plastisphere

PLASTIC GEOLOGY

Plastics are known for being remarkably resistant to natural degradation processes. An attribute most favorable in the first place has eventually resulted in disastrous environmental calamities of our times. Their water-repelling nature makes most plastics inaccessible for biotic decomposing and the usual microorganisms have difficulties even colonizing the surface. Resulting in accumulation instead of degradation.

This overabundance of plastic debris and its accumulation in land and waters creates new geological properties where soil profiles contain layers of fragmented plastics of various type and origin. Plastics have become part of our recent strata and like other mineralized substances in the soil, their durability will preserve them long into the geological future (Meuser, 2010; Zalasiewicz et al., 2016).

At the same time, plastic production has been growing over 299 million metric tons annually, the majority of which for disposable use. A new material and habitat for new stories and lifeforms. Sites of refuse and littering might have gotten a new fertile identity:

The 'plastisphere'

PLASTIC BIOLOGY

Evolution doesn't distinguish between born or made, growth or synthesis, natural or cultural. Nature includes and adapts to our new materiality, new niches are being formed and create new lifeforms that will get born.

In the soil, microorganisms are involved in degradation processes of both natural and synthesized material. In order to build a first understanding of the plastisphere as living habitat, I started characterizing the microbial community on plastic debris in soil and landfills.

GROWING ON PLASTICS

Since a geology never comes without an ecology, I suspect these life forms to have undergone natural adaptation processes to degrade and utilize plastic as a nutrient source.

Bacteria were isolated from old landfills in northern Germany and grown on nutrient medium with plastic powder as the only carbon source. Using medium mixed with Polyethylene (PE), Polyacetate (PA), Polypropylene (PP) or Polystyrene (PS), only bacteria will be selected that can utilize one of these anthropogenic substrates.

Plastic chips before and after the incubation with bacteria from the landfill.

Cracks get colonized and white bacterial biofilms forms after 4 months in liquid culture.

"It may seem odd to think of plastics as archaeological and geological materials because they are so new, but we increasingly find them as inclusions in recent strata. Plastics make excellent stratigraphic markers."

Dr. Matt Edgeworth, University of Leicester’s

By extracting DNA from such sediments, I'm trying to map the bacterial varieties, hypothesizing that they must have undergone natural adaptation processes to degrade and utilize plastic as a nutrient source.

My research uses molecular techniques to characterize the microbial community on plastic debris in soil and landfills.

PLASTIC SOCIOLOGY - "LIVING-WITH" PLASTICS

Cheikh N'Daye from Foundiougne village the Senegalese Saloum delta is a dressmaker and craftsman. The material that passes through his hands are woven fabrics. Cotton and synthetics.

In the village of Foundiougne, plastic is an omnipresent material that never asked for admission into its existing landscape. Trees and grass fields, dusty roads and river benches. Plastic covers and intrudes the geological inheritance and transforms it into something from the very presence.

Together with his brother who is a woodworker, Cheikh recovers plastic trash from the Foundiougne grounds. Plastic foils filled with Water, bottles, bags and else is melted into a viscous glue. The machine they use is a heat-gun welded together with a drillingmachine.

He uses it as glue and paint, making collages and masks that are exhibited in the townhall, creating awareness of the plastic pollution in their pristine protected area