<story><title>UBC device uses wood dust to trap up to 99.9 per cent of microplastics in water</title><url>https://news.ubc.ca/2023/08/16/microplastic-pollution-plants-could-be-the-answer/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>hosh</author><text>There is a researcher named John Todd whose work has been able to break down DDT in a matter of weeks.&lt;p&gt;In this video, he gives a talk about some various projects. In the first one, he uses these methods to clean up a site contaminated with the top 15 pollutants (at least at the time). Heavy metal were sequestered by algea; 14 of the 15 toxins were below detectable levels, and the 15th was reduced by 99.999%; solids were eaten by armored carp. The output is drinking standard water, and it takes 10 days for the contaminated water to flow through the system.&lt;p&gt;The key design principle is putting many species across all five kingdoms, from different biomes, and they start self-organizing around the pollutants. The resulting communities break down the pollutant, but are all new.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;SeQotnmhO5I&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;SeQotnmhO5I&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a different interview, he talks about microplastics — and while he has not worked on it, he believes a solution can be found in incorporating all five kingdoms. So not just sequestering them, but breaking them down so they can be useful in the ecosystem again.</text></comment>
<story><title>UBC device uses wood dust to trap up to 99.9 per cent of microplastics in water</title><url>https://news.ubc.ca/2023/08/16/microplastic-pollution-plants-could-be-the-answer/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>joker_minmax</author><text>I feel like we keep hearing about technologies like this that are going to change the world but none of them ever actually get implemented... just me?</text></comment>