms to store up to nine or ten times as much PHA as they could originally, to ensure they grow as large a "belly" as possible. Stouten has been feeding his bacteria waste water from confectioner Mars. The aim is to produce plastics for packaging.
Now in partnership with Californian waste water treatment company PAX, Stouten expects factories in 2030 will routinely make use of their waste streams. Tuck in, bacteria. There’s more where that came from...
Stouten's Circular Process
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
