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

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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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday May 22 2019, @04:28AM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 22 2019, @04:28AM (#846051) Journal

    I think these microbes require an environment where they are surrounded by water. Probably salt water.

    OTOH, this process is probably rather slow. If it weren't, the plastic wouldn't stay in the ocean garbage patches. It's my expectation that they require the surface of the plastic that they are eating to be wet, though I suppose oily is an outside possibility. Otherwise they can't get at it to digest it. It's also not clear how complete a job they do. Perhaps they leave isolated benzene rings floating around or something.

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