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Plastic makes up nearly 70% of all ocean litter, putting countless aquatic species at risk. But there is a tiny bit of hope—a teeny, tiny one to be precise: Scientists have discovered that microscopic marine microbes are eating away at the plastic, causing trash to slowly break down.
Plastic-eating bacteria could help to one day tackle some of the 14 million tons of plastic that is offloaded into our oceans every year. Plastic pollution leads to severe impact on...
In fact, 34 billion PET plastic bottles end up in the ocean every year alone. A solution proposed to aid in the clearance efforts of such plastic is through the use of plastic-eating bacteria to aid in the degradation process of marine plastics.
Genetically engineered plastic-degrading bacteria can also perform their magic in saltwater environments. This means that they could potentially work on ocean plastic waste. Addressing plastic waste in our oceans and other water systems has become one of the lesser known but greatest challenges of our time.
They are looking for plastic-munching microbes in searing hot springs in Yellowstone National Park, remote island beaches in the Pacific Ocean, and a plastic recycling factory in Japan, among other places.
The bacteria, found in a region of the North Atlantic Ocean called the Sargasso Sea, is clearly breaking down the plastic, but scientists don’t know if the byproduct is environment-friendly waste or a toxin. If a toxin is produced, the effects could be detrimental to aquatic life.
In new research, an international team of scientists studied how microbial communities build up on ocean-polluting plastics and contribute to their degradation – a natural biological mechanism we might be able to exploit, if we can learn to understand it better.
Plastic-eating enzymes are just one example of the means by which microbes can be harnessed to eat pollutants—from the ‘forever chemicals’ per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) to...
Plastic-eating bacteria might help explain why the amount of debris in the ocean has levelled off, despite continued pollution. But researchers don't yet know whether the digestion produces...
Have we found a solution to the plastic problem in the ocean? With this new plastic-eating bacterium, we seem to see light at the end of the tunnel.