Well, I did it again: led the Seven-Sentence Short Story workshop (created by science fiction and fantasy author James van Pelt) at a writing conference, this time, Wordbridge in Lethbridge, Alberta. Here’s the story I …
It’s time for this year’s Kickstarter to fund Shapers of Worlds Volume V, the fifth in the series of anthologies featuring science fiction and fantasy by authors who were guests on my Aurora Award-winning podcast, The …
It takes money to publish books, and most of that money flows out the door before the book is released and sales begin, so my publishing company, Shadowpaw Press, is turning to Crowdfundr to help …
Shapers of Worlds Volume IV, the fourth anthology featuring authors who were guests on my podcast, The Worldshapers, is now available everywhere, including directly from Shadowpaw Press. Here’s a handy universal URL with links to …
My publishing company, Shadowpaw Press, has three great titles coming out in the first two months of 2024, all of them science fiction or fantasy. The first two, The Good Soldier by Nir Yaniv and …
Here’s another seven-sentence short story! I ran the workshop again at Ganbatte, an anime convention in Saskatoon. It went well, and here’s the one I created, again with the instructions, created by noted SF short-story …
Previous
Next
Bacteria that eat polystyrene
From Sciencebase:
Irish and German researchers have discovered that the soil bacterium Pseudomonas putida can eat polystyrene. This polymer, instantly recognisable in its expand form is a key component of disposable cups, and in “plastic” plates and utensils.
This is potentially good news for the environmentally friendly disposal of these things, but it reminds me of a science fiction book I read as a kid (which means it was probably written in the late 1960s or early 1970s) about the collapse of civilization caused by a strain of mutant bacteria–not one that makes people ill, but one that eats plastic…
Permanent link to this article: https://edwardwillett.com/2006/02/bacteria-that-eat-polystyrene/
