Question: You know it takes thousands of years for the average plastic bag to decompose well surely that could be decreased by lots just from simple work? Do research onto which bacteria makes it decompose. (I'm sure it works by bacteria, what else?) Establish which bacteria make it decompose the fastest. Find the perfect growing conditions for sad bacteria to work. This should surely increase the speed for it to decompose, like working with anything you want, whenever you want it. (Without distraction, ofc)

Mark Roberts answered on 23 Jun 2010:

Good qu!

The answer is yes and no – so if you think about it as a food source plastic bags have not been around very long and so bacteria haven’t evolved to break them down efficiently – though some can – an example would be Pseudomonas – but they don’t break them down all the way and only work on certain types of plastic….

So scientists are currently working on making them better at this, coping with a wider range of plastic and making them survive in the sort of conditions you’d get in landfill etc – so at the moment most of this in in the lab stage but perhaps in the next 20 years we will be doing just what you describe.

There are environmental issues too, as we need to make sure that we control the plastic eating bacteria otherwise they will spread around the world and eat all of our plastic which would be a serious issue – so part of the reason this is still in the lab is people need to work out how to control these once they are used in the environment