Scientists have found a worm that can eat its way through the plastic. This worm is called a waxworm, it is a member of the caterpillar family. The worm eats wax and it parasitizes beehives. The worm is also useful in animal research, it can replace mammals in some scientific experiments.
Professor Federica Bertocchini made this discovery when she removed an infestation from one of her owned hives and put them into a plastic bag. Surprisingly, the worms ate their way out.
To make more findings, professor Federica Bertocchini along with scientists Paolo Bombelli and Christopher j.
Howe placed 100 of these worms in various shopping bags and 40 minutes later, they noticed holes. After 12 hours the plastic bags had decreased by 92mg.
The scientists further mashed up some of the worms and smeared the paste on the plastic bags. The bags also depreciated. This was done in order to determine if the worms really affect the plastic or are just simply chewing them the plastic bags into smaller pieces.
The scientists suspect that the system of these worms contains a specific enzyme that, aids the digestion of plastic. The scientists also plan to continue investigating, if they are eating the plastic to use as food or just eating it so they can get out of the plastic bags.
One of the scientists Paolo Bombellli, a biochemist at Cambridge, believes that the findings could lead to a solution to plastic waste which laying all around in landfills, waterways and the oceans.
The scientists with further research, plan to identify the enzymes that these waxworms produce when they eat through plastic. And, the genes might then be put into bacteria like E Coli, or a marine organism called phytoplankton and used to degrade plastics.
Plastic pollution has been a real problem worldwide. Every year, 12.7 million tons of plastic end up in the oceans, so there is an estimate of five trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean. Since the 50s, over 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced only 9% have been recycled, 12% have been burned and the rest ended up in our environments.
This discovery is still undergoing more researches but hopefully, it just might just be an answer to eradicating plastic pollution in the ecosystem and save our planet.