Plastic bags are one of the environmental banes of our existence. Under normal circumstances, they take roughly a thousand years to biodegrade (though often only being useful as a bag for days or weeks), and in the meantime they pose a serious threat to nature. Plastics break down into tiny particles which attract toxins and leach others, the form massive clouds in the ocean killing over a million seabirds and hundred thousand mammals and turtles each year. Plastic particles are found inside everything from birds to plankton (the tiny organisms which make up the basis of the ocean food chain and produce most of the planet's oxygen). And as much as many stores are striving to move toward re-usable bags, there's still millions of them out there.

Here's the bright side. A 16-year-old student from Waterloo has found a way to break them down in a few months. The process is simple, not a lot more complicated than brewing beer - fermentation. Using dirt from a landfill as a source for bacteria which would feed on plastic (where else would you look?) and some yeast, he figured out the right temperature to keep them at and after six weeks had broken down nearly half of the plastic in the experiment. There doesn't seem like there's any reason this couldn't be done with other plastics, or on a far larger scale.

Nature is the largest collection of machines one can imagine. If you have a task, there's probably a plant, a fungus or a microorganism which can do it. Nature turns deserts into forests, garbage into food and is the only reason we have a remotely breathable atmosphere on this planet. Despite constant attempts to patent plants, bacteria and DNA, nature will provide for anybody, regardless of what colour their skin is or what's in their wallet. The offspring of a handfull of seeds can feed a family for generations, and before around 1850, all fine Belgian beers, French wines and Highland Scotch were produced without the benefit of purchased yeasts, or even knowledge of what they were. If we want a small-scale alternative to enormously expensive toxic industries, we need look no farther than the natural processes which have supported human needs for food, fiber and building materials for thousands of years.