Plastic-Eating Bacteria

And Their Pollution-Reducing Enzymes

In the 21st century, plastic is literally becoming part of everything as it gradually breaks down and builds up in the environment. This is a growing problem for life on Earth. Right now there are about 9 billion tons of plastic in the world, with 300 million tons of new plastic being produced every year. As part of this, one million new water bottles are produced every minute, and that’s just one of many different products. As if that wasn’t bad enough, less than 10% of all plastic winds up being recycled. Thus, every year, at least 8 million metric tons of discarded plastic end up in our oceans. So, at this rate, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish, and that’s assuming that the volume of waste won’t increase, but it most certainly will. As part of this, small plastic pellets are the result of industry and domestic plastic waste which has spread across the oceans. Some of the plastic pellets have even fragmented into microscopic particles. This is alarming because plastics are incredibly harmful chemical contaminants that pollute our soil, our food, our water, and our bodies. Plastic can and does disrupt ecosystems and create more and more areas where nothing can survive. Plastic debris kills millions of birds and fish annually. The sinister, and some might say signature, synthetic material has even been found in human…