Environmental Pollution Discussion Short Paper

DISCUSSION SHORT PAPER

Discussion Short Paper

Plastic – unlike is the case with other materials – is not biodegradable and could leech chemicals when exposed to heat (UNEP, 2022). Towards this end, plastic “pollution chokes marine wildlife, damages soil and poisons groundwater, and can cause serious health impacts” (UNEP, 2022). For this reason, the kind of microbe described by Morgan Vague in the YouTube video could be a handy solution to the problem of plastic pollution (TED, 2019). I am of the opinion that the bacteria could be could be deployed in locations that are heavily polluted with plastic waste, such as our oceans, where they would ‘munch’ the said waste – effectively complementing other strategies to rein in the plastic waste problem.

Yet another key problem that the world faces is carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution. Indeed, as Lindsey (2023) points out, the continued release of CO2 into the atmosphere is “supercharging the natural greenhouse effect, causing global temperatures to rise.” The solution to this problem could be found in cyanobacteria’s ability to recycle carbon (Zhang, Carroll, and Atsumi, 2017). More specifically, this bacteria (which lives in water) uses energy captured from the sun to partake in the conversion of CO2 into, amongst other things, sugars. Thus, efforts to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere could “harness cyanobacteria's photosynthetic system to uptake and convert CO2 into bioproducts” (Zhang, Carroll, and Atsumi, 2017).

References

Lindsey, R. (2023). Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. NOAA. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide