Plastic-eating bacteria have already evolved to eat our plastics. By Joanne Nova.
The Experts thought PET plastic was impossible to degrade naturally:
- WWF tell us it will take 450 years for a plastic bottle to break down.
- The US EPA says it will take up to 1,000 years.
- And the UN says “plastic is forever”.
But now that we’ve banned plastic straws and picnic spoons, and changed our shopping bags and spent hours sorted our rubbish, it turns out bacteria have already evolved to capture the energy left in the plastic. And furthermore, they weren’t just in one shallow bay, they found them spread throughout the world’s oceans. …
Evolution, free lunch:
How much of our recycling is just a waste of time and money?
Life on Earth was never going to leave a free meal sitting around.In 2016 researchers found one sort of bacterium in a Japanese recycling plant was able to live off the plastic waste. Now we know that the enzyme PETase breaks down plastic, and that it is found in marine bacteria too. Researchers looked at 400 sites around the world and found the plastic-chewing-enzyme in (by golly) 80% of them. …
All over the world, a whole new ecosystem is rising out of the mud. With a library of some 200 million microbial enzymes across the land and sea, and quadrillions of bacteria flexing their mutations, it was only a matter of time. …
Plastic is just a different form of C-H-O waiting to be converted into CO2 and water.
What do the stupid arts graduates who run the world know? This is their solution:
