NewsBits

By Editorial Staff, Resource Recycling

The Manatee County School District in Florida has earned the Guinness World Record for "Most Plastic Bottles Recycled" by collecting 29,560 pounds of plastic bottles in an eight-hour period, reports the Bradenton Herald. The record was set on April 26 during the district's 2012 Recycling Round-Up held at Sugg Middle School with help from the community and event sponsors.

After learning about the growing e-waste crisis in a geography class, 15-year-old Jason Lin started iReTron, his own e-scrap company, reports TreeHugger. Line recently won the "Next Teen Tycoon" contest held by San Francisco-based marketing firm VerticalResponse, receiving $4,000 towards his business and tickets to the TEDxTeen Conference.

A group of students from a San Rafael, California elementary school have created an online petition to exhort Crayola to offer a take-back and recycling program for the crayon company's markers. The San Francisco Bay Area school students are "hopeful Crayola will make their current recycling program — an internal program that includes only markers malformed during production — available to all consumers."

A group of Yale University students and faculty doing research in the Amazon rainforest have found a fungus that "eats" polyurethane. From the Applied and Environmental Microbiology journal abstract: "Several active organisms were identified, including two distinct isolates of Pestalotiopsis microspora with the ability to efficiently degrade and utilize PUR [polyurethane] as the sole carbon source when grown anaerobically, a unique observation among reported PUR biodegradation activities."

Non-Doctor Who fans: Don't know what a "Dalek" is? Then, by all means, do not click on this link to see one made from recycled engine parts.

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