The Plastic Alchemist

Article By Helen Lovell-Wayne, MS

Picture By Gokalp Iscan

https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-lovell-wayne/

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hlovell@gmail.com

I wrote this paper with the sole intention of informing consumers about the goods they may currently be buying. Hopefully, with enough demand from consumers, industries will supply safer and more sustainable products.

Plastic is a petroleum product and its presence as a “forever” waste polluting our water and soil has the public increasingly concerned (V. Khyade 2018). Social media is full of Julian Brown and his microwave pyrolysis “invention”. The idea behind his contraption is to turn plastic back into the oil that it is composed of. Julian Brown is making this idea mainstream, and the public is, for the most part, on board with his products, “plasoline and plasodiesal”.

However, there are other ways of breaking down plastic, and pyrolysis is not the ideal solution that the public is craving. Hydrothermal, catalytic cracking, and pyrolysis are all processes that turn plastic into oil. They all work on the same basic premise. The heat breaks the plastic down into its component parts. This results in the formation of a combination of solids, liquids, and gases. Moreover, consumers can utilize the liquids as gasoline. However the gases, and some of the solids and liquids resulting from this procedure can be toxic(N. Shah, Rockwell, J. and Huffman, G. 1998). Consequently, some of these processes aim to minimize this toxicity (M. Ozoemena and Coles, S. 2023).

💡Plastic Eating Worms💡

In doing so, they utilize energy; in all cases, the energy to create the product is more than the energy produced (N. Shah, Rockwell, J. and Huffman, G. 1998). Even with using catalysts to reduce the initial temperature needed, these three processes end up with a net loss, at this point in our technological knowledge (N. Shah, Rockwell, J. and Huffman, G. 1998). A solution that is not getting the same notoriety as the above-mentioned processes comes from nature.

Scientists at Arkansas State University in collaboration with NASA are studying waxworms that eat and digest plastic (V. Khyade 2018). The plastic breaks down into harmless ethylene glycol without excessive heat or energy (V. Khyade 2018). Additionally, ethylene glycol biodegrades easily (V. Khyade 2018).The “normal” food for waxworms is the wax from beehives. Hence beekeepers consider them parasites. Therefore breeding waxworms to eat plastic would most likely cause other ecological problems.

🧫Other Plastic Methods🦠

So scientists are isolating two strains of bacteria Enterobacter asburiae and Bacillus sp found in the guts and saliva of worms that cause plastic to decompose (V. Khyade 2018). Consequently, scientists could use these bacteria to accelerate the breakdown of plastics in landfills. Independent research efforts in Japan and Australia are focused on worms exhibiting similar abilities (S. George, George, A. and Martin, A. 2022).There are other methods currently being studied, including other types of naturally occurring bacteria.

These are naturally occurring bacteria are not found in the guts of worms that decompose plastic. One type of bacteria that is currently being studied is called Ideonella sakaeinsis (S. Kaur, Singh, Z. and Singh, B. 2024). Its primary source of energy comes from plastic. It breaks it down into ethylene glycol (EG) and terephthalic acid (S. Kaur, Singh, Z. and Singh, B. 2024). This acid can cause eye irritation and coughing. However but it is far less harmful than the carcinogenic substances produced by heat-based processes mentioned earlier in this article.

🧫Plastic Bacteria Limitations🦠

The biggest drawback is that this bacteria only eats one type of plastic: PET (plyethethlene terephthalate) (S. Kaur, Singh, Z. and Singh, B. 2024). These plastics have a 1 in a triangle on the base of beverage bottles (S. Kaur, Singh, Z. and Singh, B. 2024).In any case, there is room for all the types of plastic “recycling” I have mentioned. Mostly because a natural means of breaking down plastic has not been discovered for all types of plastic.

Until that discovery there is room for hydrothermal, catalytic cracking, and pyrolysis on a limited basis, until they can replace them with more efficient nontoxic mechanisms. Accordingly, these processes should be regarded as a stopgap method. In the meantime, as a consumer, the main thing you can do is use less plastic. For more information about reducing plastic waste, read Garbage Talk, 2025, and/or Microplastics-It’s What’s On The Menu. If you can’t avoid it is use plastic created from hemp, seaweed, coconut, and/or bamboo.

🥥Plastic Consumer Behavior🎋

The term for this type of plastic is bioplastic. The consumer can usually determine that they are buying bioplastics by looking at the triangle with the recycling arrows. If there is a number 7 then it is considered plant-based or compostable. These products can usually decompose in less than 6 months and are currently commercially available. That way, we are not causing more plastic environmental problems. Hopefully, in the near future, plastic will not be forever but more or something fleeting like a summer’s day.