Bye Plastico

During the last century, humanity has overused plastics for packaging and other purposes, causing a dramatic impact on the ecosystems, including massive pollution of the oceans with microplastics which affects the survival of many species, including humans. Our solution uses natural microorganisms able to break down plastic polymers. Furthermore, using biotechnological tools to improve its biochemical pathways, we can make this work in months rather than in centuries as it takes naturally. Our workflow permits identifying Natural Plastic Eaters, which promises to have a plastic waste-free future for the world. Our purpose is to develop a biological formula to get rid of the plastic pollution accumulated during the last decades. So far we have been able to break down up the 35% of polyethylene in one month with the fungi found in the Atacama Desert.

Plastics are a 20th-century invention, which has caused many problems nowadays, including persisting pollution of the environment, threatening the survival of critical species, and directly affecting human health. World plastic production increased exponentially, from 2.3 million tons in 1950 to 448 million tons by 2015. Plastics often contain additives making them stronger, more flexible, and durable. But many of these additives can extend the life of products if they end up in thrash, with some estimates ranging to at least 400 years to break down, stressing all living beings including microorganisms.

In nature, stressed microorganisms develop sensitivity to many chemical compounds due to damage to their permeability barriers in the cell wall and the cell membrane. They also fail to repair this damage in the presence of selective compounds and consequently fail to multiply. However, the cells can repair this damage relatively rapidly in an adequate environment in the absence of selective agents. Repaired cells regain their resistance to the selective compound and can multiply in a selective environment. This characteristic allows them to develop natural mechanisms to get rid of plastics using it as a carbon source

A mixture of microorganisms which include using isolated fungi from a highly stressed zone of the Chilean north (the Atacama Desert). Employing biotechnology and molecular biology approach, we can elucidate the molecular and biochemical machinery of these fungi involved in the polyethylene biodegradation, improving it and using it to make different formulas to apply them in the household or industrial level. So far we have been able to digest up to the 35% of polyethylene in one month with the set of microorganisms we found. Our goal is to design an optimal formula to be used globally.

Plastic pollution is a global problem that needs to be addressed as fast as possible. Human beings, aerial and marine animals are suffering its effects over the globe. Considering this the whole world population is in need to solve this issue. 

At the same time organizations in charge of municipal garbage have the issue of digging more and more space, since the plastic debris accumulate and barely disappear over the decades, involving economical and environmental costs.

To understand the needs of the whole community our team has organized meetings with a wide variety of stakeholders in our Country (Representatives of the communities, political representatives, entrepreneurs, municipal landfills managers, governors, neighbors from Iquique, students and general population), we listen to their points of view and we include them in the profiling of our biotechnological solution.

Our approach considers the utilization of vastly widespread fungi and their biochemical machinery to degrade plastic accumulations, helping communities and nature transform an impossible pollutant into an organic carbon source able to incorporate back to the natural cycle. In that way, not assimilable material will be disrupted and recycled.

Our solution wants to tackle environmental pollution directly, using biotechnology and natural fungal capabilities. Many countries are forbidding plastic bags and other "single-use" plastics. Still, tons of plastic debris are already there, plus the plastic packaging is actively in use nowadays besides the carry bags. All of these are polluting our ecosystems, and we need to rid out them. Biodegradation is an answer to solve that problem. From this point of view, we have been able to track the ecosystem's ways to adapt to plastic pollution and using this adaptation in benefit for the mitigation of this issue. With our work pipeline we are able to track these environmental resilience and use it for human benefit.

Our team, working since 2015, at Iquique and Santiago de Chile, has managed to identify and exploit three (3) species under laboratory conditions bacterial and six (6) fungal, capable of growing on a laboratory scale, with plastic as the sole carbon source and that could be used in an optimized process of biodegradation of this, significantly reducing degradation rates in our prototype model. The results showed that these microorganisms could biodegrade low-density polyethylene by up to a 35% in one month under laboratory conditions. The prospective impact of this technology could reach our communities or even the global level in just few years.

The natural biological breakdown can eliminate plastic, but usually, it takes hundreds of years. Finding specialized microorganisms and improve their natural capabilities through biotechnology is a step forward in the biodegradation scenario. A final formulation may accelerate the natural process hundreds of times, changing a market completely with a relatively low number of players. Human communities, fauna, and nature, in general, will be beneficiated, here in Chile or eventually on a global scale.

Currently the outcomes from our solution are serving the population of Tarapacá Region in the north of Chile, where most of our development has taken place. The population of this region is 325.000 people. We expect to extend our range of action to the Chilean national level 18.950.000 people in the next year. And our goal is to develop a solution that can be used at least by the whole American continent territory, involving 1.002.000.000 people.

Simultaneous to our work at the laboratory we have developed multiple actions to measure our impact, as our regional workshops with the community, which we have twice a year, where we communicate our advances to our direct served population. In these initiatives we disseminate the potential of our technology and we highlight the awareness of the community to tackle down the plastic pollution negative effects.   

The team is conformed by staff from Universidad Arturo Prat (Iquique-Chile) and external contractors. The development of this technology has been performed within the university facilities, yet for the intellectual property, the whole team is included.

We are 12 people involved in the solution development.

All of us are working part-time in it.

4 of us are part of University staff, and 8 people working as external contractor.

We are a multidisciplinary team with a variety of skills mixture in our motley crew. Since we are professionals from different areas of knowledge (from biological sciences, business development, education and public administration) we are capable of develop a solution that tackles an important danger to our species technically and socially. At the same time, due to our experience together, we have been able to transmit our knowledge to newer generations in our country, specially to the more humble towns, encouraging younglings to engage into the responsibility we have as citizens of the world in the wise use of plastics, and the potential that every mind observing the world has to solve this problems. 

Our team is formed by people from several socio-economical origins and two nationalities involved (Chilean and Colombian) with 50% of women participation. Within the development of our solution, we have considered multiple technical views since the beginning, going further the biological sciences sphere, taking into account the economic, social, and environmental outputs that our solution involves; this has implied an integration vision within the leadership approach needed. At the same time, we have enhanced our actions in several aspects of dissemination, going into rural schools to share our knowledge, and also to the political and entrepreneurial level nationally. These actions we project to keep having them for the following years of development of our solution, since we consider as a critical asset the knowledge sharing with the basis of our society, the children, taking also into our scope the decision making sphere as a second target.

I strongly believe that the development reached by my team is indeed a solution that can unravel one of the most daring challenges of our times. To become a solver will allow my team become part of a rich environment with likely minded people which wants to improve the world we are living in. This interaction with partners solvers also will allow us to join forces to address our financial barriers, by raising funds and developing together the following stages of our solution, taking our prototype to a widely distributed tech based product for guarantee a plastic waste free environment in a close future.

Even though we have in our team academic experience at the business model, one of our weaknesses is that we lack entrepreneurial field experience. Inside the Solvers community, we are eager to find organizations with more expertise to transform our prototype into a global product recognizable by its efficiency and relevance to the environment. 

Within the financial sphere, achieving capabilities such as pitching skills for reaching investors will be an essential asset to acquire. At the same time, being visible to members of the Solve community could make us reach a higher level of funding than we are getting nowadays.
Finally, in product development, mentorship by experienced entrepreneurs in the solve community and partnership with key organizations used to transform prototypes into globally distributed technology products is the kind of support that we are looking for.

At the MIT faculties, we will appreciate being partners with the Biomolecular Engineering staff to get deeper into our knowledge about the mechanisms involved in the plastic breakdown within our microorganisms. 

For reaching a concrete social impact, liaison with the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation could give us a boost to transform our prototype into a globally distributed product, funding our next steps and helping us establish teams in different countries to find more microorganisms able to eat plastics. 
Simultaneously, we believe that The Nature Conservancy organization could be interested in applying and disseminate our development since we aim to protect lands and water equally by eliminating plastics in a naturally enhanced way, them can help us reach different landscapes that we haven´t considered yet, in which other species can be breaking down plastics in efficient ways.

We are qualified for the prize due to our main goal- which is tackling the global issue of plastic pollution- since we are using in a smart fashion the tools that nature have adapted to the pollution stress to break-down the plastic persistent in our environment, making it safer for humans and every species affected by the contamination caused by plastics during the last century of use, at the same time we can use the by products of the breakdown to make organic composting, adding a sustainable point of view to a problem that can become a solution by itself. Our team will use the prize money to develop a packable technology solution from our discovery.