UBC Professor Sue Baldwin is looking into miniscule ways of cleaning up refuse from BC’s mining corporations, reported CBC.

She is experimenting with “heavy-metal-eating microbes” at a lead mine in Trail, BC and their ability to process toxic byproducts. Some bacteria help remove cadmium and arsenic from water, and others eat heavy metals. She is using a new area of biology called metagenomics, which examines the DNA of multiple organisms at the same time so scientists can form a larger picture of which genes are effective and which are not.

“It’s very much like gardening,” Baldwin told CBC. “It’s sometimes more like an art than a science.”