Pests Can Eat Plastic, Savior of Man-made Plastic Waste

This article examines Pests Can Eat Plastic, Savior of Man-made Plastic Waste. It presents the main facts, practical implications, and key points in a clearer, easier-to-follow format.

Understanding Pests Can Eat Plastic

• Why do humans not bring waste to the Sun?
• How long does it take waste to decompose?

Federica Bertocchini, a scientist at the University of Cantabria, Spain, and an amateur beekeeper, when he looked after the beehive, discovered the amazing ability of worms to eat plastic worms. These worms often cause a honeycomb hole with wax. After catching them from the beehive, Bertocchini dropped the worms into a supermarket plastic bag made of polyethylene. Amazingly, less than an hour later, the bag was punctured.

Later, Bertocchini collaborated with scientists at Cambridge University, England to study the activity of this worm in nylon bags.

When dropping 100 worms into a supermarket bag made of plastic. Scientists were shocked to find that after 40 minutes the holes appeared on the plastic bag and after 12 hours, 92 mg of plastic were eaten by the worm.

The efficiency of plastic destruction of this worms is superior to that of bacteria, it takes one day for bacteria to destroy 0.13 mg of plastic in the supermarket bag.

Not only does it bite through the plastic bag but the worm is actually eating plastic and decomposing plastic into ethylene glycol, an antifreeze. So far, worms are the only known insect capable of decomposing polyethylene in this way.

The researchers also tried to crush waxy worms into a glue and apply it to plastic bags. Nylon bags also decompose in the same way but the effect is not as high as the worm. This shows that deep wax itself contains an enzyme capable of breaking down polyethylene.

Scientists hope they will identify that enzyme and produce it on an industrial scale to save the world environment from the stinging plastic buildup.

Currently, billions of plastic bags and hundreds of tons of plastic are released into the environment each year seriously affecting the environment and species on Earth.