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https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-11-18/dna-plastic-can-be-used-to-hold-polluters-responsible/101652588>
'Thousands of marine mammals, reptiles, fish and birds die every year, usually
from starvation, after mistaking plastic waste for food.
The United Nations has described plastic pollution as a global crisis, with
microplastics discovered from the deepest oceans, to near the top of Mt
Everest.
So what if there was a way to trace plastic back to its manufacturer, and even
to hold them responsible for its clean-up?
There's now an emerging area of technology that makes it possible to embed a
traceable code, which researchers have likened to plastic "DNA", into plastic
polymer.
In a recent paper published in
Polymer Chemistry, researchers
have rallied the polymer-chemistry community to work towards embeddable codes
for plastic, that can be read on small handheld devices in the field, and
ideally even on mobile phones.
"Currently, to read out a code by itself requires multi-million-dollar
equipment and specialist, physical chemists," said Christopher Barner-Kowollik,
a co-author on the paper and macromolecular photochemistry researcher at the
Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
"What we are proposing is, we need either a small handheld device or even a
mobile phone [to read the code]."
And that could have some powerful implications.'
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
