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These Tiny Microbes Are Munching Away at Plastic Waste in the Ocean

posted by chromas on Tuesday May 21 2019, @11:11PM   

Phoenix666 writes:

ScienceMag:

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.

[...] Both types of plastic lost a significant amount of weight after being exposed to the natural and engineered microbes, scientists reported in April in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. The microbes further changed the chemical makeup of the material, causing the polyethylene’s weight to go down by 7% and the polystyrene’s weight to go down by 11%. These findings may offer a new strategy to help combat ocean pollution: Deploy marine microbes to eat up the trash. However, researchers still need to measure how effective these microbes would be on a global scale.

Perhaps one day Earth's inheritors will snack on Big Mac...wrappers.

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Original Submission

• Re:So we can keep on using plastic,... Re:So we can keep on using plastic,... (Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Tuesday May 21 2019, @11:28PM (1 child)

  by linkdude64 (5482) on Tuesday May 21 2019, @11:28PM (#845976)

  Mother nature ...creating and solving all the world's problems.

  FTFY

  Parent

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• Re:So we can keep on using plastic,... (Score: 2) by choose another one on Wednesday May 22 2019, @07:56AM

  by choose another one (515) on Wednesday May 22 2019, @07:56AM (#846098)

  > Mother nature ...creating and solving all the world's problems.

  Yep, this. George Carlin explains it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c [youtube.com]

  The planet will be here for a long, long, long time after we’re gone and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself ’cuz that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it’s true that plastic is not degradable well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allows us to be spawned from it in the first place: it wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it, needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old philosophical question, “Why are we here?” “Plastic, assholes.”

  Parent