Solving Oceanic Plastic pollution with bacteria.

It’s common knowledge that our survival on earth is threatened by a number of self-caused problems: whether it’s global warming, antibiotic-resistant bacteria or the threat of a third world war, things in short look bleak.

However, there is some hope in establishing a solution to the problem of pollution, more precisely plastic pollution, due to the up and coming duo  Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao. These 21-year-old undergraduate students have developed a prototype of a bacteria that breaks down polystyrene, a versatile form of plastic that’s used in manufacturing water bottles and yogurt containers, into CO2 and water, a project they first started working on in highschool.

The current version of the process includes using solvents to dissolve the plastic, then enzymes catalyze depolymerization of its base chemicals, which are then consumed and transformed by the bacteria. Wang and Yao envisage sending moving clean-up station to the locations of the plastic, where workers then can load the wasted and wait for it to degrade.

The duo has founded a company called BioCollection in an aim to capitalize on their idea and reach a widespread distribution. The company is targeting the removal of 9 grams of plastic per liter of bacteria and to sell 150 000 liter containers of the bacteria for $20000. While whether the company will prove to be the next Wall Street darling remains to be seen, there are signs of hope as the technology is much easier to implement than the widespread use of biodegradable plastics, version of which existed since the late 1980s and early 1990s, and more effective than similar products such as plastic consuming mealworms. What’s even more promising is that the duo won a total of 5 prestigious Wharton awards from the University of Pennsylvania, hosted their own TED talk, and raised $400 000, all under the age of 21.

BioCollection is not the next Silicon Valley wonder that teenagers aspire to copy one day, it is a company that can prove life-saving in the literal sense, and is the type of company that we ought to seek from the entrepreneurial world.