Galen Weston, hire this kid

As part of a science fair project, a 16 year old Canadian teenager has come up with a way to get plastic shopping bags, which normally take up to 1,000 years to decompose, to break down in as little as three months. (h/t Agonist)

Daniel Burd, a high school student in Waterloo, Canada, reasoned that, because plastic eventually degrades, there is probably some some microorganism out there that breaks it down. If that microbe could be identified, you could expose higher concentrations of it to plastic and break it down faster. Daniel won top honors at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa, where he took home $30,000 in prizes and scholarships. See detailed article here.

Absolutely amazing. You would think that with all the heat that they must be under, the companies that make plastic bags would have come up with this. Or for that matter any number of physicists or chemical engineers.

And I'm not being facetious about the title. I'm serious. Loblaw Companies Limited should hire Daniel or partner with him to develop his theory. Loblaw's has warehouses full of rotting meat (that's where unsold meat goes) that they turn it into President's Choice compost (a green idea actually). Why not devote one of them to decomposing plastic bags. Now that would be a commercial.

And besides Galen and Brian look about the same age. OK that part was facetious.

PS: To the PR firm or legal aids that scans the web for Loblaw Company references. Pass this one on to Britannia, it's a good idea.