{"id":652904,"date":"2020-04-23T09:51:44","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T13:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=652904"},"modified":"2020-04-23T09:51:44","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T13:51:44","slug":"engineered-microbes-can-produce-biodegradable-plastics-at-lower-cost-and-environmental-impact-than-plant-based-plastics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=652904","title":{"rendered":"Engineered microbes can produce biodegradable plastics at lower cost and environmental impact than plant-based plastics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you look up from your screen and glance around you, it&#8217;s nearly certain that there will be something made of synthetic plastic within arm&#8217;s reach (maybe even the clothing you&#8217;re wearing). Humans have only been manufacturing plastics for about 100 years, but we have already produced about 8,300 million metric tons of it since the 1950s\u2014that&#8217;s roughly the weight of 25,000 Empire State Buildings. And, because the vast majority of plastics do not biodegrade, nearly all of that century&#8217;s worth of plastic remains somewhere on planet Earth, from the guts of fish and seabirds to water-poisoning landfills to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And even if we can&#8217;t see them, microplastics now permeate the air we breathe and can end up in our lungs, and their health effects are not yet known.&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\n Click here for original story, <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2020-04-microbes-biodegradable-plastics-environmental-impact.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Engineered microbes can produce biodegradable plastics at lower cost and environmental impact than plant-based plastics<\/a>&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\nSource: Phys.org&#013;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you look up from your screen and glance around you, it&#8217;s nearly certain that there will be something made of synthetic plastic within arm&#8217;s reach (maybe even the clothing&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-phys-org"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=652904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=652904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=652904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=652904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}