PLASTIC EATING BACTERIA

CAN SCIENCE & BACTERIA HELP SOLVE A MASSIVE CHALLENGE OF OUR OWN MAKING?

When a microbe was found munching on a plastic bottle in a rubbish dump, it promised a recycling revolution. Now scientists are attempting to turbocharge those powers in a bid to solve our waste crisis. But will it work? In 2001, a group of Japanese scientists made a startling discovery at a rubbish dump. In trenches packed with dirt and waste, they found a slimy film of bacteria that had been happily chewing through plastic bottles, toys and other bric-a-brac. As they broke down the trash, the bacteria harvested the carbon in the plastic for energy, which they used to grow, move and divide into even more plastic-hungry bacteria. Even if not in quite the hand-to-mouth-to-stomach way we normally understand it, the bacteria were eating the plastic.

Stephen Buranyi

THE GUARDIAN

ADDITIONAL QUOTES FROM THE ARTICLE

In the years since the group’s discovery, plastic pollution has become impossible to ignore. Within that roughly 20-year span, we have generated 2.5bn tonnes of plastic waste and each year we produce about 380 million tonnes more, with that amount projected to triple again by 2060. A patch of plastic rubbish seven times the size of Great Britain sits in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and plastic waste chokes beaches and overspills landfills across the world. At the miniature scale, microplastic and nanoplastic particles have been found in fruits and vegetables, having passed into them through the plants’ roots. And they have been found lodged in nearly every human organ – they can even pass from mother to child through breast milk.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

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Save Our Woodlands is an environmentally conscious group of volunteers dedicated to preserving threatened birds, animals and ecosystems in the woodlands of New South Wales, Australia.

Only 15% of our woodlands remain, the rest has been cleared for agriculture.

Save Our Woodlands Inc. secures and protects woodlands in NSW and pays landholders, in perpetuity, to conserve, enhance and re-establish native woodlands on THEIR land, and to manage these woodlands, so they are maintained.

BUT we need YOUR help. Together we can bring about change. Please consider donating.

People tend to think that woodlands are “just bush,” consequently, over 85% of the native woodlands in New South Wales, Australia have been replaced by agriculture.

Donate $10 per month & help protect critical habitats. By doing so YOU will prevent further species from extinction.

Our work is only possible with your support.

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