SoylentNews

Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

ScienceMag [sciencemag.org]:

Plastic makes up nearly 70% of all ocean litter [sciencemag.org], 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 [sciencedirect.com] 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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