Thanks! And totally agree! Many of these points are similar to the thoughts I’ve been having since looking into this. Addressing highly toxic or very poorly managed waste sectors makes a lot of sense. Would be interested to know more about the plastic eating bacteria
I remembered incorrectly—it was not the plastics, but the rare earths that they were recycling. Tanzeena Hussain was the graduate student working on it and having success getting bacteria to survive in increasingly toxic environments. She was crushing up old electronics to feed the bacteria—pretty on the nose.
It looks like they are having enough success to file for a patent and investigate if this could eventually be a viable business too. But speeding this up at such early stages could be hugely beneficial to reducing mining and improving human health damaged by rare metal recovery.
Thanks! And totally agree! Many of these points are similar to the thoughts I’ve been having since looking into this. Addressing highly toxic or very poorly managed waste sectors makes a lot of sense. Would be interested to know more about the plastic eating bacteria
I remembered incorrectly—it was not the plastics, but the rare earths that they were recycling. Tanzeena Hussain was the graduate student working on it and having success getting bacteria to survive in increasingly toxic environments. She was crushing up old electronics to feed the bacteria—pretty on the nose.
It was in Elizabeth Skovran’s lab at San Jose State University. This is the only write up I can find on it: https://blogs.sjsu.edu/newsroom/2023/taking-bio-recycling-to-the-next-level/
It looks like they are having enough success to file for a patent and investigate if this could eventually be a viable business too. But speeding this up at such early stages could be hugely beneficial to reducing mining and improving human health damaged by rare metal recovery.