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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: 1) by Goghit on Wednesday May 22 2019, @02:39PM (1 child)

    by Goghit (6530) on Wednesday May 22 2019, @02:39PM (#846219)

    And on land we have the larvae of wax moths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waxworm [wikipedia.org] A right pain in the arse they are, since while a couple of species will eat plastic they prefer beehive wax. They're a pain to work with since they like to chew their way out of things like cheap, easily available yoghurt containers.

    Unlike the bacteria these things are edible and have a high fat content so they might actually be tasty.

  • (Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday May 22 2019, @02:50PM

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 22 2019, @02:50PM (#846229) Journal

    On a related note, I've observed mealworms eating expanded polystyrene foam, but I don't know how to determine if they gain any nutrition from it.